Letters from Mississippi: Reports from Civil Rights Volunteers & Poetry of the 1964 Freedom Summer

Letters from Mississippi offers a riveting, personal and multi-faceted narrative of the dramatic events that took place during the summer of 1964, Freedom Summer, when hundreds of people came to Mississippi to volunteer with the Mississippi Summer Voting Project. The book covers the disappearance and murder of James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the Freedom Schools, the violence and tensions at voting registration centers, and the political struggles in the halls of power.

The original publication of Letters from Mississippi in 1965 was an immediate record of the mostly white volunteers in the Mississippi Summer Voting Project of 1964 (Freedom Summer). It went out of print in 1970. Zephyr Press' 2002 edition took the original text and placed it in a context of the history of the civil rights movement, of the broader scene in Mississippi during that summer, and of the subsequent lives of the volunteers. That edition has become a staple in studies of the civil rights movement, but it still focuses mostly on the outsiders in their Mississippi communities. This fiftieth anniversary edition includes: expanded biographical notes from previous editions, additional biographies of contributors to the original book, expanded notes, and a filmography. The result is a wider resource for scholarship as well as for a general understanding of this critical moment in civil rights history.

Elizabeth Martínez has published six books and numerous articles on popular struggles in the Americas including De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century.

Julian Bond has served four terms on the NAACP National Board and since 1998 has been board chairman. He was president of the Atlanta NAACP from 1978 until 1989.