Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader with WI Historian Michael Edwards
Felker Family Genealogy and Local History Room, Everett Roehl Marshfield Public Library
Free and Open to the Public

An anthology of 44 original documents from the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project, which was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Readers can peruse civil rights workers’ letters, eavesdrop on their meetings, experience the final hours of three workers murdered on the project’s first day, read testimony by black residents who stood up to police torture and Klan firebombs. An introductory essay and opening comment situate each document in the broader context of the civil rights movement.

Michael Edmonds is a writer and public historian living in Madison, Wisconsin. His writings on history, nature, and folklore explore ways that ideas have moved through time and space in oral, printed, and digital forms. He’s fascinated by eccentric, unusual, and atypical people or events that mainstream history has usually overlooked.

Michael will be available for autographs after the presentation. Copies of his book will be available for sale.