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JWA documents Jewish women's stories, elevates their voices, and inspires them to be agents of change.

Together we inspire (young) Jews to learn about who they want to be and what impact they want to have on the

world.

GOALS

Learn how community and community organizing played a central role in the Civil Rights Movement—especially during Mississippi Freedom Summer.

Explore how Jewish experiences and values informed Jewish relationships to activism in the Civil Rights Movement.

Get practical tools and resources for teaching students about social justice activism through a Jewish lens.

What, if anything, do you know about Freedom Summer??

FREEDOM SUMMER

1954Brown v. Board

1955Montgomery Bus Boycott

1960Sit-in @ Woolworths in Greensboro, NC

1961Freedom Rides

1963March on Washington, John F. Kennedy Assassinated

1964Freedom Summer

1965Voting Rights Act

1966Black Power Movement

1968Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy Assassinated

Source: Chronology from Civil Rights—The 1960s Freedom Struggle by Rhoda Louis Blumberg

Student Nonviolent Coordinatin

g Committee

(SNCC)

Council of Federated

Organizations

(COFO)

Jews made up an estimated half of all white Freedom Summer volunteers

Less than 1% of the US population at that time

Mostly white, affluent; many college students

Stopped for training in Oxford, OH before heading to different communities in the South

Volunteer Profile

Need

Extensive voter intimidation and complicated voter registration process

Low literacy rates, poverty

Systemic racism and violent intimidation; retaliation from Whites

Lack of Black representation in legislature despite large Black population

Volunteer Action Taken

Literacy classes, education about voter registration process, and other subjects in “Freedom Schools”

Voter registration efforts—canvassing and recruitment, accompanying voters to the Registrar, record keeping

Creation of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

“My husband, Michael Schwerner, did not die in vain. If he and Andrew Goodman had been Negroes, the world would have taken little notice of their deaths. After all, the slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the national alarm has been sounded.”

ABOUT THIS LESSON

Role play

Round robin

Follow-up activities

Why are you here?

What is motivating you to go or not to go to Mississippi?

Based on your skills/talents, which project could you contribute to the most?

STATION 1: Jewish Participation

“…One of the strong things I grew up with as a kid was some sense of fighting for social justice, and without realizing it, that that was rooted somehow in Jewish tradition. It was never specifically identified to me as such, and I don’t even know that that was what was driving people. But as I look back on it now, I know that that was part of that Jewish secular tradition of social justice.”

Vicki Gabriner, Tennessee Volunteer

STATION 1: Jewish Participation

“I grew up in a family that had good social values, reflected in our Jewish heritage, culture, and history. When I was growing up, at one point I wanted to be a rabbi, but was told (at that time) women couldn’t be rabbis. I went to Israel when I graduated from high school in 1963, and the experience of Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum) had a transforming effect on me: I promised myself that in the face of injustice I would struggle for justice.”

Heather Booth, Mississippi Volunteer

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What values or experiences do Vicki Gabriner and Heather Booth identify as influential?

Where/how did they learn these values?

What are some things you have learned within your family that shape the way you see the world and/or act in the world?

Do you think Vicki Gabriner and Heather Booth were conscious of their motivations at the time? Do you think it matters if you know why you are doing something to help others or is it okay if you just do it? Why?

STATION 2: Goals and Purposes

1. In breakout groups, read the documents.

2. Then discuss: a) Which reasons given in these documents

are most resonant to you?

b) Which sound like reasons you might decide to be a volunteer in Freedom Summer?

STATION 3: Community and Community Organizing

Play a game1. Could you have

accomplished your goal with only one person?

2. What challenges did you face in accomplishing your goal?

3. At what point in the process did it become easier to accomplish your goal? What do you think made it easier? What did different people bring to the process?

STATION 3: Community and Community Organizing

Study a photo1. How do you think music

helps build community?

2. What do you think can be learned about music and community from looking at a photograph?

STATION 3: Community and Community Organizing

Listen to an oral history

And I don’t think I’m romanticizing it as I look back on it. I remember there were just the most extraordinary moments in that work. I remember times being at a mass meeting inside a church and singing “We Shall Overcome” and knowing that there were white people outside in their cars, in their trucks, probably with guns, and feeling as though the roof were just going to lift off the church because the energy of the people with whom we were working was so intense. You know, the struggle – they were so involved in the struggle that it was palpable. It was palpable…

Discuss:1. Vicki describes being in a church while

another group is waiting outside. These two groups are divided by color, space, and values. With which community do you think Vicki Gabriner most identifies?

2. What does she have in common with each of the two communities?

3. Based on these similarities and differences, what do you think were some things that were important in connecting people and forming communities during the Civil Rights Movement?

VOICES OF FREEDOM SUMMER

June 24

Dear Dad,

The mood up here [in Oxford, Ohio] is, of course, very strained with those three guys who disappeared Sunday, dead, most likely. Saturday night, I ate dinner with the wife of one of them. She was telling me about all the great things she and her husband were working on. She looks younger than me. What does she do now? Give up the movement? What a terrible rotten life this is! I feel that the only meaningful type of work is the Movement but I don’t want myself or anyone I’ve met to have to die. I’m so shook up that death just doesn’t seem so awful anymore, though. I’m no different from anyone else and if they’re risking their lives, then so must I. But I just can’t comprehend why people must die to achieve something so basic and simple as Freedom…

Love, Sylvie

1. Read the letter.

2. Post a response in the lino board (link in chat window).

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FREEDOM SUMMEROnline Learning for Jewish EducatorsJewish Women’s Archive