LibGuides: African American Studies: Mississippi Civil Rights

Selected Print Books Available in the Library

The Parchman Ordeal

Call Number: F349 .N2 L34 2018

The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi

Call Number E185.9 .M6 C58 2013

To Write in the Light of Freedom

Call Number: E185.93 .M6 T6 2015

Catfish Dream

Call Number: SH20 .S385 R36 2018

Mississippi Praying

Call Number BR555 .M7 D87 2013

Civil Rights, Culture Wars: The Fight over a Mississippi Text Book

Call Number: E175.8 .E24 2017

Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America's Civil Rights Century

Call Number: HV6465 .M7 W27 2016

Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

Call Number: E185.93.M6 D58 1994

A Voice That Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement

Call Number: E185.97 .H35 B76 2014

I've Got the Light of Freedom

Call Number: E185.93.M6 P39 1995

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi

Call Number: BX8249 .N46 G46 2015

Remembering Medgar Evers

Call Number: F349 .J13 G85 2013

Worse Than Slavery

Call Number: HV9475.M72 M576 1996

Freedom Summer

Call Number: E185.93.M6 W285 2010

The Blood of Emmett Till

Call Number: HV6465 .M7 T97 2017

Breach of Peace

Call Number: E185.93 .M6 E85 2018

Museums & Historical Sites

Digital Collections & Online Documents

Civil Rights Archive, University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi's Civil Rights Archive contains digitized versions of small (generally one box or less) collections related to the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi and the American South. Collections date from Reconstruction to the late 20th century. Major topics represented include the Freedmen's Bureau, school integration, voter registration, labor, and religious activism.
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive, University of Southern Mississippi
Mississippi was a focal point in the struggle for civil rights in America, and Hattiesburg, home of The University of Southern Mississippi, had the largest and most successful Freedom Summer project in 1964. The civil rights materials collected at the University document a local history with truly national significance. The Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive includes a selection of digitized photographs, letters, diaries, and other documents. Oral history transcripts are also available, as well as finding aids for manuscript collections (from the website).
Emmett Till Archive, Florida State University
From the website "The Emmett Till Archives at Florida State University Libraries consists of primary and secondary source material related to the life, murder, and memory of Emmett Louis Till. Florida State University Libraries partners with the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, the Emmett Till Memory Project, and other institutions and private donors to collect, preserve, and provide access to the ongoing story of Emmett Till. The Till Archives includes newspapers, magazines, oral histories, photographs, government records, scholarly literature, creative works, and other materials documenting the Till case and its commemoration, memorialization, and discussion in scholarship and popular culture."
FBI Files--Mississippi Burning, 1964
Brief summary and timeline of the murders that took place in Neshoba County in 1964. Includes a link to the related case records.

Digital Collections & Online Documents Continued

Freedom Summer Papers of Thomas Foner, Mississippi Department of Archives and History
The collection consists of correspondence, a voter registration plan, photographs, and newsclippings from Thomas Foner's work as a volunteer with the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in 1964. The collection documents his work with the project and contains substantial information about the conditions faced by volunteers during the summer (from the finding aid).
Milburn J. Crowe Photograph Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Late-nineteenth-century album of ninety photographs of the Benjamin Thornton Montgomery family and their friends and associates. Benjamin Thornton Montgomery, gifted engineer, businessman, and ex-slave, bought the Davis Bend, Mississippi, plantations Hurricane and Brierfield from his former owner, Joseph Emory Davis (brother of Jefferson Davis), in 1867 and hosted a colony of tenant freedmen farmers that survived until 1886, nine years after his death. Benjamin Montgomery's son, Isaiah Thornton Montgomery, founded the town of Mound Bayou, one of the earliest self-governing black communities in the United States, with his cousin, Benjamin Titus Green, in 1887.
Mississippi Civil Rights Project
The Mississippi Civil Rights Project is an interactive, evolving repository of information about the civil rights movement in Mississippi, cross-referenced by county, by topic, and by person (from the website).
A Shaky Truce: Starkville Civil Rights Struggles, 1960-1980, Mississippi State University
“A Shaky Truce” highlights the civil rights struggles that took place in Starkville, Mississippi during the 1960s and 70s, a time when local African Americans demanded equality for all citizens. Includes photos and documents from Mississippi State University Libraries’ Special Collections, Digital Collections, or Circulating Collections; others come from other online archives; still other items were generously donated or shared by those we interviewed.
Sovereignty Commission Online, Mississippi Department of Archives and History
The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was the state's official counter civil rights agency from 1956–1973. The files in this online collection comprise the scanned originals with court-approved redactions requested by individuals named in the records along with additional information submitted by individuals named in the records who chose to file a rebuttal. The collection also includes the court-specified personal name index and links between rebuttal records and Commission records in which rebuttal submitters are mentioned. The files may be searched by personal name, folder title and number, or rebuttal respondent (from the website).
Tougaloo College, Mississippi Civil Rights Collection
The Tougaloo College Digital Collection contains a selection of items documenting civil rights in Mississippi from the archives at the Tougaloo College Library.