440. The 1964 Freedom Summer Project in Mississippi

Willie Hiatt via Zoom

In the summer of 1964, hundreds of white and black college students participated in a voter-registration campaign in deeply segregated Mississippi, where legislation, intimidation, and violence had disenfranchised most black voting since Reconstruction. The death of three college students in June at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and local law enforcement attested not only to the threat that Civil Rights posed to the white South, but also the danger that student organizers faced. This lecture explores the organization, training, and non-violent tactics of college students and the response of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

10-12 noon                                                                                                                  1 Session

Tuesday, February 18                                                                                     Fee:  $30

[A Zoom link will be sent to you prior to each session, typically on the day before your class and the morning of your class.  If you have any questions or need help getting online, feel free to call us at 516-480-5733 and we’ll get right back to you with assistance.]

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Willie Hiatt, a Kentucky native, is an Associate Professor of History at Long Island University,

Post Campus, and a former Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2019-20).

He’s the author of The Rarified Air of the Modern: Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes (Oxford, 2016). His current research is an oral history project examining how Maoist

insurgents in Peru targeted high-tension towers during the Shining Path movement (1980-92).