Special Collections | University of Mississippi Libraries - Archives and Special Collections - Civil Rights, Mississippi, and the Novelist's Craft - Freedom Summer 1962

University of Mississippi Libraries – Archives and Special Collections<br /> – Civil Rights, Mississippi, and the Novelist’s Craft – Freedom Summer 1962

Civil Rights,
Mississippi, and the Novelist’s Craft

Civil Rights Events

Emmett Till

Authors

Ellen Douglas
Ronald L. Fair

Book Production

Manuscript
Uncorrected Galleys

Freedom Summer 1964

James D. Forman & Shepard Rifkin

During the first weekend of Freedom Summer 1964, three civil rights workers

– Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman – disappeared.

Authorities ultimately discovered their bodies outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

In Freedom’s Blood (1979), James D. Forman has written a novel

for young people reconstructing the

events of that weekend, using details provided by verified reports of

the actual event.

The Murderer Vine (1970), by Shepard Rifkin is much

more loosely based upon the three murders. In this tale, the wealthy father

of one of the victims offers a New York detective one hundred

thousand dollars to execute each of the five suspected killers, including

the local sheriff.