Freedom Summer Photograph: Dr. Leo Orris taking Fannie Lou Hamer's blood pressure, Ruleville, Mississippi, August 1964

Photograph of Dr. Leo Orris taking the blood pressure of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer in front of her house in Ruleville, Mississippi. The photograph was taken in August 1964 by Dr. Erwin D. Zeman of Lincoln, Nebraska, who was visiting his daughter Zoya, a Freedom Summer volunteer in the Community Center in nearby Clarksdale.

Dr. Leo Orris was a New York physician who helped to organized the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), a group of doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists, dentists, and social workers who treated civil rights and peace movement workers during the sixties. Dr. Orris was in Mississippi with the MCHR during the summer of 1964 to participate in 'Freedom Summer', the Summer Project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).