Planting “Seeds of Freedom”

Though often overlooked in social movement histories and theatre studies, the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, known as Freedom Summer, demonstrates how applied theatre arose within and served social movement goals. Activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) who led the Freedom Summer campaign recognized that to develop trusting relationships with prospective African American voters, they had to confront the educational deficits of Mississippi's segregated schools. Among the campaign's most overlooked and innovative aspects were the Freedom Schools, staffed by volunteers, who deployed dramatic role-playing and theatrical presentations of student-created work to prepare young people and their elders to participate in the democratic process. This chapter traces the development of “Seeds of Freedom,” an original play by the students and teachers of the Holly Springs Freedom School about the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers the year after his assassination. This case study demonstrates how, in conjunction with voter registration efforts, the creative work intervened in cycles of oppression to benefit the community and empower students with a new sense of agency.