Neil Wilson Freedom Summer Collection

Dr. Neil Wilson was born on January 11, 1932, in New York City and was studying psychology at the University of Syracuse when he traveled to Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. Dr. Wilson traveled to Mississippi with his friend Bruce Thomas and actor Richard Beymer (known for West Side Story). The summer of 1964 volunteers like Dr. Wilson traveled to Mississippi to help register African Americans to vote and establish freedom schools. Dr. Wilson helped with voter registration in Indianola, Mississippi, and was a part of the group that attempted to fight the segregation of public spaces by trying to integrate the Honey Theatre.

According to the file in the collection, on September 6, 1964, Dr. Wilson and a group of twenty African Americans and whites went to the Honey Theatre in Indianola, Mississippi to integrate the theatre. The theatre had two ticket lines, one for whites and one for African Americans. When the group arrived, the African Americans stood in the line meant for whites, while the white volunteers stood in the line for African Americans and they were refused admission. While there was no incident at the theatre, the group was later arrested several blocks away from the theatre for “refusing order of policemen” and they were sent to a county work farm. Dr. Wilson requested his F.B.I file in 1990 and out of the twenty-three-page file, only seven pages were released with redactions. The correspondence in the collection contains Dr. Wilson’s appeal to the Department of Justice to release the rest of the file. After Freedom Summer, Dr. Wilson received his Ph.D. in psychology and became a psychoanalyst.