First published in 1999, FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE is a one of a kind anthology that holds as much relevance now as it did then. In celebration of its 2021 reprinting, editor Susan J. Erenrich comes together with Jerry Mitchell as well as Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner (collectively known as MAGPIE) to share readings, truth, and song. With more than 80 contributors, FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE is one of the most comprehensive books ever published about the civil rights movement in Mississippi. The anthology focuses on the critical year of 1964. It details the juxtaposition of a time when civil rights workers were beaten, jailed, and murdered, yet freedom schools were established, thousands registered to vote, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged segregated elections. Each contributor’s story is told with passion, in an unprecedented array of songs, articles, photographs, and drawings, collectively recounting the fierce battle to bring equal rights to Mississippi. Much of the content is controversial. All of it is riveting, eyewitness history. This event is free and open to all, accessible through our Facebook and Youtube pages (@busboysandpoets).
About our Guests
Susan (Susie) J. Erenrich is a social movement history documentarian. She uses the arts for social change to tell stories about transformational leadership, resilience, and societal shifts as a result of mobilization efforts by ordinary citizens. Her career in nonprofit/arts management, civic engagement, community organizing and community service spans more than four decades experience. Susie holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. She is the editor of The Cost Of Freedom: Voicing A Movement After Kent State 1970; Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement); Kent & Jackson State 1970 – 1990; co-editor of Grassroots Leadership & the Arts for Social Change; and co-editor of the forthcoming book, A Grassroots Leadership & Arts For Social Change Primer For Educators, Organizers, Activists & Rabble-Rousers.
For the past five years, Susie has been the producer/host of Wasn’t That A Time: Stories & Songs That Moved The Nation, a community radio broadcast on WERA.FM. And since January 2018, she has been the editor of The Grassroots Leadership & The Arts For Social Change Corner in partnership with the International Leadership Association.
Since 1973 Terry Leonino & Greg Artzner, MAGPIE, have entertained, uplifted and inspired audiences around the world with their music, with their amazing versatility, powerful voices in harmony, and their provocative, captivating and moving songs, many of their own composition, on guitars, harmonica, mandolin, and dulcimer. They have performed on stages from major folk festivals, to intimate folk clubs and small concert settings, to school auditoriums and classrooms, to demonstrations, rallies, picket lines, and other venues too numerous to mention. They have toured the length and breadth of North America and toured internationally, including numerous tours of England and Scotland. They have many recordings to their credit, including collections and song cycles on special themes, and tracks on notable anthologies including songs of Civil Rights, and tributes to Phil Ochs, Utah Phillips, and Pete Seeger. Greg & Terry are also actors and playwrights, scholars of the life and legacy of abolitionist John Brown and his wife Mary, whom they have portrayed in their own stage play since 2000, and the many people associated with his revolutionary fight to end slavery in America. They have been educators and activists, never passing up an opportunity to lend their voices and instruments to the causes of peace, liberation, justice, and responsibility for the Earth.
The stories of investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell have helped put four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars. His stories have also helped free two people from death row, exposed injustices and corruption, prompting investigations, state reforms, the firings of boards and officials. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a longtime member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and a winner of more than 30 other national awards, including a $500,000 MacArthur “genius” Grant. His memoir for Simon & Schuster, Race Against Time, details how some of the nation’s most notorious murders came to be punished years later. After working for three decades for the statewide Clarion-Ledger, Mitchell left in 2019 and founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit that exposes corruption and injustices, investigates cold cases, gives voice to marginalized communities and raises up the next generation of investigative reporters.
