Mr. Watson's book derives its powerat its best, it is the literary equivalent of a hot light bulb dangling from a low ceilingfrom its narrow focus. Freedom Summer is about the more than 700 college students who, in the summer of 1964, under the supervision of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, risked their lives to travel to Mississippi to register black voters and open schools…The story of these months has been told before, but rarely this viscerally.
The New York Times
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Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy
Narrated by David Drummond
Bruce WatsonUnabridged — 14 hours, 37 minutes
![Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy
Narrated by David Drummond
Bruce WatsonUnabridged — 14 hours, 37 minutes
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Overview
This remarkable chapter in American history, the basis for the controversial film Mississippi Burning, is now the subject of Bruce Watson's thoughtful and riveting historical narrative. Using in-depth interviews with participants and residents, Watson brilliantly captures the tottering legacy of Jim Crow in Mississippi and the chaos that brought such national figures as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pete Seeger to the state. Freedom Summer presents finely rendered portraits of the courageous black citizens and Northern volunteers who refused to be intimidated in their struggle for justice, as well as the white Mississippians who would kill to protect a dying way of life. Few books have provided such an intimate look at race relations during the deadliest days of the civil rights movement.
Editorial Reviews
Blow-by-blow account of the ghastly reception given the Freedom Summer volunteers who attempted to register black voters in Mississippi in 1964. Journalist Watson (Sacco and Vanzetti, 2007, etc.) creates a complete picture of this decisive summer, from the makeup of the young students who risked their lives to volunteer to a comprehensive portrait of a nation on the brink of wrenching change in race relations. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had recruited across college campuses legions of white and black students eager to break open the deeply segregated "closed society" of Mississippi, with its entrenched obstacles to black voting. Trained briefly in Ohio and bused down to Mississippi by late June, the young, idealistic volunteers were well-informed about the white hostility and customary savagery perpetrated against blacks that they would face. However, the largely middle-class, well-educated students were not prepared for the scenes of poverty and destitution they encountered in black communities throughout the South. The disappearance in late June of three SNCC volunteers haunted their work that summer, and the incident serves as the book's suspenseful propulsion. The discovery of their remains in early August-after an extended FBI hunt and national outcry-reinforced rather than deterred the volunteers' conviction. Watson does a fine job portraying key participants, such as SNCC leaders Bob Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer, as well as less-well-known events at the subsequent Atlantic City Democratic Convention in mid-August, where the 67 black Freedom Democrats of Mississippi insisted on being heard. Engaging but occasionally longwinded, Watson's work is competentlyresearched and contextually rich. A moving record of the power of idealism. Agent: Jeff Kleinman/Folio Literary Management
In this mesmerizing history, Watson (Sacco and Vanzetti) revisits the blistering summer of 1964 when about 700 volunteers arrived in Mississippi to agitate for civil rights and endured horrific harassment, intimidation, and persecution from racist state and private forces. The largely white, college student volunteers and the largely black trainers and organizers, SNCC veterans of previous campaigns, were fed and sheltered by the impoverished black community members they had come to serve and secure suffrage for. Their path was two-pronged: the Freedom School’s challenge to a “power structure... that confined Negro education to 'learning to stay in your place’ ” and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s challenge to Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Familiar figures (e.g., Lyndon B. Johnson, Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer) take the stage, but Watson’s dramatic center belongs to four “ordinary” volunteers, whose experiences he portrays with resonant detail. The murdered Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner cast shadows over all, haunting Watson’s account of how the volunteers, organizers, and the black Mississippians who dared seek political expression “lifted and revived the trampled dream of democracy.” (June)
"Here is a past of fear and hate, but also of courage and bravery, all given a narrator's---a scholar's---knowing and wise documentary attention." ---Robert Coles, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Children of Crisis series
This powerful account of the Civil Rights Movement focuses on the volunteers that descended on Mississippi during the summer of 1964 for the purpose of registering black voters. David Drummond's narration, like Watson's story, starts strong and remains so throughout the entire production. Drummond provides a straight narration that proves to be sensitive and animated when the story requires. The combination of well-crafted reporting and Drummond's moving performance allows the listener to become a witness to a painful and tumultuous chapter in our nation’s history. FREEDOM SUMMER will most certainly remain in the minds of listeners for some time. J.R.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940170722853 |
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Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
Publication date: | 06/16/2010 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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