Freedom Summer Journal of Sandra Adickes; 1964

              Freedom Summer Journal of Sandra Adickes

Prologue:

How did the United Federation of Teachers, Local 2, get to Mississippi? In the summer of 1963, UFT teachers served as volunteers in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where the white community had closed the public schools rather than integrate them. While there, they met SNCC workers who had been active in the South since 1961. Contacts were maintained throughout the fall and winter, and early in 1964, Norma Becker and Sandra Adickes, who had been in P.E. County, were asked by SNCC workers if they and other teachers would participate in the Mississippi Summer Project to be organized by SNCC, together with CORE, SCLC, and NAACP in a new amalgamation, the Council of Federated Organizations.

The UFT executive committee gave its approval for union participation in the project and the call went out for volunteers. Approximately 35 teachers came forward. The UFT Mississippi contingent met in working sessions, formed committees, and set about gathering supplies -- books, paper, chalk, crayons, mimeograph and other duplicating machines -- and soliciting funds for their transportation and maintenance during the summer, but mostly for the rental of cars for each of the projects where UFT volunteers would go.

The slaying of the three young men cast a long grim shadow, but none of the teachers withdrew from the program. On June 30, the first group of volunteers left for their orientation session in Memphis. Florence and Abe Sayer, Stan Zibulsky, and Ira Landess left by Greyhound. Steve and Susan Schrader, Phil Corner and Donna Garde arrived by car. Other UFTers followed for later orientation. We all remember the 4-Way restaurant in Memphis as the last point of free socializing we were to experience for the summer.

Volunteers entered Mississippi on the 4th of July. On the long ride through the state there was nowhere evidence of our nation's holiday: no parades, no backyard family gatherings, not even an American flag. Others followed and Norma Becker remembers leaving Morris Rubin by a gas station on a deserted road outside of Shaw.

The communities served by the volunteers ranged from the isolated rural town in the