Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964--The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America

In 1964, 1000 white college students were recruited, chiefly by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), to travel to Mississippi and register African Americans to vote. In this taut, well-researched history of the summer project, as it came to be called, Mills ( The Great School Bus Controversy ), drawing on interviews with participants, brings to life the spirit of that idealistic time when, despite tensions between the well-off white volunteers and the poor black project staff, all worked together for social justice. The summer began tragically with the murders of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, and closed with the rejection of the Mississippi Freedom Party by the 1964 Democratic National Convention, effectively ending an integrated SNCC and leading to the Black Power movement. (Sept.)