Monday, January 23, 7-9pm, Columbus Mennonite Church, 35 Oakland Park Ave.

Today’s program: screening of film “Freedom Summer”

During the hot and deadly summer of 1964, the nation could not turn away from Mississippi. Over ten memorable weeks in 1964, known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers from around the country joined organizers and local African Americans in a historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in what was one of the nation’s most viciously racist and segregated states.

Working together, they canvassed for voter registration, created Freedom Schools, and established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with the goal of challenging the segregationist Democratic Party at the national convention in Atlantic City.

Freedom Summer was marked by sustained and deadly violence: murders, beatings, the burning of 35 churches, and the bombing of 70 homes and community centers. The film highlights an overlooked but essential element of the civil rights movement: the patient and long-term efforts of both local citizens and outside activists to organize communities and register black voters in the face of intimidation, physical violence, and death.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/freedomsummer/