Skip To Content
Join the Conversation
Funded by
Support Provided by: Learn More
Freedom Summer | Clip

On a Hair Trigger

From the Collection: Fighting for a More Perfect Union: Protest and Politics in America

Local Mississippi leadership prepared themselves psychologically and militarily for Freedom Summer.  The Ku Klux Klan rose up as one that April. Mississippi was on a hair trigger. 

Support Provided by: Learn More

Now Streaming

  • The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools poster image

    The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools

    Explore what happened when the small Mississippi town of Leland integrated its public schools in 1970. Told through the remembrances of students, teachers and parents, the film shows how the town – and America – were transformed.

  • The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools (español) poster image

    The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools (español)

    Explore lo que sucedió cuando la pequeña ciudad de Leland en Misisipi integró sus escuelas públicas en 1970. Contada a través de los recuerdos de estudiantes, maestros y padres de familia, la película muestra cómo se transformaron la ciudad y el país.

  • The Busing Battleground poster image

    The Busing Battleground

    The Busing Battleground viscerally captures the class tensions and racial violence that ensued when Black and white students in Boston were bused for the first time between neighborhoods to comply with a federal desegregation order.

Related Features

  • What Was Freedom Summer? poster image icon Clip
    Freedom Summer | Clip

    What Was Freedom Summer?

    They called it "a campaign that may have no parallel since the days of Reconstruction." In 1964, more than 700 civil rights workers focused their efforts on Mississippi. 

  • Freedom Summer's Widow poster image icon Clip
    Freedom Summer | Clip

    Freedom Summer's Widow

    When Mickey Schwerner was killed in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, much attention was trained on his wife, Rita. 

  • Tensions During Training poster image icon Clip
    Freedom Summer | Clip

    Tensions During Training

    During training before Freedom Summer in 1964, tension between the mostly-white volunteers and the mostly-black SNCC staff became evident immediately.