Remembering Mississippi Freedom Summer

Charles O. Prickett began his activities toward world peace and justice while in high school doing surveys of area businesses to determine if racial discrimination was occurring in his hometown, Carbondale, Illinois.

Charles attended the March on Washington in 1963, and participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, where he worked operating Freedom Schools, conducting voter registration drives, organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and organizing local black farmers to vote in U.S. Department of Agriculture fall elections. He also helped organize the Selma-Montgomery March in 1965.

Charles has written a book about his experiences in the civil rights movement, "Remembering Mississippi Freedom Summer" (Amazon).  This book chronicles the experiences he had as an active participant of the civil rights movement, and includes his meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King while working on the Selma-Montgomery March. His book contains nearly 80 pictures, most from a movie he helped make with Richard Beymer in 1964, "A Regular Bouquet" (YouTube). This movie contains the only film record of Freedom Schools and voter registration efforts from Freedom Summer. PBS in their series "Eyes On the Prize", and "Freedom Summer" have used these images.  He is currently an attorney in Santa Rosa, California, and has been a pro tem judge in small claims and traffic court in California for over thirty years, and has served as a mediator for the Sonoma County Superior Court.