Wilson College LEAP Summer Bridge Program Social Justice Research Assignmentby Amy Ensley, Director of the Hankey Center (2010-2023) Note to Educators: This assignment uses the primary documents created and assembled by Patricia Vail who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Project during the spring and summer of 1964. Pat frequently wrote to her family documenting her experience and her thoughts during this monumental episode in American history. Pat’s archival collection is housed in the C. Elizabeth Boyd ’33 Archives in the Hankey Center at Wilson College. The assignment was created for a Wilson College First Year Seminar course for incoming freshmen students in a Summer Bridge Program called “LEAP”. The program was funded by a Title III federal grant to Wilson College in 2017 – 2019. The students were on campus for only two weeks and the classroom work consisted of two hours per day of math and language arts skills plus two hours per day devoted to this research assignment. Given the extremely compressed time frame, the assignment was designed to provide a fast introduction to the topic of social justice and it assigned students to groups with pre-determined topics and primary source materials. A longer time frame would have allowed students to spend more time exploring topics and ideas on their own, and would have incorporated additional primary source information. Students work with primary documents including images from Pat’s work in Freedom Schools The first year of the Wilson College Leap Summer Bridge Program was 2017, several years after the murders of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and others, and the founding of #BlackLivesMatter. Donald Trump had been in office for less than one year. The “broader theme” topics were all issues that had been in the news during the previous five years including: Police Brutality, Income Inequality, Terrorism (International and Domestic), Voter Suppression, Abuse of Power, White Supremacy, and Taking a Stand – the Role of Citizen Activists. 2017 LEAP student reflection Link to detailed description of the assignment and notes on the materials:Pat Vail Freedom Summer Curriculum Links to Primary Source Documents for each student group: GROUP 1 Materials: Pat’s March 14 letter “The Upbeat Generation” from the Plain Dealer Students for a Democratic Society pamphlet Broader Theme: Income Inequality • How does learning about income inequality and poverty issues galvanize young people into becoming activists for social justice causes? GROUP 2 Materials: Pat’s May 28 letter Memo to Parents of All Mississippi Summer Volunteers Broader Theme: Police Brutality Police Brutality - Police brutality and Black Lives Matter; use of cell phone video today to capture evidence; use of riot gear, militarization of police equipment GROUP 3 Materials: Pat’s June 22 letter, “Some Civil Rights Workers Scared but Won’t Quit” from the Dayton Daily News Letter from Senator Joseph S. Clarke Broader Theme: Terrorism Terrorist KKK lynchings, bombings of homes, businesses and churches vs. “Radical Islamic Terrorism” GROUP 4 Materials: Pat’s June 26 letter Letters from Senator Hugh Scott, Congressman Jim Fulton, The White House Associate Counsel Lee C. White June 25, 1964 broadcast of a special CBS News report, anchored by Walter Cronkite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkPWoF07xRA Broader Theme: Abuse of Power When people in positions of authority are the ones causing the oppression – police and elected officials GROUP 5 Materials: Pat’s July 2 letter Two articles from the Delta Democrat-Times “White Association Disclaims Violence” and “New Racist Organization Terrorizes Several South MS Counties” Judy Walborn letter to the Billboard White Citizens Council poster Broader Theme: White Supremacy - White Supremacist groups such as Americans for the Preservation of the White Race and the White Citizens Council, Ku Klux Klan vs. the “Alt-Right” and other white nationalist organizations such as the Proud Boys GROUP 6 Materials: Pat’s July 10 letter “Students will Seek to Register 200,000 Mississippi Negroes” Plain Dealer article Broader Theme: Voter Suppression - Voter ID laws today vs. voter restrictions and suppression tactics in Mississippi in 1950s and 60s GROUP 7 Materials: Pat’s August 6 letter “Tired of Being Sick and Tired” from The Nation article Broader Theme: Taking a Stand - Role of ordinary citizens and celebrities in bringing attention to causes – for example comedian Dick Gregory, musicians Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, athlete Colin Kaepernick – accepting the risks Links to original letters from Pat Vail to her family:March 14, 1964May 28, 1964June 22, 1964June 26, 1964July 2, 1964July 10, 1964August 6, 1964 The Hankey Center Lesson Plans (©2021, The Hankey Center, Wilson College) comprise an open access publication distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. 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