Source: Willie Cordy, Jr. / NEWorks Productions
The countdown has begun.
In four days, Americans will be making a decision that will affect individuals, families, communities and the nation as a whole for the next four years. Regardless of how you decide to vote this coming Election Day (November 4), the key factor is exercising your right to vote while doing so with some morality still intact.
Sometimes the best way to feel like you’re making the right choice in any election is to be well-informed on how each candidate plans on shaping the future of American history. Then again, that also requires you to understand America’s historical context.
NEWorks Productions recently launched its Freedom Advances campaign in efforts to encourage voting amongst American citizens in 2024 by way of an animated civic anthem titled “Rise Up & Fight” inspired by the Freedom Summer of 1964.
Spearheaded by NEWorks founder Nolan Williams Jr., a revered composer for over 20 years and counting, and brought to life through the creative mind of illustrator and college professor Willie Cordy Jr., the worlds of art, politics and Black culture all intersect in this influential and educational PSA. We got a chance to have an extensive conversation not too long ago with both men for a virtual discussion on the campaign at hand and how it all came together.
Here’s a brief Black history lesson below on the aforementioned Freedom Summer of ’64 that inspired “Rise Up & Fight,” via The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University:
“On 14 June 1964 the first group of summer volunteers began training at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. Of the approximately 1,000 volunteers, the majority were white northern college students from middle and upper class backgrounds. The training sessions were intended to prepare volunteers to register black voters, teach literacy and civics at Freedom Schools, and promote the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s (MFDP) challenge to the all-white Democratic delegation at that summer’s Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Just one week after the first group of volunteers arrived in Oxford, three civil rights workers were reported missing in Mississippi. James Chaney, a black Mississippian, and two white northerners, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, disappeared while visiting Philadelphia, Mississippi, to investigate the burning of a church. The abduction of the three civil rights workers intensified the new activists’ fears, but Freedom Summer staff and volunteers moved ahead with the campaign.
Voter registration was the cornerstone of the summer project. Although approximately 17,000 black residents of Mississippi attempted to register to vote in the summer of 1964, only 1,600 of the completed applications were accepted by local registrars. Highlighting the need for federal voting rights legislation, these efforts created political momentum for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Learn more about the Freedom Advances campaign and how to join by clicking here.
As you prepare to make your voice be heard, watch our conversation with composer Nolan Williams Jr. and illustrator Willie Cordy Jr. for a discussion on Freedom Advances and what it means when you rise up to fight for your rights: