Description
Ed King's Mississippi:
Behind the Scenes of Freedom Summer features more than forty
unpublished black-and-white photographs and substantial writings by the
prominent civil rights activist Reverend Ed King. The images and text
provide a unique perspective on Mississippi during the summer of 1964.
Taken in Jackson, Greenwood, and Philadelphia, the photographs showcase
informal images of Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Mississippi
civil rights workers, and college student volunteers in the movement. Ed
King's writings offer background and insights on the motivations and
work of Freedom Summer volunteers, on the racial climate of Mississippi
during the late 1950s and 1960s, and the grassroots effort by black
Mississippians to enter the political arena and exercise their
fundamental civil rights.
Ed King, a native of Vicksburg and a
Methodist minister, was a founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party and a key figure in the civil rights movement in the state in the
1960s. As one of the few white Mississippians with a leadership position
in the movement, his words and photographs offer a rare
behind-the-scenes chronicle of events in the state during Freedom
Summer. Ed King is a retired faculty member of the School of Health
Related Professions, University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Historian
Trent Watts furnishes a substantial introduction to the volume and
offers background on the Freedom Summer campaign as well as a
description of Ed King's civil rights activism from the late 1950s to
the present day.
