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Freedom Summer | Clip

Charles McLaurin - "The Foot Soldier"

From the Collections: Freedom Summer @ 50 | Fighting for a More Perfect Union: Protest and Politics in America

In the summer of 1964, Charles McLaurin led a group of Freedom Summer volunteers in an effort to register voters in rural Mississippi. In 2014, he journeyed back to the small towns he worked in that summer, recounting how infiltrating the small town of Drew, Mississippi landed him and others in a small country jail and the ways in which Fannie Lou Hamer inspired the volunteers.

Watch more Freedom Summer @ 50

Freedom Summer @ 50: The Librarian
Freedom Summer @ 50: The Publisher
Freedom Summer @ 50: The Activist
Freedom Summer @ 50: The Voter
Freedom Summer @ 50: The Teacher
Freedom Summer @ 50: The Photographer
Freedom Summer @ 50: The Preservationist
Freedom Summer @ 50: The Folk Singer

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