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.