OXFORD, Ohio Fifty years ago, young volunteers trained in Oxford risked and, in three cases, lost their lives fighting for civil rights in Mississippi. This weekend, veterans of 1964's \"Freedom Summer\"willgather at Miami University to tell stories of those momentous days and send a clarion call to engage in today's civil rights struggles. <\/p>\n
The conference and reunion, named, \"50 Years After Freedom Summer: Understanding the Past, Building the Future,\"will reunite 48 volunteers among the 800 who trained for a dangerous voter registration campaign and the establishment of Freedom Schools in Mississippi to educate African-American children who were denied equal access to a public education. <\/p>\n
The activists' worst fears were realized on Sunday, June 21, 1964, when three volunteers James Chaney of Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman and MichaelSchwernerof New York failed to check in after investigating a recently fire-bombed church nearPhiladelphia,Miss. wherethey had planned to conduct a Freedom School. <\/p>\n
Six more weeks would pass before the remains of the three men were found buried in an earthen dam inNeshobaCounty, Miss. They had been arrested in Philadelphia on a speeding charge, jailed and then released with a posse of Klansmen waiting for them. Another 35 years would pass before sevenKKKmembers would be prosecuted for the crime. <\/p>\n
The training took place at Western College for Women, which merged into Miami in the1970s. Conference organizers created an iPhone appthrougha National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The app will debut this weekend andoffer an interactive tour of the Western campus and explain events like role-playing through which students learned to react nonviolently to violent racists trying to impede their work. <\/p>\n
Become a WCPO Insider to see how conference organizers want to affect the events of today. <\/p>\n
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