Oral history with Dr. Peter Orris

              An Oral History with Dr. Peter Orris
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Biography
Dr. Peter Orris was born in 1945 into a liberal, socially- active family in Los Angeles and was raised in New York City. His parents are Trudy and Leo Orris. He participated in his first civil rights demonstration, the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, when he was only eleven. He was also involved with the Students for a Sane Nuclear Policy, the Youth March for Integrated Schools, and weekly pickets of his local Woolworth's. After graduating from high school, Orris attended Harvard University. While there he was involved in a peace group, helped to organize the Socialist Club, and belonged to the Civil Rights Coordinating Committee, which coordinated civil rights activities on the Harvard campus for CORE, the Northern Student Movement, SNCC, and other civil rights groups. In spring 1964 he was recruited by Dottie Zellner to participate in the Summer Project in Mississippi. It was originally intended that Orris go to Amite County, but while he was in training in Oxford, the three civil rights workers, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, disappeared, and he was instead assigned to work in the Mileston area, just south of Greenwood. The volunteers cleaned and fixed up two abandoned homes: one served as a Freedom House, the other as a Freedom School. He then worked two and a half weeks on voter registration. His participation in Freedom Days, activities dedicated to reinvigorating civil rights activities in Greenwood, led to ten days in the Leflore County jail and a hunger strike. After his release, he was paired with an engineer from New York, and the two of them installed two- way radios in farm houses without phones, in African- American churches, and in SNCC cars throughout the state. Orris was also responsible for coordinating communications for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic convention of 1964. In the fall, Orris returned to Harvard. While he was studying there, he participated in anti- Vietnam War protests. At the time of this interview, he lived with his family in the Chicago area, and he practiced internal medicine at Cook County Hospital.
Transcript
This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Dr. Peter Orris and is taking place on November 21, 1995. The interviewer is John Rachal. mus- coh. orrisp. doc Page 1 of 27