Talk:Freedom libraries

Wiki Education assignment: Literacy and Inclusion

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2023 and 17 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SmallChartreuseCat (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Kbelay1.

— Assignment last updated by Kbelay1 (talk) 22:45, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

New sources and additions

I've added these new sources:

• Kristin Hunt - Libraries feel attacked - but not like the 'freedom libraries' of 1964(2022)
• SNCC - Freedom Summer
• Mike Selby - Freedom's Reading: The Discovery of Two Alabama Freedom Libraries(2013)
• Frederick W. Heinze - The Freedom Libraries: a wedge in the closed society(1965)
• Karen Joyce Cooke - Freedom Libraries in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project: a history(2008)
• Bruce Watson - Freedom Summer (2010) (print book)

I've added information from these sources that were already included:

• Mike Selby - Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South (2019) (print book)
• David Battles - The History of Public Library Access for African Americans in the South (2008) (print book)
• Ashawnta Jackson - Freedom Libraries and the Fight for Library Equity (2022)

I've left what was already written almost as is, rewording or reorganizing sentences in a couple places as needed. Here are the main additions I've made, organized by section where they appear:

• intro: mentioned the work of Karen Cook and the timeframe of summer 1964
• background: libraries may have been technically desegregated but preserved segregation
• establishment: context of Freedom Summer, context that public libraries were sites of sit-ins, who the COFO was (what organizations), demographic information about volunteers, the Selma Free Library, what kinds of buildings freedom libraries were in, what other services they offered
• challenges: lack of clarity around COFO organizational structure, lack of funding and volunteer experience, details about Vicksburg bombing, landlords' reluctance to rent to freedom libraries
• impact: freedom libraries raising awareness, significant impact in short time period

--SmallChartreuseCat (talk) 14:37, 24 February 2023 (UTC)