Miami claims Freedom Summer story By Haley Donovan

On June 20, 1964, three men left Oxford, and headed to Neshoba County, Mississippi. The next day, those three men lost their lives near Philadelphia, Miss., in Neshoba County.

It would be 36 years before the community recognized those men – Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner – as civil rights heroes.

Goodman, 20, had just been trained in Oxford on what is now Miami University’s Western campus, and had only been in Mississippi for 24 hours before he was murdered. The other two men – Chaney, 21, and Schwerner, 24 – were veteran civil rights workers, Chaney a native of Mississippi, and Schwerner a paid staffer for CORE.

It was later discovered that members of the Neshoba County law enforcement The Freedom Summer memorial, built in and the Ku Klux Klan worked together 2000, stands on Miami University’s Western to track down and kill the three men. campus. Photo by Haley Donovan

During the summer of 1964, Miami University and Western College for Women were two entirely independent institutions, but there were Miami students and faculty involved in the movement.

Ronald B. Scott, associate Vice President for institutional diversity, believes that people assume that Freedom Summer was something that exclusively happened on Western campus. “There were people in Oxford and there were people in Miami proper who were involved. There was spillage, and there are records suggesting that many people were involved in the training.”

Bob Strippel served as assistant dean of men at Miami University when he and his wife began the Friends of the Mississippi Summer Project. The purpose of the Friends project was to provide the support that the volunteers were not getting elsewhere, whether it be through kind words in letters or money donations.

Emeritus philosophy professor Rick Momeyer was also involved in the training sessions on Western campus. At the time, Momeyer did not work for Miami, and was simply a student who came from Allegheny College to help this civil rights effort.

There was no reason Miami should approve or disapprove of the events that occurred on the Western College campus The Freedom Summer memorial sits next to Kumler Chapel that summer, but with on Miami University’s Western campus. Photo by Haley headlines like Donovan. “Mississippi Invasion Army” and “Two Oxfords” emerging in newspapers, outsiders likely believed that they did not welcome the movement with open arms.

Rumors and stories have surfaced over the years of police in Oxford making it clear that the volunteers were not welcome on the Miami campus, and grounds and maintenance being told that they could not go over to Western campus for fear of losing their jobs.

In 1974, Phillip Shriver was president of Miami University, when Miami bought Western College for Women, and the two institutions merged. Momeyer described Shriver as disliking conflict and wanting nothing to do with Freedom Summer.

Between the years 1964 and 2000, Miami University had four different presidents: Phil Shriver, Paul Pearson, Paul Risser and then finally James Garland. In 2000, Garland was approached by members of the Oxford community and asked, “Why isn’t Miami telling this story?”

In an email interview, Garland offered this perspective: “I think the decision to build the memorial in year 2000 had to do mostly with the start of a new century. That provided a natural opportunity for the university to reflect on its own history and its role in shaping the events of the previous hundred years.”

“As I remember, there was also the feeling that some of the participants in the civil rights movement of the ’60s were becoming quite elderly, and we wanted to pay tribute to their commitment and sacrifices while they were still living,” he said.

As Miami’s President, Garland’s role was mostly to rally support for the memorial, help line up funding for it, and respond to the many creative ideas of individuals in the community who worked to make the memorial happen.

Ann Elizabeth Armstrong, professor of theatre at Miami, said, “Garland commissioned the memorial. The physical representation of the reality [of the events] was the first step for Miami.”

As Miami continues to keep the story of Freedom Summer alive, some hope that the code of love and honor is more heavily enforced. As Scott said, “I would like to see people buy into all of the principles. The code of love and honor is a reaffirmation to freedom, and respect, and connection. I’d like to see us continue to grow in that spirit.” Ron Scott said Miami was interested in Freedom Summer, dating back to 1964. Every year, incoming freshmen are assigned Photo by Jeff Sabo. a book to read before beginning classes. The students attend convocation and participate in group discussions about the book. This year, on the 50-year anniversary of Freedom Summer, the summer reading book for the incoming students is “Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy” by Bruce Watson.

Watson will provide the convocation address to incoming freshmen at 9 a.m. on Friday, August 22, 2014.