Wed 10/19 @ 7PM
Recently, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage opened a new exhibit This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Era. It features the work of nine photographers who were actively involved in the so-called “freedom movement,” when civil rights activists — both natives of the south and students from up north — worked together to end segregation and make sure black people were able to vote.
1964 was dubbed the Freedom Summer, when those activists, organizers, students and citizens, spearheaded by groups like the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), poured into Mississippi to register voters. It wasn’t an easy job and pushback from some white people was brutal: in June, three men involved with the effort, Mississippi native James Earl Chaney and New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were abducted and murdered near Philalephia, Mississippi.
The Maltz Museum will be screening the 2014 documentary Freedom Summer, an almost two-hour film depicting the risks, resistance and triumphs of one of the U.S.’s most dangerous voter registration drives.
It’s free but registration is required. Go here or call 216-593-0575.