Film Screening, Exhibit Opening Commemorating Freedom Summers's 60th Anniversary

News item published on: 2024-07-18 14:16:00

Black and white photograph of three black young adults, two female, with a male in the middle, sitting on a front step in front of a storefront, reading a notebook. "Freedom Summer at 60: Mississippi as a Catalyst for Change," a photography exhibit, will be on display at the Hattiesburg Library through August. The exhibit was curated in association with University Libraries Special Collections and Harvey Richards Media Archive. It features photographs taken by Herbert Randall in and around Hattiesburg during Freedom Sumer, as well as archival photographs by Richards made in Mississippi from 1959-64.

In conjunction with the exhibit, a film screening of two civil rights-era documentaries filmed in Mississippi will be held from 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 8, at the Hattiesburg Public Library. The screening commemorates the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer voting rights and education initiatives in Mississippi.

We’ll Never Turn Back (1963) and Dream Deferred (1964) document the often-violent struggle that Black residents faced across Mississippi and the South when attempting to vote. These events led to the watershed moment of national recognition that occurred during Freedom Summer in 1964.

Herbert Eugene Randall, Jr., a talented young African and Native American photographer, was awarded the John Hay Whitney Fellowship for Creative Photography in the spring of 1964, to be used to photographically document the contemporary lives of African Americans. Shortly after receiving the fellowship, he met Sanford Rose "Sandy" Leigh, a Field Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and director of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in Hattiesburg. Upon their meeting, Leigh suggested that Randall use his fellowship to photograph Freedom Summer activities in Hattiesburg.

Harvey Richards was a union organizer, social activist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker from rural Oregon whose work portrayed the various struggles faced by the working class and members of the lower socio-economic rungs of society. He viewed the documentary image as a tool for raising social awareness and as a catalyst for change.

Black and white photograph of four black kids, one female on the right side of the table and three male on the left, talking and writing on paper. During the summer of 1964, Randall not only documented the social and political efforts of the Hattiesburg Project, but also vividly depicted the hardships of African American lives in a racially discriminating Mississippi.

The selection of black and white images by Herbert Randall displayed in this exhibition were made in and around the Hattiesburg area, documenting the local community and organization efforts as freedom workers and volunteers from throughout the United States assisted in the voter registration and education initiatives that were part of Freedom Summer. Randall’s photographs are presented alongside a selection of color photographs made by Richards throughout Mississippi from 1959-1964. These images were made during three trips that Richards took to Mississippi to more directly represent the social and living conditions of Black southerners within a biased contemporary media landscape.