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This collection documents the work of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia between 1967 and 1984. The subjects of this collection reflect the organization's mission and priorities during that period. They relate to a wide range of issues including academic freedom; due process; the rights of children and students; racial and sexual discrimination; the military draft; religion in public schools; the rights of women; the rights of prisoners; state reapportionment; the rights of the mentally disabled; and the rights of migrant workers.

This collection consists of the files and working papers of Howard Worth Smith who represented Virginia in Congress for some thirty-five years as representative from the Eighth Congressional District. Included are correspondence received and carbon copies of replies, clippings, printed government and other publications, copies of printed bills, reports, press releases, speeches, notes, memoranda, financial records, tape and disc recordings, drawings, and other materials. The papers cover the years 1933 to 1966 when Smith retired from Congress.

This collection contains printed items pertaining to the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, a landmark campaign in the Civil Rights Movement aimed at challenging systemic racism and voter suppression in Mississippi. Organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and other groups under the umbrella of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), the Freedom Summer mobilized over 1,000 volunteers, including many college students, to join Black Mississippians in a massive effort to register African American voters, establish Freedom Schools, and create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The associated content is all dated from 1964 and includes brochures, internal "COFO Publications," a "Memo to Accepted Applicants" for the Mississippi Summer Project, a "Security Handbook," internal memoranda, press releases, a pamphlet titled "Genocide in Mississippi," a pamphlet titled "Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to Vote," correspondence between organizers and movement members, "Freedom School Assingments," teaching frameworks for Freedom Schools, reports on bombings in Pike and McComb County, case studies on non-violent movements and demonstrations, a circular published by the Bay Area Friends of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the "Basis for the Development of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party." Of special interest is a June 22, 1964 internal report discussing the "disappearance of three summer project workers in Neshoba County." On June 21, 1964, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi, while working to register Black voters and investigate the bombing of a local church. Their disappearance triggered a massive federal response, led by the FBI under the code name "Mississippi Burning." After weeks of searching, their bodies were discovered buried in an earthen dam. The investigation revealed that members of the Ku Klux Klan, with assistance from local law enforcement, had abducted and murdered the men.