January 8, 2026
Resources for studying the Southern Freedom Movement (aka Civil Rights Movement**). If you would like to have any of the hard copy material, email me at mke4think@gmail.com
SFFS During the five summers of the San Francisco Freedom School in the parish hall of St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco (2005-2010), we put together a great deal of materials as well as bought books and films.
SFSU From 2010 -2020, I taught a course at SFSU called Lessons from Freedom Summer (PLSI 357) and used Lessons from Freedom Summer as my textbook. I put together a great deal of resources during the ten years I taught that course every semester -- I have whittled them down here.
NOW I am moving in the spring and need to get rid of (i.e., for free!)
- the hard copies of films (DVDs),
- SFFS books,
- and my textbook, Lessons from Freedom Summer (> 100 copies).
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WANT TO TEACH IT?
For those of you who may want to have the small core of the materials organized around the idea that the Southern Freedom Movement has a great deal to teach us about how to organize successful protests today, the below is for you:
First -- PDF -- Key Components of a Successful Social Movement (pdf off of my google drive)
Second -- POWER POINT SLIDES -- (the short version and the long one) are based on the above "Key Components" and the argument that there were five major events of the era with Freedom Summer being the climax of the movement (this supports the focus of our book, "Lessons from Freedom Summer".
- The Brown decision
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- The Sit-ins
- Freedom Rides
- Freedom Summer
- Selma March
Third -- TEXT BOOK -- I have over a hundred copies of Linda Gold's text (my teaching materials), Lesson from Freedom Summer that I need to give away (the publisher went out of business and sent them to me instead of trashing them). I have a folder in my google drive with some of the notes I took while reading the book. The book is part text, part workbook and is organized around FIVE categories:
- Nonviolent philosophy and action
- How the four major civil rights organizations (NAACP, CORE, SCLC, SNCC) arrived in Mississippi in 1964.
- FREEDOM SUMMER
- the role the arts played during Freedom Summer
- To what degree was the summer a success?
You can read Howard Zinn's foreword to Lessons HERE.
Fourth -- MOVIES/Documentaries -- Here is a curated list of dvds from my collection that I used with my PLSI 357 class to teach this curriculum
THE PROBLEM
- Sharecropping excerpt from Documentary, This Promised Land
INFRASTRUCTURE/COMMUNITY UPON WHICH MOVEMENT BASED
- Excerpts (36 min) from dramatization of history of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids from feature film, 10,000 Men Named George
- Excerpts (35 min) from dramatization of living in Mississippi in the 1950s from feature film, Once Upon a Time when We Were Colored
- Excerpts (35 min) Documentary, The Barbara Johns Story
- Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker
- Excerpts (31 min) Documentary, You Got to Move (Highlander Folk School)
THE MOVEMENT
- Excerpts from dramatization of Montgomery Bus Boycott from feature film, Boycott
- Documentary (30 minutes) of Nashville Sit-ins, When We Were Warriors
- Samples of the music of the movement CD
- Documentary excerpts (20), Mississippi right before Freedom Summer from Eyes on the Prize
- Documentary excerpts (33 min) Eyes on the Prize, Freedom Riders and Freedom Summer
- Documentary excerpts (24 min) Freedom on My Mind, about Freedom Summer
- Documentary excerpts (11 min) of Fannie Lou Hamer
- Documentary excerpts (23 min) Selma from Eyes on the Prize
- Negroes with Guns (57 min)
- Documentary excerpts (26 min) Scarred Justice: Orangeburg Massacre 1968
** "The mass media calls it the "Civil Rights Movement," but many of those whose boots were on the ground prefer the term "Freedom Movement" because it was about so much more than just a few narrowly-defined civil rights" (crmvet.org "movement history). And the Southern Freedom Movement, of course, was the one in the south.
