Rust College celebrates being the main library for Freedom Summer Schools

Opening a panel discussion July 16 in the Rust College library, Dean of Humanities Dr. Karl Twyner told an audience of some 50 people that Holly Springs residents and Rust College students have a legacy of opposition to the system of segregation that once dominated Mississippi. Twyner said, “This will be the first of a year-long series of events exploring that legacy. Today, we’ll spotlight Rust’s central role in sending books to Freedom Schools set up throughout Mississippi in the summer of 1964, Freedom Summer.”

Bill Scott, who was Rust student government president in 1964, recounted that schools, libraries and churches from across America donated over 100,000 volumes. They were collected at Rust, where he headed up the work of sorting and cataloguing them for distribution to Freedom Schools for Black youngsters set up by Civil Rights activists across the state.

“There were so many books,” Scott recalled, “we could not fit them in any building. We set up a huge tent right where the library was built later, the exact spot where we are sitting today.”

Larry Rubin, a Civil rights organizer in 1964, said he was among those whose job it was to pick up boxes of books mailed by donors to various locations and haul them to Rust for sorting.

“It was dangerous work,” he said. Rubin and Scott were each arrested in Mississippi towns while hauling books to Rust.

Rubin said, “I was charged with carrying printed material `advocating the overthrow of the government of the state of Mississippi.’ “ Pointing to a pile of Freedom School books still in the Rust library, he said the books “were English, history and math primers and children’s books such as the Bobbsey Twins series. But upon reflection, I realize that the charge was correct. Anything that helped Black kids learn to read more effectively threated the segregation system of the time.”

Rubin said the danger did not end when the books arrived at Rust. After they were distributed, Freedom Library librarians across the state received death threats and racist groups shot into several libraries.

Roy DeBerry, a Holly Springs high school student in 1964, explained that the local Freedom School was located in a Rustowned building directly across the street from the College. Classes were free. Students studied history, math and Black culture and worked to improve reading and writing skills. He said that he, Wanda Pegues, (now a Rust College librarian), Tina Evans, (Bill Scott’s late wife) and others wrote a play about Mississippi Civil Rights martyr Medgar Evers that was performed at Rust and then in New York City.

In closing remarks, Rust College President Dr. Robert Dixon said that over the coming years, Rust students will be reenacting the voter rights and anti-segregation marches and demonstrations of 1960-67, and studying the many ways Rust played a central role in the Freedom Movement.

“I am sure,” Dixon said, “that today’s Rust students will be inspired to carry on the legacy of fighting for social justice.”