Davis Houck In-Conversation with Darius Young with Black Bodies in the River

Nearly sixty years after Freedom Summer, its events–especially the lynching of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner–stand out as a critical episode of the civil rights movement. The infamous deaths of these activists dominate not just the history but also the public memory of the Mississippi Summer Project.

Beginning in the late 1970s, however, movement veterans challenged this central narrative with the shocking claim that during the search for Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, the FBI and other law enforcement personnel discovered many unidentified Black bodies in Mississippi’s swamps, rivers, and bayous. This claim has evolved in subsequent years as activists, journalists, filmmakers, and scholars have continued to repeat it, and the number of supposed Black bodies–never identified–has grown from five to more than two dozen.

In Black Bodies in the River: Searching for Freedom Summer, author Davis W. Houck sets out to answer two questions: Were Black bodies discovered that summer? And why has the shocking claim only grown in the past several decades–despite evidence to the contrary? In other words, what rhetorical work does the Black bodies claim do, and with what audiences?

Let’s Meet Professor Davis Houck
Professor Davis Houck has spent the better part of the last 3 decades exploring the rhetorical dynamics of the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. He’s worked extensively on how the media shaped the narrative of the kidnap and lynching of Emmett Till. That scholarship continues with his work on the Emmett Till Memory Project, a digital app for smart phones designed to tell the story in the 21st century. Houck spent several years, along with co-author and editor, David Dixon, unearthing parts of the civil rights movement that have gone missing, publishing 3 books on long-forgotten speeches from local leaders, including a book on the women of the movement.

At his home on Florida State University’s campus, Houck is the founder of the Emmett Till Archive, the only archive in the world dedicated exclusively to primary sources related to this foundation stone of American history. He is also a founding member of the FSU Civil Rights Institute, an interdisciplinary and community group that explores where policy, culture, and the past intersect with race, on campus, in Tallahassee, and in the state of Florida. Most recently, working with high school educators in the Mississippi Delta, Houck has created and endowed the Emmett Till Archive Fund to promote creative projects by high school students at West Tallahatchie High School in Webb, Mississippi.

His most recent book, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2022, is Black Bodies in the River: Searching for Freedom Summer. His online digital platform, Public Speaking in the 21st Century, continues to educate college and high school public speaking students around the country.

He currently is the Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies, a professorship that celebrates the life and work of the sharecropper-turned-civil-rights-activist from Ruleville, Mississippi.

Let’s Meet Darius J YoungDarius J. Young is a native of Detroit, Michigan. He attended Florida A&M University where he earned a BS in African American studies and a master’s degree in history. In 2011, Young completed his Ph.D. in history from the University of Memphis.

He is an author and historian of black political movements during the 20th Century. His first book, Robert R. Church Jr. and the African American Political Struggle (University Press of Florida, 2019), won the C. Calvin Smith Book Award from the Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc. His current book project, Freedom Now!: Black Detroit and the Revolutionary Year of 1963 chronicles the historic events that led to a rise in Black radical activism in the city during 1963. Young has published a series of articles, book chapters, and reviews that can be found in Black Perspectives, The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Southern History, The Journal of American History, The Griot: The Journal of African American Studies, and the Florida Historical Quarterly.

He currently sits on the advisory boards for the University Press of Florida, the Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc., and the State of Florida’s African American History Task Force.

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