Part of the Freedom Summer, 1964 exhibit on display at MGCCC’s Perkinston Campus through February 27. The exhibit, compiled last year on the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, is on loan from The University of Southern Mississippi’s McCain Archives.
Exhibition showcases works of Civil Rights photographer Herbert Randall Jr.
It was 1964. The Beatles and other British rock groups were taking America and the rest of the world by storm. Cassius Clay won the Boxing World Heavyweight Championship. The Vietnam War was made official and very real for U.S. soldiers. Race riots were being fought in America’s cities and towns. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. And award-winning photographer Herbert Randall Jr. captured 1,759 photographs during Freedom Summer, becoming the official photographer for the movement that was formed when an alliance of local residents, college students and voting rights organizers from across the country came to Hattiesburg to gain voting rights for African Americans in the state
Fast-forward almost 51 years to the Perkinston Campus of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, where you can relive, or experience for the very first time, the life-changing events of 1964. A showcase of Randall’s photos, The Freedom Summer, 1964, exhibit, established last year on the 50th anniversary of the event, is on loan from The University of Southern Mississippi’s McCain Archives. It can be seen in the Willis H. Lott Learning Resource Center at the Perkinston Campus through February 27 during the LRC’s regular business hours (Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.; and Sunday, 6 – 9 p.m.).
Randall, who was 28 when he was awarded the John Hay Whitney Fellowship Award for Creative Photography, befriended Sanford Rose “Sandy” Leigh, director of the Freedom Summer project in Hattiesburg, shortly after receiving the award. Leigh asked Randall to use his fellowship to travel to Hattiesburg and serve as the official photographer. During that summer and under the direction of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), volunteers in Hattiesburg organized health clinics, established freedom schools to educate African-American children and sponsored voter registration drives. Randall’s photos depict those events and even include a picnic at the home of the late civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer.
The exhibit is open to the public and is free of charge. For more information, contact Shugana Williams at 601.928.6259 or shugana.williams@mgccc.edu.
Sandy Leigh Closeup August 1964
Voter Registration Canvassing July 1964