Training for Freedom
PBS WESTERN RESERVE (WNEO 45.1 / WEAO 49.1):
Saturday, Feb. 3, at 10 PM
Saturday, Feb. 17, at 6 PM
FUSION (WNEO 45.2 / WEAO 49.2):
Monday, Feb. 12, at 9:30 PM
Saturday, Feb. 17, at 4 PM
This documentary captures the transformational story of how idealistic college students and Black activists came together in Oxford, Ohio, to find their humanity and the common ground to fight as one in the freedom struggle that would define a nation and alter the course of history.
Premiering exclusively on PBS Western Reserve, TRAINING FOR FREEDOM weaves intimate personal stories from participants and local residents with critical historical analysis from noted historians and scholars. It explores how people from dramatically different worlds broke down barriers of race, class and gender to organize the most comprehensive campaign of the civil rights movement.
In the summer of 1964, volunteers and trainers for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Campaign descended upon the small town of Oxford to attend a week-long orientation held on the grounds of the Western College for Women.
Situated against the peaceful backdrop of the remote, pastoral campus, volunteers learned how to register Black voters; teach basic math, literacy and Black history erased from the segregated public schools; and stay alive using nonviolent disobedience tactics and hard learned rules for survival in the Jim Crow South.
