Towards Justice

Jim Kates was just a teenager when he travelled down to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964. He worked in the community to register Black Mississippians for the vote and taught African American children about their history in the campaign’s ‘Freedom Schools’. Jim reveals how, decades later, one of the pupils reached out to thank him for making him worthy for the first time in hi...

Ken Cloke was a vocal civil rights activist on his campus at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s. He helped organize Freedom Rides, supported sit-ins and worked closely with John Lewis, the President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1964, Ken ventured down to the South to continue his fight for racial justice. As a young law student, Ken worked as a...

At the age of just eight years old, Alice Pretlow was among the first African American students to integrate an all-white school in Batesville, Mississippi. This came after the landmark Brown Vs Board of Education decision of 1954 which required schools throughout America to desegregate. Despite facing cruel racism and discrimination, Alice devoted her life to public school teaching. In the interv...

Leonard Edwards was a student at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, when he traveled down to Mississippi as part of the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964. Meanwhile, his father, the prominent Californian Congressman Don Edwards, was voting in favour of one of the most consequential civil rights laws in American history. Leonard discusses how his fight for justice has been a lifelong pursuit, from his...

Welcome to Towards Justice, a podcast about some of the inspiring people who fought in the Civil Rights Movement in America. Each episode profiles a different veteran and illustrates how the lessons of the 1960s Freedom Struggle paved the way for a life devoted to social justice. The podcast title is based on the quote, made famous by Martin Luther King Jr., that “the arc of the moral universe is...

Dr Robert Fullilove spent his early twenties in the Deep South working as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As the son and grandson of prominent Black physicians from Mississippi, Dr Fullilove was motivated to visit the state and became involved with the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. His contributions will forever be seared into history as he feature...