Mississippi Summer – 1964

I n the summer of 1964 July was “Hospitality Month” in Mississippi. But as the volunteers and staff of the Mississippi Summer Project began settling into the countryside, what they found waiting for them was, as one volunteer put it, a “magnolia jungle.” The aim of the Summer Project was to challenge the segregationist policies of the most openly racist state in the nation. As John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) observed at the ...