Biographical Sequencing and Activism

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This is a proposal to study the how participation in political activism and social movements affects people's decisions about work, education, marriage, and childbearing. All applicants to the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project will be compared to a matched comparison group. The investigators propose to update the life histories of participants in the Freedom Summer Project previously surveyed in 1988, to obtain comparable life-course data for a sample of individuals who did not participate in the Freedom Summer Project, and to develop and administer a questionnaire focusing on the subjective dimensions of the relationship between political activism and the life course. One of the central questions in the study will be how participation in social movements such as the Freedom Summer Project have influenced life choices and career trajectories. An equally important question will be to understand how and why major life events such as marriage and childbearing often serve to constrain political activism. This project will contribute to our understanding of the interrelations between political activism and the life course, and it will also provide insights into the life patterns of a cohort of people who lived through young adulthood during the turbulent decade of the 1960s.