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National Museum of American History Celebrates 50 Years of Civil Rights History

The National Museum of American History will hold a National Youth Summit Feb. 5, 2014, at noon EST at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, Miss., and link high school students across the U.S. in an engaging program on the history and legacy of the 1964 youth-led effort for voting rights and education.

freedom summitThe summit will include interviews with a panel of experts and civil rights veterans, including Robert Moses, the project director for Freedom Summer; Marshall Ganz, civil rights activist and senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; Michelle Deardorff, professor and department head of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; and Hollis Watkins, Mississippi native and civil rights activist.

While the story of Freedom Summer is one part of the nation’s ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunities for all of its citizens, it is a story that began in Mississippi. For the first time, the museum will present the National Youth Summit from a location outside Washington, D.C., by partnering with the Old Capitol Museum. The summit will incorporate the perspective of students living in the state five decades after the youth-led effort to end political disenfranchisement.

For more information, visit http://americanhistory.si.edu.