Faces of Freedom Summer portrays the danger inherent in Civil Rights activism in the 1960s. Randall shows the reader a volunteer's car perforated with bullet holes and an image of a bleeding Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld just after an angry Mississippian clubbed him with a tire iron. The overall effect of the book, however, provides a sense that Freedom Summer was a success story, one in which whites and blacks joined together to promote education and political freedom in Mississippi and the nation through nonviolent means. Faces offers captivating photographic portraits of individual volunteers and local blacks, such as a Freedom School student smiling shyly at his teacher and Victoria Gray caught in a moment of contemplation. Its moving depictions of the Freedom Summer activities provide a window into the movement.
Ladies fan away the summer heat during a political caucus at a Hattiesburg church.
Tusa's introduction sheds new light on the Civil Rights movement in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Together they have produced a work as inspirational as it is instructive. It captures the sense of place that lay at the core of Southern culture and attaches it to the struggle over Civil Rights. Order blanks for additional copies are available at the Cleanth Brooks Reading Room at the McCain Library and Archives. The Herbert Randall Freedom Summer Photograph Collection is one of 68 original collections and 144 oral histories held by the USM Libraries that document the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi.