{"id":3201,"date":"2014-10-09T18:45:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T22:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/2014\/10\/09\/preserving-the-voices-of-change\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T18:19:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T23:19:07","slug":"preserving-the-voices-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/preserving-the-voices-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Preserving the voices of change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/a>Dave Dennis was there. He rode on the first Freedom Bus from Montgomery, Ala. to Jackson, Miss. in 1961 as part of an attempt to desegregate the interstate bus system. He worked alongside Dr. Bob Moses and Medgar Evers.<\/p>\n

This summer, the prominent civil rights activist also spent an evening sharing stories with communication studies professor Sean O\u2019Rourke and Furman students Adair Bramlett \u201915 and Sarah Stevens \u201915 as part of the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the Freedom Summer in Jackson, Miss.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmid bravery was a high human cost. Our work was met with deadly violence, beatings, arrests, bombings and arson, economic terrorism, as well as a toll emotionally,\u201d Dennis has said.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1964, Dr. Moses organized more than 1,000 student volunteers to assist NAACP leaders and others in ending segregation in Mississippi. Their efforts were celebrated during the Mississippi Freedom Summer 50th<\/sup> Anniversary Conference, hosted by the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Mississippi State Conference NAACP, One Voice, and Tougaloo College.<\/p>\n

As the cameras rolled five decades later, Dennis shared new details about the eulogy he gave at James Chaney\u2019s funeral with his Furman friends. Chaney was one of three American civil rights workers who were murdered near Philadelphia, Miss., during the Freedom Summer by members of the Ku Klux Klan. As Dennis shared the painful thoughts he experienced during the eulogy, it brought new and deeper meaning to the story he has told in previous documentaries, O\u2019Rourke said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory is not by any means complete,\u201d said O\u2019Rourke. \u201cThere are stories, voices we haven\u2019t heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a mindset O\u2019Rourke has brought to the book he is editing with Communication Professor Lesli Pace of the University of Louisiana at Monroe, Like Wildfire: The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Sit-Ins.<\/i> The book, which is currently under review by the University of South Carolina Press, focuses on new stories from 23 sit-ins over 35 years, including Eleanor Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cSit-Between\u201d in Birmingham, Ala. in 1938 and local sit-ins in 1960 at Sterling High School in Greenville.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement were some of the most extraordinary acts of protest in an age marked by protest,\u201d O\u2019Rourke said. \u201cBy occupying \u2018whites only\u2019 lunch counters, libraries, beaches, swimming pools, skating rinks, parks and churches, young men and women put their bodies on the line, fully aware that their actions would almost inevitably incite savage, violent responses from entrenched and increasingly desperate white segregationists.\u201d<\/p>\n

With thousands participating in sit-ins over the decades, local and regional historians are still scrambling to piece together the details of sit-ins before they are lost.<\/p>\n

To supplement their research, O\u2019Rourke and Pace are planning an open-access, online database that will provide both students and scholars with sit-in information by location, including photographs and possibly video. Many of the listings will be those not currently mentioned in scholarly or popular literature, O\u2019Rourke said.<\/p>\n

The interview with Dennis and other civil rights leaders from the Freedom Summer had a tremendous impact on Stevens, a communication studies and earth and environmental sciences major from Greenville. \u201cI met them personally. I shook their hands. I knew their names,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bramlett, a communication studies and health sciences major from Columbia, became interested in social activism after studying the green movement, gay rights, and women\u2019s rights in O\u2019Rourke\u2019s May by the Bay May X class. She and Stevens have been assisting O\u2019Rourke with research as part of the Furman Advantage program.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I learned about social activism, I began to discover the power of my voice and my desire to be creative in evoking change,\u201d said Bramlett. \u201cWhile I do not foresee myself doing something as heroic in my lifetime, I wish to contribute by making these stories and documents of sit-ins an accessible part of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a project that is \u201cboth a testament of history as well as a collaborative learning experience,\u201d Bramlett said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Dennis was there. He rode on the first Freedom Bus from Montgomery, Ala. to Jackson, Miss. in 1961 as part of an attempt to desegregate the interstate bus system. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":13852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-communication-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}