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hattiesburg, mississippi. hattiesburg was incorporated in 1884. he was known for its lumber and railroad industries. posted by the comcast table city tours-span's staff recently visited this. learn more all weekend here on "american history tv." >> there is an essay by shirley, age 14, that says -- what do i think about hattiesburg? hattiesburg is an unfit place to live because of the people that make up this town. the whites have their way, if they kill one of us, they get away with it. but if we kill one of them, they kill us. what are we going to do about this? nothing but take our stand for equal rights. today, we are in special collection at the university of southern mississippi. we are part of the library here.

today i am featuring different collections from our civil rights materials. this manuscript material, you know oftentimes when you , have your presidents and governors and stuff, they all know to keep their papers. , kind of the normal everyday person like us who don't realize that what they have is so valuable and that people can learn so much from it. so what we strive to do here in relation to our civil rights materials is collect the experiences of people living during the movement. because just the nature of the collections, much of this material, we are the only institution in the world who has these. after brown versus board of education, that was when several new segregationist groups were created. you had the white citizens council, which was kind of the uptown klan. these would be prominent community members. in addition, you are also going to have the mississippi state

sovereignty commission. which was a state agency whose sole purpose was to prevent integration. that kind of kept it under states rights. these organizations, along with the klan and other groups really had an impact on mississippi and hattiesburg and just the way of life in mississippi. so hattiesburg, for instance, we have had voter registration. african-americans could not register to vote. everything was still segregated. a lot of the businesses and restaurants and hotels were still kind of under these kinds of old jim crow laws. one of the things i want to show, prior to freedom summer to show the kinds of things that happened in the forest county and hattiesburg area. you have the story of these two young boys. this is february of 1964.

this is edgar and randy williamson. they were in jones county, the county north of hattiesburg. and so these two boys were eight , and nine years old and never attended a day of school. i find information about them in the johnson papers. paul johnson was governor at the time of mississippi in 1964. this is particularly about this letter. this is the condensation of a very voluminous file. the sovereignty commission on the williamson boys showed on the birth certificate to be white males because of white parents, but they were believed 1/32 of negro blood. so, this shows you that they had never been to school because they could not find a school that would take them. they were legally, according to the 1/8 rule in mississippi, they were legally white, but because they did have this one drop of blood, they were discriminated against. so eventually they did get into

school, but i think this is a perfect example of the day to day things of how african-american it -- how african-americans or people of african-american ancestry were really impacted before freedom summer. so, mississippi was chosen because of the dire need of kind of, you know the race relations in the state were not the best. which was the main umbrella organization of civil rights groups, you had various other organizations involved including the naacp, , snic, and core. these groups came together to brainstorm and to organize freedom summer, but really snic was the group that did most of the work. bob moses, or i still believe lives in jackson, was the one who organized this and got this going. really this was not a regional

effort, this is not a local effort. this was a national effort to really do something very local. prior to freedom summer, which 1964, 12 weeksof during the summer of 1964, volunteers starting in february of 1964. sncc, the student nonviolent coordinating committee started advertising and getting people to volunteer to come to mississippi to set up freedom schools. to help to register african-americans to vote and to help with other initiatives to really give confidence and a voice to african-americans in mississippi. so once the volunteers were brought together, they went to what is now miami university in ohio for training sessions. so this is where they were taught to self-defense. kind of drop and roll and get

into a ball and do that. they were also given different documents and different kinds of materials. so for instance, each person was given a list of freedom songs. because you know so often in the , civil rights movement, you have all these "we shall overcome," or "this little light of mine." these are important songs. the volunteers were actually given copies of the lyrics so that they could participate in different sing-alongs. and you will see here from the summer of 1964, this is mississippi democratic freedom party meeting at one of the local churches, and you will see that they are you know, holding , hands and singing before or after a meeting. in may, people started coming into town, across the state. and hattiesburg was one of the

main locations for freedom summer. when they got here there, were several things that they were tasked to do. one was to set up freedom schools. you would have african-american children and adults who would attend school to learn about voters rights. african-american history, you know african-american history , had never been taught to people in mississippi. to be able to learn about context within the race was a really important part of the movement. for the group, they brought down copies of ebony magazine. people in mississippi had never seen these. a lot of these were were banned and not sold. this picture here shows a group of men looking through the magazine for the first time. imagine being surrounded by images that don't look anything like you. so this was really an important move to kind of see that these

publications were there for african-americans. so, within the schools they would have different homework activities. you would have the students that get around and write essays about what they liked about hattiesburg. students would write about their experiences with race relations and different things going on. a lot of the writings were put into little newsletters. for true life,ce one of the churches in town that sponsored, they had their own newsletter for students written , by students. you know, there's an essay by shirley, age 14 that states -- what i think about hattiesburg. hattiesburg is an unfit place to live because of the people that make up this town. the whites have their way. if they kill one of us, they get away with it. if we kill one of them, they kill us. what are we going to do about this? nothing but take our stand for equal rights. prominent people would come to

town to help spread the movement. a lot of this was linked to folk tradition. pete seeger came into town and met with the freedom schools and performed. in this picture here you see him , speaking to students and really talking to them about what they were going through. their thoughts on things. and you know, this just shows how someone as nationally prominent as seeger is going to come into town and work on issues related to race relations. one of the things that the people in hattiesburg were given was a handout for the hattiesburg power structure. and this is a wonderful document for people to be able to get a sense of the fact that, you know for instance, the newspaper , publisher reported directly to the mayor. and so this was a way for the , city government, some say, to take control of what was in the media and kind of make sure that

hattiesburg was viewed in a positive light. so you know, of course, the , hattiesburg power structure was the white community. because african-americans really did not hold any kind of elected office or any kind -- they weren't in the chamber of commerce or the police department or anything like that. one thing i want to point out on the graph is that with the chamber of commerce directly reporting to it is the white citizens council. so that proves again how these segregationists were really entrenched in everyday kind of prominent white society. you know the mississippi state , sovereignty commission did have fights. they would come around and do -- kind of follow people or infiltrate the activities here in hattiesburg. on these blue sheets of paper

, these are the reports of operator 79. operator number 79 was an undercover officer who posed as a civil rights activist and volunteered in hattiesburg with the freedom summer offices. the first sentence of this is -- it reads the split between the , naacp and co-folk widened with insults being passed. so you know, he gives a report on kind of what was happening between the different groups that were involved with freedom summer and how it played out. i think he also did a little editorializing. he would make judgments about how, you know, black men and white women were hanging out a lot. work all that they do is smoke , cigarettes. or, they are you know, they all , love communism. different things like that. there were different get-togethers. and different events to bring people together.

not only the volunteers, but also community members. volunteers were staying with local residents, which could often prove dangerous or many of the residents here who had gunshots, bullet shots through their windows and had vehicles shot up and various other other things. ,so this particular picture takes place at the vernon tamer farm. so vernon tamer lived in the kelly settlement, which is just outside of hattiesburg. it is in forest county. he owned a general store and was very active in registering african-americans to vote. he was a civil rights activist locally. he also would have these great parties with hayrides and know, picnics and all sorts of great food. it was a great way for the community to become more comfortable with the volunteers

and the other way around. so this particular sign, which is left on a tree outside his damer, itf vernon shows you the kind of intimidation the people in hattiesburg did experience. two years after the freedom summer, vernon damer his house , was firebombed. he did die later from the effects of smoke inhalation. this was after freedom summer. even though it really motivated locals and made a lot of headway, it was still the silence and kind of intimidation that existed in hattiesburg and much of the state. so freedom summer had a large impact on hattiesburg and the state. had, it encouraged people to

stand up for themselves, to be a little more sure in their protest. different programs came out of the freedom summer, such as, i think, headstart came out of it. >> you also had people willing to push for integration. tools peoplee learned, they were able to change their lives. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> we recently traveled to hattiesburg, mississippi. hattiesburgbout that c-span.org/cies