Newseum opens “1964: Civil Rights at 50” exhibit featuring powerful photographs of Freedom Summer

Student civil rights activists joined hands and sang as they prepared to leave Ohio to register black voters in Mississippi.The 1964 voter registration campaign was known as Freedom Summer. Photo Credit: Ted Polumbaum/Newseum collection

WASHINGTON — On Friday, January 17, 2014 the Newseum will open “1964: Civil Rights at 50,” a yearlong exhibit about Freedom Summer, a bold campaign organized by civil rights groups in 1964 to register black voters in Mississippi.
“1964” features powerful images of Freedom Summer, from volunteer training sessions in Ohio to clashes with segregationists and the search for three missing civil rights workers who were later found murdered. The photographs were taken by Ted Polumbaum, a freelance photographer working for Time magazine, whose passion for social justice led him to Mississippi in the summer of 1964. The Polumbaum photographs are part of the Newseum’s permanent collection and will be on display in the exhibit through December 28, 2014.
“The exhibit powerfully illustrates the risks that student activists took 50 years ago to defeat segregation,” said Cathy Trost, vice president of exhibits and programs at the Newseum. “Photojournalist Ted Polumbaum recorded the dramatic events of Freedom Summer and left behind a remarkable collection of images capturing key moments in the fight for civil rights.”
“1964” is a companion exhibit to “Make Some Noise: Students and the Civil Rights Movement,” which opened at the Newseum in August 2013. “Make Some Noise” spotlights key figures in the student civil rights movement, including John Lewis, now a U.S. representative from Georgia, and Julian Bond, who later became chairman of the NAACP.