Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations including the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Aimed at increasing black voter registration in Mississippi, the Freedom Summer workers included black Mississippians and hundreds of out-of-state, predominately white volunteers.
Though the SNCC agreed to recruit only one hundred white students for the project, a much larger number was ultimately recruited. Two one-week orientation sessions for the volunteers were held from June 14 to June 27, 1964 in Oxford, Ohio, on the campus of then-Western College for Women (now part of Miami University).