In the winter of 1963, the leaders of prominent Civil Rights groups in the United States met and came up with a program that would help alleviate the massive problem of Black voter disenfranchisement in the south. Spearheaded by Bob Moses and Dave Dennis, the Mississippi Summer Project, also known as Freedom Summer, was born. The project was slated for the summer of 1964 and would expand on already-existing programs across Mississippi, relying on volunteers to canvas neighborhoods and help register Black voters.
After 6 months of planning, Berea College in Kentucky canceled their participation as the original site of training. Quickly, the Western College for Women in Oxford, OH, was selected to host the volunteer training. Two months later, in June of 1964, approximately 800 young people gathered on the campus of the Western College for Women to attend training sessions to prepare them for Mississippi. The land on which the Miami University Art Museum stands, as well as to the North and East, was the property of the Western College for Women. Over the course of two week-long training sessions, volunteers met in Clawson, Boyd, and Peabody Halls, attended lectures on the history of the Black vote and the current socio-political environment in the South, and learned non-violent self defense training.
Steve Schapiro was one of the few photojournalists present during the first training session in Oxford. From June 14 to June 20, 1964, Schapiro captured various moments of the training, creating invaluable documentation of what would become an important moment in Civil Rights history that began in Oxford, Ohio.
