S4 E7: Freedom Summer

Scene on Radio: Capitalism

Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

Society & Culture, Audiodoc, Radio, Documentary, Stories

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2020

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the summer of 1964, about a thousand young Americans, black and white, came together in Mississippi to place themselves in the path of white supremacist power and violence. They issued a bold pro-democracy challenge to the nation and the Democratic Party.

Produced by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with John Lewis, Bob Moses, Unita Blackwell, Hollis Watkins, Dorie Ladner, and many others.

The series editor is Loretta Williams. Freedom song recordings courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways. Other music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: A Freedom Summer worker in Mississippi, 1964. Photo by Steve Schapiro.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	A content warning. This episode includes descriptions of intense violence and the use of a racial slur.
0:07.0	So, John, when you look at history, the way that we're looking at it in this series, sometimes I start to get tempted to make really sloppy historical comparisons.
0:19.0	Yeah.
0:20.0	And I mean, because that's easy to do.
0:22.0	It is easy to do.
0:24.0	What's that expression?
0:25.0	History doesn't repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.
0:29.0	And it's easy to get carried away trying to hear those rhymes.
0:34.0	In a scholarly world, we learn to have nuance and not to do that.
0:37.0	But sometimes I myself have been guilty.
0:40.0	I worked on this podcast on civil about the Civil War.
0:44.0	And during that time, I was like, everything was just like 1861.
0:49.0	I mean, I'd be like at dinner parties and people like,
0:53.0	I change, we get it to understand anything like a movie.
0:58.0	It's like we have to go back to the 19th century. We understand.
1:01.0	Yeah.
1:02.0	Or, you know, the United States today is Germany 1933.
1:06.0	Right.
1:07.0	Yeah.
1:08.0	Well, and maybe it is.
1:10.0	Some days it seems to be.
1:12.0	But yeah, you tried not to get too carried away reading the newspaper every morning.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -1781 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.