About this Event
For Immediate Release
Event: From Juneteenth to Freedom Summer & Beyond
Location: St. Matthew's-St. Joseph's Episcopal Church, 8850 Woodward Ave. Between Holbrook and King
Date: Tues. June 18, 2024, 7:00-9:00pm EDT
Speakers Include: Dorothy Dewberry Aldridge, SNCC, Northern Student Movement and Chair of the Detroit MLK Committee; Martha Prescod Noonan, SNCC and Freedom Summer organizer; Walter Knall, co-founder of the Freedom Now Party formed in Michigan and current member of Moratorium NOW! Coalition; Abayomi Azikiwe, MLK Committee and Moratorium NOW! Coalition
Marilyn (Maryam) Lowen, Northern Student Movement, SNCC and the Mississippi Child Development Group.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (313) 671-3715
Admission: Free and Open to the Public
Detroit MLK Committee Hosts Public Forum in Honor of Juneteenth
Juneteenth has been celebrated for over a century in African American communities throughout the United States, particularly in the former antebellum slave states. The holiday represents the liberation of enslaved people in the state of Texas in June 1865.
Nearly a century later, the Civil Rights Movement for full equality and self-determination was at its height. During the Summer of 1964, hundreds of students and their supporters travelled to the State of Mississippi and Southwest Tennessee to demand the recognition of the democratic rights of the African American people to vote and participate in all aspects of civil society.
Three Civil Rights workers were killed during the first week of Freedom Summer in Mississippi. The purpose of the Freedom Summer efforts was to register African Americans to vote and to build an independent Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The MFDP was built by several groups including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), the state NAACP, among many others.
The MFDP registered over 80,000 African Americans defying the segregationist laws of the state. The MFDP took a representative delegation to Atlantic City, New Jersey to challenge the segregationists dominating the Democratic Party in Mississippi. Despite their representative character, the MFDP was denied the right to be seated at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1964.
We will examine the lessons from this betrayal and its significance for the developments unfolding during this election year of 2024, some six decades later. Today youth are on the move in solidarity with the Palestinians at campuses across the United States. They too are being met with intense repression from the local, state and federal authorities.
Please join us for this discussion along with archived video clips of the period and presentations from cultural workers in Detroit.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
St Matthew's & St Joseph's Episcopal Church, 8850 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, United States
USD 0.00