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Center for the History of Print Culture

PRINT CULTURE COLLOQUIUM

The Amazing Freedom Summer Freedom School Newspapers.

William Sturkey, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, Ohio  
State University.
Danky Fellow for 2010

Tuesday, September 21, 12:00 Noon-1:00 p.m.

SLIS Commons
4207 Helen C. White Hall
University of Wisconsin-Madison

William Sturkey, winner of the 2010 Danky Fellowship competition, is  
a PhD candidate in History at Ohio State University where he studies  
modern African American History with a focus on the Mississippi Civil  
Rights Movement.  William’s research concentrates on the famous 1964  
Freedom Summer campaign. His project, tentatively titled, “Just Give  
Us a Light,” is an extension of his Master’s thesis, which won the  
2008 Glover Moore Prize from the Mississippi Historical Society. This  
dissertation will examine the Freedom Schools that were designed to  
supplement the inferior education previously available to black  
Mississippi youths.

Freedom Summer is the most widely documented campaign of the modern  
African American Civil Rights Movement. Freedom Schools themselves  
have received widespread attention and are currently duplicated by  
various organizations across the country. But most of this  
scholarship and interest focuses on the pedagogy and curriculum of  
Freedom Schools. However widely recognized, scholars have paid scant  
attention to the impact of the 1964 Freedom Schools on their actual  
students. Ironically, black Mississippians have often been left out  
of the Freedom Summer narrative. William Sturkey’s project will tell  
the stories of the young people who attended those 1964 Freedom  
Schools. It seeks to provide a long term analysis of the impact of  
Freedom Schools. Rather than gauge Freedom Summer within a Civil  
Rights-era vacuum, William’s dissertation will consider the entirety  
of the Freedom School project from execution to the present day.



Christine Pawley Ph.D.
Professor & Director, School of Library and Information Studies
http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~cpawley/

Director, Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America
http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~printcul/

University of Wisconsin-Madison
4238 Helen C. White Hall
600 N. Park St.
Madison, WI 53706
phone: 608 263-2945/608 263-2900
fax: (608) 263-4849
email: [log in to unmask]


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