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Locate the group chat pod

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Introduce yourself by typing in

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Feel free to ask questions or

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Get Set Up Introduce Yourself

WELCOME!

We’re so glad you could join us.

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Yes! This program will

be recorded.

We will make the recording,

handouts, and presentation

available to you.

JWA documents Jewish women's stories,

elevates their voices, and inspires them to be

agents of change.

Together we inspire (young) Jews to learn

about who they want to be and what impact

they want to have on the world.

GOALS

Learn how community and community organizing

played a central role in the Civil Rights Movement—

especially during Mississippi Freedom Summer.

Explore how Jewish experiences and values

informed Jewish relationships to activism in the Civil

Rights Movement.

Get practical tools and resources for teaching

students about social justice activism through a

Jewish lens.

What, if anything,

do you know

about Freedom

Summer?

FREEDOM SUMMER

1954Brown v. Board

1955

Montgomery Bus

Boycott

1960

Sit-in @ Woolworths in

Greensboro, NC

1961

Freedom Rides

1963

March on Washington,

John F. Kennedy Assassinated

1964

Freedom Summer

1965

Voting Rights Act

1966

Black Power Movement

1968

Martin Luther King, Jr.

and Robert Kennedy

Assassinated

Source: Chronology from Civil Rights—The 1960s Freedom Struggle by Rhoda Louis Blumberg

Student

Nonviolent

Coordinating

Committee

(SNCC)

Council of

Federated

Organizations

(COFO)

Jews made up an estimated half of all

white Freedom Summer volunteers

Less than 1% of the US population at that

time

Mostly white, affluent; many college

students

Stopped for training in Oxford, OH before

heading to different communities in the

South

Volunteer Profile

Need

Extensive voter intimidation and

complicated voter registration

process

Low literacy rates, poverty

Systemic racism and violent

intimidation; retaliation from

Whites

Lack of Black representation in

legislature despite large Black

population

Volunteer Action Taken

Literacy classes, education

about voter registration

process, and other subjects in

―Freedom Schools‖

Voter registration efforts—

canvassing and recruitment,

accompanying voters to the

Registrar, record keeping

Creation of Mississippi

Freedom Democratic Party

―My husband, Michael Schwerner, did not die in vain. If he

and Andrew Goodman had been Negroes, the world would

have taken little notice of their deaths. After all, the slaying

of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my

husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the

national alarm has been sounded.‖

ABOUT THIS LESSON

Role play

Round robin

Follow-up activities

Why are you here?

What is motivating you to go or not to

go to Mississippi?

Based on your skills/talents, which

project could you contribute to the

most?

STATION 1:

Jewish Participation

―…One of the strong things I grew up with as a kid

was some sense of fighting for social justice, and

without realizing it, that that was rooted somehow in

Jewish tradition. It was never specifically identified to

me as such, and I don’t even know that that was what

was driving people. But as I look back on it now, I

know that that was part of that Jewish secular tradition

of social justice.‖

Vicki Gabriner, Tennessee Volunteer

STATION 1:

Jewish Participation

―I grew up in a family that had good social values,

reflected in our Jewish heritage, culture, and history.

When I was growing up, at one point I wanted to be a

rabbi, but was told (at that time) women couldn’t be

rabbis. I went to Israel when I graduated from high school

in 1963, and the experience of Yad Vashem (the

Holocaust museum) had a transforming effect on me: I

promised myself that in the face of injustice I would

struggle for justice.‖

Heather Booth, Mississippi Volunteer

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What values or experiences do Vicki Gabriner and Heather

Booth identify as influential?

Where/how did they learn these values?

What are some things you have learned within your family that

shape the way you see the world and/or act in the world?

Do you think Vicki Gabriner and Heather Booth were conscious

of their motivations at the time? Do you think it matters if you

know why you are doing something to help others or is it okay if

you just do it? Why?

STATION 2:

Goals and Purposes

1. In breakout groups, read the documents.

2. Then discuss:

a) Which reasons given in these documents are most

resonant to you?

b) Which sound like reasons you might decide to be a

volunteer in Freedom Summer?

STATION 3: Community and Community Organizing

Play a game

1. Could you have accomplished

your goal with only one person?

2. What challenges did you face in

accomplishing your goal?

3. At what point in the process did

it become easier to accomplish

your goal? What do you think

made it easier? What did

different people bring to the

process?

STATION 3: Community and Community Organizing

Study a photo

1. How do you think music helps

build community?

2. What do you think can be

learned about music and

community from looking at a

photograph?

STATION 3: Community and Community Organizing

Listen to an oral history

And I don’t think I’m romanticizing it as I look back on

it. I remember there were just the most

extraordinary moments in that work. I remember

times being at a mass meeting inside a church

and singing ―We Shall Overcome‖ and knowing

that there were white people outside in their cars,

in their trucks, probably with guns, and feeling as

though the roof were just going to lift off the

church because the energy of the people with

whom we were working was so intense. You know,

the struggle – they were so involved in the

struggle that it was palpable. It was palpable…

Discuss:

1. Vicki describes being in a church while

another group is waiting outside. These two

groups are divided by color, space, and

values. With which community do you think

Vicki Gabriner most identifies?

2. What does she have in common with each

of the two communities?

3. Based on these similarities and differences,

what do you think were some things that

were important in connecting people and

forming communities during the Civil Rights

Movement?

VOICES OF FREEDOM SUMMER

June 24

Dear Dad,

The mood up here [in Oxford, Ohio] is, of course, very strained with those three

guys who disappeared Sunday, dead, most likely. Saturday night, I ate dinner with

the wife of one of them. She was telling me about all the great things she and her

husband were working on. She looks younger than me. What does she do now?

Give up the movement? What a terrible rotten life this is! I feel that the only

meaningful type of work is the Movement but I don’t want myself or anyone I’ve

met to have to die. I’m so shook up that death just doesn’t seem so awful

anymore, though. I’m no different from anyone else and if they’re risking their lives,

then so must I. But I just can’t comprehend why people must die to achieve

something so basic and simple as Freedom…

Love, Sylvie

1. Read the letter.

2. Post a response in the lino board (link in chat window).

FREEDOM SUMMEROnline Learning for Jewish Educators

Jewish Women’s Archive