Letters from Mississippi offers a riveting, personal and multi-faceted
narrative of the dramatic events that took place during the summer of
1964, Freedom Summer, when hundreds of people came to Mississippi to
volunteer with the Mississippi Summer Voting Project. The book covers
the disappearance and murder of James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and
Michael Schwerner, the Freedom Schools, the violence and tensions at
voting registration centers, and the political struggles in the halls of
power.
The original publication of Letters from Mississippi in 1965 was an
immediate record of the mostly white volunteers in the Mississippi
Summer Voting Project of 1964 (Freedom Summer). It went out of print in
1970. Zephyr Press' 2002 edition took the original text and placed it in
a context of the history of the civil rights movement, of the broader
scene in Mississippi during that summer, and of the subsequent lives of
the volunteers. That edition has become a staple in studies of the civil
rights movement, but it still focuses mostly on the outsiders in their
Mississippi communities. This fiftieth anniversary edition includes:
expanded biographical notes from previous editions, additional
biographies of contributors to the original book, expanded notes, and a
filmography. The result is a wider resource for scholarship as well as
for a general understanding of this critical moment in civil rights
history.
Elizabeth Martínez has published six books and numerous articles on
popular struggles in the Americas including De Colores Means All of Us:
Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century.
Julian Bond has served four terms on the NAACP National Board and
since 1998 has been board chairman. He was president of the Atlanta
NAACP from 1978 until 1989.
