Photoessay #2860 - Freedom Summer 1963

I feel a new interest coming on. This one has a much more crowded field.  I pretty much have Maier Zunder all to myself.  Turns out my professor this quarter has a strong tie with Mark Beittel.  My cousin.  I have always been close to the Beittel family.  His parents Sue and Dan (may he rest in peace, I still miss his presence), his sisters Lynn and June, his grandparents.

His grandfather, A. D Beittel, married my husband and I.  Was the perfect solution.  His family says we were the last couple he married.

I knew he was involved in the civil rights movement and I knew he was a president of a college but I didn't really pay too much attention or put together his story.  I knew him and his wife as Grandfather and Grandmother Beittel.  I always found them so interesting.  And, at that ime, I scowled at and scorned most all adults.

But there is information abuot him online.  Somebody does need to write his story.

But here is the coolest picture ever.  The Freedom Summer of 1963.  Sit in at the Woolworth counter in Jackson Mississippi by students and faculty of Tougaloo College.  What's happening here is not pretty; the angry white people behind them are pouring food and syrup all over them.  Some faculty members and students are shown.  At the end of the counter is the college president A. D. Beittel.  I can't tell if anybody has poured any food on him.

Brave times.  Who endures, the people sitting at the lunch counter or the people harassing them?

Do the right thing.