From objection to recollection: Miami’s relationship with Freedom Summer

When a university buys a college, does it buy its history too?

Miami University bought the Western College for Women, now Miami’s Western campus, in 1974 — 10 years after the privately-owned college hosted the training of 800 college students from across the country on how to register Black voters before they headed to Mississippi.

What was Freedom Summer?

In Mississippi, the students took part in a voter registration drive organized by civil rights organizations including the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

The drive in Mississippi would eventually be known as Freedom Summer. Prior to their journey south, volunteers attended week-long orientation sessions held from June 14 to June 27 on the Western College campus.

The sessions involved teaching students non-violent resistance, preparing volunteers to register Black voters and teaching literacy and civics at Freedom Schools.

Miami absorbed Western a decade later, and though the university now offers programming based around Freedom Summer, it was not involved with the push to register voters at the time.

Photo by Reagan Rude | The Miami Student
A Freedom Summer historical marker commemorates the events of 1964.

Miami and Oxford protest the project

Jacqueline Johnson, university archivist, said that not only did the Miami and Oxford community play no role in the training, residents had mixed feelings about what was happening on Western’s campus.

“Some of the residents welcomed the trainers, trainees and students, others didn’t,” Johnson said. “They thought they were troublemakers.”

Although some residents had strong feelings about what was happening on Western’s campus, others didn’t even know it was happening.

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“Since the arrival of the students coincided with the influx of Miami’s summer school students, most Oxford residents are only vaguely aware of the village’s current role in civil rights advancement,” an Oxford Press article from June 1964 read.

Other locals, however, were vocal in their opposition to the training. Richard Momeyer, a retired professor of philosophy at Miami and a trainer for Freedom Summer, remembers several editorials criticizing the project, including one by Bob White, the owner and editor of the Oxford Press.

“[White] wrote an editorial lamenting the assault on the good citizens of Oxford by the hippies who had invaded Western College and their provocative mission to disrupt the social order in Mississippi,” Momeyer said. “He was upset about that, and I suppose that represented a certain element of the community.”

While some opposed the trainings on ideological grounds, others were more concerned with safety. Jason Shaiman, curator of exhibitions for the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum, said many residents feared the students may attract violent instigators.

“We’re not far from some Klan country in southeastern Indiana,” Shaiman said. “And we’re only a couple miles from the border. So there were some concerns about issues and problems that could take place.”

Shaiman, who has conducted research and interviews with firsthand witnesses for several Freedom Summer photography exhibits, said the relative isolation of Western’s campus kept local opposition at bay.

“There was a dining hall, they stayed in the dorms because it was during the summer so Western students by and large weren’t on campus,” Shaiman said. “I think it helped to keep them separated from the locals so that there weren’t any clashes.”

Some residents, however, were more sympathetic to the cause. Headed by Arthur Miller, about 60 Oxford residents took part in the Friends of the Mississippi project, which provided moral and financial support to the volunteers.

“Some of them adopted individuals that they then exchanged letters with all summer,” Momeyer recalled. “What I remember most was [Miller] and others coming the day we were leaving for Mississippi to help wire shut some of the hoods of the cars. Because if you had to stop at a Mississippi gas station for gas, you did not want that attendant lifting the hood to check your oil or water.”

Photo by Reagan Rude | The Miami Student
The Friends of the Mississippi project provided support to Freedom Summer volunteers

But it wasn’t just the local residents that were largely indifferent to Freedom Summer as it was happening. Miami, too, had little interest in being associated with it.

“The general attitude was ‘Thank God it’s over there and not here. They’re so weird over at Western College anyway,’” Momeyer said. “‘I hope people don’t think because those people are in Oxford that it has anything to do with Miami.’”

Alongside the administration, many Miami students were disinterested in the civil rights movement as a whole. Ed Bernstein, a Miami alum who attended in 1964, wrote in a letter at the time that the mood of Miami was “an incredibly conservative, Greek-dominated, conformist, and fairly stifling student environment.”

“I never got the sense of the Miami student body being either interested or concerned about for the most part in the civil rights movement,” Bernstein wrote in the letter, which is currently held in the university archives. “I don’t even remember it being discussed much in the classroom.”

Johnson said it’s important to remember the civil rights movement was not viewed in the same light then as it is now.

“[In the 1960s] no one wanted to be a part of civil rights, social justice,” Johnson said. “Now, everyone wants to be a part of it.”

Remembering Freedom Summer

Although Miami didn’t play a part in Freedom Summer when it happened, it has had a significant role in conveying the event’s history and legacy to future generations.

Western College for Women went bankrupt around 1973 and was bought by Miami in 1974. But it wasn’t until the initiatives of James Garland, Miami’s president from 1996 to 2006, that the university began the process of memorializing Freedom Summer.

Part of that initiative was the creation of a memorial to honor those involved in the Freedom Summer training, as well as three volunteers who were killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner disappeared on June 21, 1964, just days after departing from Oxford. Their bodies were discovered 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam.

The memorial, an outdoor amphitheater located next to Peabody Hall, is dedicated to “the slain activists, other volunteers, and ideals of the Freedom Summer movement,” the memorial’s Ohio Historical Marker writes.

Photo by Reagan Rude | The Miami Student
The Freedom Summer amphitheater monument honors those who died during the movement.

“Long story short, the university’s response to Freedom Summer was indifference, embarrassment at worst,” Momeyer said. “Relief that they weren’t really part of it. And then a gradual recognition and ownership and finally, admirable celebration.”

Momeyer said it’s important to inform new generations about the history of Freedom Summer, and hopefully, they may take pride in being at an institution that celebrates it.

The limited reach of programming

While Miami has worked with the Western College Alumnae Association to preserve Freedom Summer’s memory, some Miami students go through their entire college careers without ever hearing about it.

“It’s surprising how many students are on this campus for four years and know little or nothing about it, and I wonder if a part of it is because Western campus is sort of over there,” Shaiman said. “It’s not in the middle or near the hub of campus.”

Sophie Kwiatkowski, a sophomore English literature major, said she’d heard of Freedom Summer while living in a Western campus residence hall her first year, but doesn’t know much about its history.

“When I first applied to Miami, I thought there was going to be more of a recognition of its history, and I thought my UNV 101 class would go through it but they never did,” Kwiatkowski said. “I wish there was more education because [Miami] prides itself in its Miami plan, worldview education, but they don’t acknowledge their own worldview.”

Photo by Reagan Rude | The Miami Student
Markers located throughout Miami remind people of the events of Freedom Summer.

The course description for University (UNV) 101, an introductory course required for first-year students, makes no mention of Miami’s history as a part of its curriculum.

Shaiman doesn’t think Freedom Summer should be used as a selling point for Miami, but he said incoming students should be presented with information about it — some advocates are even trying to get “Training for Freedom”, a 30-minute documentary about Freedom Summer, incorporated into first-year orientation.

“When Miami University is recruiting students, I wouldn’t say hype it up, but I think they should mention it,” Shaiman said. “Even though Oxford at the time wasn’t necessarily welcoming to it, it has become part of this history of Oxford and Miami, and it’s a major source of pride now.”

Momeyer said he hopes the memory of Freedom Summer will inspire today’s young adults to fight against today’s problems.

“It’s really important for students to know how powerful they can be if they organize and take action against oppressive policies,” Momeyer said. “We need to convey this history because it was a time in which young people really had influence on and made a difference in changing the world.”

rudere@miamioh.edu