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Christina J. Thomas, PhD, will conduct research to support her upcoming digital project, “Digitizing Freedom Summer” 

Christina J. Thomas, a post doctorate fellow at the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the University of South Carolina, is the recipient of the inaugural Robert “Bob” Moses Civil Rights Research Fellowship, offered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Thomas will conduct research in the MDAH archives this summer to support her forthcoming “Digitizing Freedom Summer” project, featuring an interactive map that locates and documents the stories of volunteers of Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.

This new fellowship is named for Moses, who is widely credited as the architect of Freedom Summer 1964, when hundreds of college students from around the country came to Mississippi to register Black people to vote and establish school classrooms for Black children. Thomas’s project focuses on the volunteers, including the local people who opened their homes to the activists. 

“I am honored to receive this fellowship and to continue sharing Moses’ legacy and that of those who carried the Mississippi movement forward,” Thomas said.

The project’s interactive map, which is in development alongside a database, will showcase the stories of Freedom Summer through biographical profiles of volunteers. When available, the profiles will also include the volunteers’ Freedom Summer applications and links to primary sources, such as oral histories or newspaper articles.

“Through this fellowship, I aim to finalize the database, which serves as the foundation of the map,” Thomas said. “The first prototype will be sent to Civil Rights Movement scholars and veterans for critical feedback in late fall 2026 before its public launch next year.”

Moses was an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. The fellowship that bears his name seeks to nurture scholars at the beginning of their academic careers to increase their lifelong interest in history and promote continued academic and public appreciation of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and the struggle for human rights, said Laura Heller, MDAH acquisitions and collections coordinator. 

“The MDAH archives hold some of the country’s richest primary sources related to the Civil Rights Movement,” Heller said. “We welcome the opportunity to host a fellow whose ongoing work can be bolstered by our archival materials.”

Thomas will use the $5,000 fellowship to cover travel, housing, and other expenses incurred while conducting research at the archives.  

In addition to her work at the Center for Civil Rights History and Research, Thomas previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Scholar at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. Thomas also was a historian for the History Department of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute.

Thomas received a doctoral degree in History from Johns Hopkins University and Master of Art in History from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She received her Bachelor of Art in History from Messiah University.