Mississippi

In the struggle for civil rights, it always came down to Mississippi. The state was the site of some of the most notorious and violent moments of the movement, including the murder of Emmett Till, the killing of civil rights workers during Freedom Summer, and the imprisonment of the Freedom Riders. For decades, the state […]

The murder of Emmett Till was the lightning strike that sparked the civil rights movement. As the late John Lewis said, Emmett Till was his George Floyd. The 1955 kidnapping and brutal slaying of the 14-year-old boy shocked a nation after his mother Mamie Till-Mobley allowed Jet magazine to publish pictures of her son’s disfigured body. Three […]

These days Oxford, Miss., is best known as genteel southern college town, the former home to writers John Grisham and William Faulkner. It evokes the scent of magnolias, and the roar of the crowd at a University of Mississippi football game. But in 1962, it was quite a different atmosphere, and the roars were from […]

The film and best-selling novel The Help tells the story of Skeeter Phelan, a white Ole Miss graduate who collaborates on a secret writing project with the Black women who work as maids for white families in 1960s-era Mississippi. While some have been wary of the story by University of Alabama graduate Kathryn Stockett because it […]

Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration program that brought thousands of volunteers to the Deep South in 1964. Today you can follow an audio driving tour, the Freedom Summer Trail, one of the top things to do in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The effort, coordinated by  was met with organized violence, including the Mississippi Burning murders […]