Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader

Edited by Michael Edmonds

Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader documents the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, when SNCC and CORE workers and volunteers arrived in the Deep South to register voters and teach nonviolence, and more than 60,000 black Mississippians risked everything to overturn a system that had brutally exploited them.

In the 44 original documents in this anthology, you’ll read their letters, eavesdrop on their meetings, shudder at their suffering, and admire their courage. You’ll witness the final hours of three workers murdered on the project’s first day, hear testimony by black residents who bravely stood up to police torture and Klan firebombs, and watch the liberal establishment betray them.

These vivid primary sources, collected by the Wisconsin Historical Society, provide both firsthand accounts of this astounding grassroots struggle as well as a broader understanding of the civil rights movement.