Description

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The Eric Morton Papers: How a Deep South 1960s Civil Rights Worker's Story Arrived in an Iowa Library

Eric Morton (1934-2016) was materials coordinator for the Mississippi Project in 1964, later known as Freedom Summer. The Detroit native and veteran of the Korean War was employed from 1962 to 1966 by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of several organizations that formed a coalition in 1964 to combat racial discrimination in the voting booth in Mississippi.
Hundreds of volunteers from across the country, including Iowa, descended upon Mississippi that summer to participate in the Project, going door to door and meeting with Black Mississippians to encourage them to register to vote, a long-denied right in the Jim Crow South. Eric Morton worked with several Iowans, including Steve Smith, a UI sophomore from Marion, that summer.
The session will recount how two young men, one Black, one white, met to work toward a common goal, and tells how Mr. Morton's papers came to arrive at the University of Iowa Library, though he had never visited the Hawkeye State.
Presenter: David McCartney is University of Iowa archivist emeritus, a position he held from 2001 until his retirement in 2022. He has master's degrees in history and library science, both from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He and his husband live in Iowa City; David is originally from Charles City.

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Membership Not Required

Location

311 at Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center