College Commemorates Civil Rights Anniversary

Keene State College Marks 50th Anniversary of Voting Rights Act and Death of Jonathan Daniels with Panel Discussion and Documentary Film

Keene State College will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the death of local civil rights activist, Jonathan Daniels, with a panel conversation with volunteers from Freedom Summer 1964 – the event is free and open to the public. In addition, Keene State Professors Emeriti Larry Benaquist and Bill Sullivan produced a documentary titled “Here Am I, Send Me: The Journey of Jonathan Daniels”, which chronicles the life and work of Daniels, who was born in Keene, NH. Daniels was murdered while saving another young activist on August 20, 1965 in Alabama. The film will be shown on New Hampshire Public Television, and during the Monadnock International Film Festival (MONIFF) later this month.

The panel conversation will be held with volunteers from Freedom Summer 1964. Freedom Summer 1964 was a voter registration project in Mississippi and part of a larger effort by civil rights groups to expand voting rights of African Americans in the South. Freedom Summer was critical to President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to press the United States Congress for the Voting Rights Act.

The panel discussion event is free and open to the public and will include a question and answer session. It will be held on April 15 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery conference room. Panelists include:

• Carl Pomerance who said, “I was part of Mississippi Freedom Summer when I was 19. When I came back I became active in the student movement for peace and human rights.”

• Jim Kates who has co-directed the non-profit literary publishing house Zephyr Press, which published ”Letters from Mississippi: Reports from Civil Rights Volunteers & Poetry of the 1964 Freedom Summer”.

• Nancy Schieffelin, who was a Freedom School teacher and voter registration worker in Greenville, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer of 1964. She continued her work in the Roxbury community in Boston, running a day camp and after school programs with the African American children there.

• John Suter who served in the Peace Corps in Somalia from 1966 to 1968. He is a facilitator for Talking Circles on Race and Racism in Ithaca, which brings together a small group of racially diverse participants over a five-week period to discuss their personal experiences with racial identity, race issues and racism.

The panel event is sponsored by Keene State College’s History Department, Journalism Department, Political Science Department, and Mason Library and the School of Arts and Humanities.

Professors Emeriti Larry Benaquist and Bill Sullivan’s documentary film, “Here Am I, Send Me” will air on New Hampshire Public Television on April 16 at 9 p.m.; April 25 at 3 a.m. and 10 p.m.; April 26 at 3 p.m. and on April 29 at 5 a.m. A screening with Benaquist and Sullivan will be held at MONIFF at Keene State’s Redfern Arts Center, on Saturday, April 18, at 10 a.m. It will include a question and answer session with both producers, and will be free and open to the public.