1.
1. Adjust your volume using the speaker
button (you should see a speaker icon in
the top, black menu of your meeting
room).
2. Enable your microphone using the drop-
down menu under the microphone icon.
3. Practice muting your microphone (the icon
will be green with a line through it). Once
the program begins, please leave it on
mute when you are not speaking.
4. Enable your webcam if you would like
other participants to be able to see you
(the webcam icon will turn green). This is
optional!
5. Practice raising and lowering your hand.
This will allow you to ask questions
without interrupting the flow of the
program.
 Locate the group chat pod
(usually in the bottom right of
the meeting room).
 Introduce yourself by typing in
some information:
 Your name
 Your job title/educational role
 Your location
 Feel free to ask questions or
catch up with your colleagues
until the program begins!
Get Set Up Introduce Yourself
WELCOME!
We’re so glad you could join us.

2.
+
Yes! This program will
be recorded.
We will make the recording,
handouts, and presentation
available to you.

3.
JWA documents Jewish women's stories, elevates their
voices, and inspires them to be agents of change.

4.
JWA documents Jewish women's stories, elevates their
voices, and inspires them to be agents of change.

5.
When they consider historical stories and
role models, students begin to think about
who they want to be and what impact they
want to have on the world.
Who is this?
What did she do?
Why did she do it?
Who am I?
What do I do?
What do I want to do?
Why do I do it?

6.
TWERSKY AWARD
 Win $2,500 plus $500 for your school or
program
 For educators working with 6-12 grade
students
 Submit an original lesson that creatively
uses primary sources
 Demonstrate commitment to integrating
the stories and voices of Jewish women
 Deadline is May 12, 2014
 http://jwa.org/twersky
 2012 Winner Allyson Mattanah created a
lesson that combined Purim with stories of
Jewish women labor activists

7.
GOALS
 Learn how community and community organizing
played a central role in the Civil Rights Movement—
especially during Mississippi Freedom Summer.
 Explore how Jewish experiences and values
informed Jewish relationships to activism in the Civil
Rights Movement.
 Get practical tools and resources for teaching
students about social justice activism through a
Jewish lens.

8.
What, if anything,
do you know about
Freedom Summer?

9.
FREEDOM SUMMER
1954
Brown v. Board
1955
Montgomery Bus
Boycott
1960
Sit-in @ Woolworths in
Greensboro, NC
1961
Freedom Rides
1963
March on Washington,
John F. Kennedy Assassinated
1964
Freedom Summer
1965
Voting Rights Act
1966
Black Power Movement
1968
Martin Luther King, Jr.
and Robert Kennedy
Assassinated
Source: Chronology from Civil Rights—The 1960s Freedom Struggle by Rhoda Louis Blumberg

10.
Student
Nonviolent
Coordinating
Committee
(SNCC)
Council of
Federated
Organizations
(COFO)

11.
 Jews made up an estimated half of all white
Freedom Summer volunteers; less than 1%
of the US population at that time
 Northern volunteers were mostly white,
affluent; many college students. Southern
volunteers were mostly African American,
Christian, college students and working
class individuals from a diverse age range
 Stopped for training in Oxford, OH before
heading to different communities in the
South
Volunteer Profile

12.
Problem
 Extensive voter intimidation and
complicated voter registration
process
 Low literacy rates, poverty
 Systemic racism and violent
intimidation; retaliation from
Whites
 Lack of Black representation in
legislature despite large Black
population
Volunteer Action Taken
 Literacy classes, education
about voter registration
process, and other subjects in
“Freedom Schools”
 Voter registration efforts—
canvassing and recruitment,
accompanying voters to the
Registrar, record keeping
 Creation of Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party

13.
“My husband, Michael Schwerner, did not die in vain. If he
and Andrew Goodman had been Negroes, the world would
have taken little notice of their deaths. After all, the slaying
of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my
husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the
national alarm has been sounded.”
Rita Schwerner

14.
ABOUT THIS LESSON
 Role play
 Round robin
 Follow-up activities
 Why are you here?
 What is motivating you to go or not to
go to Mississippi?
 Based on your skills/talents, which
project could you contribute to the
most?

15.
Jewish participation in Freedom Summer was
motivated primarily by…
The Holocaust
Jews feeling like
outsiders and
empathizing with
southern African-
Americans
Jewish values of
social justice
Some other
experience or
values

16.
STATION 1:
Jewish Participation
“…One of the strong things I grew up with as a kid
was some sense of fighting for social justice, and
without realizing it, that that was rooted somehow in
Jewish tradition. It was never specifically identified to
me as such, and I don’t even know that that was what
was driving people. But as I look back on it now, I
know that that was part of that Jewish secular tradition
of social justice.”
Vicki Gabriner, Tennessee Volunteer

17.
STATION 1:
Jewish Participation
“I grew up in a family that had good social values,
reflected in our Jewish heritage, culture, and history.
When I was growing up, at one point I wanted to be a
rabbi, but was told (at that time) women couldn’t be
rabbis. I went to Israel when I graduated from high school
in 1963, and the experience of Yad Vashem (the
Holocaust museum) had a transforming effect on me: I
promised myself that in the face of injustice I would
struggle for justice.”
Heather Booth, Mississippi Volunteer

18.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
 What values or experiences do Vicki Gabriner and Heather
Booth identify as influential?
 Where/how did they learn these values?
 What are some things you have learned within your family that
shape the way you see the world and/or act in the world?
 Do you think Vicki Gabriner and Heather Booth were conscious
of their motivations at the time? Do you think it matters if you
know why you are doing something to help others or is it okay if
you just do it? Why?

19.
Jewish participation in Freedom Summer was
motivated primarily by…
The Holocaust
Jews feeling like
outsiders and
empathizing with
southern African-
Americans
Jewish values of
social justice
Some other
experience or
values

20.
STATION 2:
Goals and Purposes
1. Read the documents.
2. Then discuss:
a) Which reasons given in these documents are most
resonant to you?
b) Which sound like reasons you might decide to be a
volunteer in Freedom Summer?

21.
STATION 3:
Community and Community Organizing
 Play a game
1. Could you have accomplished
your goal with only one person?
2. What challenges did you face in
accomplishing your goal?
3. At what point in the process did
it become easier to accomplish
your goal? What do you think
made it easier? What did
different people bring to the
process?

22.
STATION 3:
Community and Community Organizing
 Study a photo
1. How do you think music helps
build community?
2. What do you think can be
learned about music and
community from looking at a
photograph?

23.
STATION 3:
Community and Community Organizing
 Listen to an oral history
And I don’t think I’m romanticizing it as I look back on
it. I remember there were just the most extraordinary
moments in that work. I remember times being at a
mass meeting inside a church and singing “We Shall
Overcome” and knowing that there were white
people outside in their cars, in their trucks, probably
with guns, and feeling as though the roof were just
going to lift off the church because the energy of the
people with whom we were working was so intense.
You know, the struggle – they were so involved in the
struggle that it was palpable. It was palpable…

24.
STATION 3:
Community and Community Organizing
 Discuss:
1. Vicki describes being in a church while
another group is waiting outside. These two
groups are divided by color, space, and
values. With which community do you think
Vicki Gabriner most identifies?
2. What does she have in common with each
of the two communities?
3. Based on these similarities and differences,
what do you think were some things that
were important in connecting people and
forming communities during the Civil Rights
Movement?

25.
VOICES OF FREEDOM SUMMER
1. Read the letter.
2. Post a response in the lino board (link in chat window).

26.
June 24
Dear Dad,
The mood up here [in Oxford, Ohio] is, of course, very strained with those
three guys who disappeared Sunday, dead, most likely. Saturday night, I ate
dinner with the wife of one of them. She was telling me about all the great
things she and her husband were working on. She looks younger than me.
What does she do now? Give up the movement? What a terrible rotten life
this is! I feel that the only meaningful type of work is the Movement but I don’t
want myself or anyone I’ve met to have to die. I’m so shook up that death just
doesn’t seem so awful anymore, though. I’m no different from anyone else
and if they’re risking their lives, then so must I. But I just can’t comprehend
why people must die to achieve something so basic and simple as
Freedom…
VOICES OF FREEDOM SUMMER

27.
CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS
 What can these primary sources and eye-witness accounts add
to your classes or programs?
 How would you connect these stories to other parts of your
curriculum?
 What questions, ideas, or themes would you explore?
 What additional stories or resources might you bring in?

28.
FREEDOM SUMMER
Online Learning for Jewish Educators
Jewish Women’s Archive