Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy »

Bruce Watson's previous books include Sacco and Vanzetti, a finalist for the Edgar Award, and Bread and Roses, a New York Public Library Book to Remember. His journalism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, and Reader's Digest. He lives in Massachusetts.

A majestic history of the summer of 1964, which forever changed race relations in America.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

Mr. Watson's book derives its power—at its best, it is the literary equivalent of a hot light bulb dangling from a low ceiling—from its narrow focus. Freedom Summer is about the more than 700 college students who, in the summer of 1964, under the supervision of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, risked their lives to travel to Mississippi to register black voters and open schools…The story of these months has been told before, but rarely this viscerally.

Book One Crossroads 3

Prologue 5

Chapter One "There Is a Moral Wave Building" 15

Chapter Two "Not Even Past" 38

Chapter Three Freedom Street 56

Chapter Four "The Decisive Battlefield for America" 77

Chapter Five "It Is Sure Enough Changing" 105

Chapter Six "The Scars of the System" 129

Interlude: "Another So-Called áFreedom Day'" 152

Book Two A Bloody Peace Written in the Sky 167

Chapter Seven "Walk Together, Children" 169

Chapter Eight "The Summer of Our Discontent" 191

Chapter Nine "Lay by Time" 215

Chapter Ten "The Stuff Democracy Is Made Of" 237

Chapter Eleven "Give unto Them Beauty for Ashes" 262

Epilogue 277

Acknowledgments 301

Notes 303

Bibliography 341

Index 353