Civil rights icon Dave Dennis to discuss 1964 Freedom Summer at LSU Shreveport

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A Shreveport native and civil rights icon will speak at LSUS on Friday to discuss his role in the 1964 Summer of Freedom in Mississippi.

Dave Dennis was one of the architects and participants in the Summer of Freedom when young people from across the country sacrificed summer fun to end segregation in the South.

Dennis was exposed to the fight for equal rights for Black Americans, as people like Reverend C.O. Simpkins and others started to lay the foundation of activism in Shreveport; however, like many young people, he did not plan to join the civil rights movement, the movement called him to it.

“Dave was a fly on the wall of perhaps the most pivotal time in the Shreveport Civil Rights Movement. When you talk about younger people in the movement, Dave Dennis is way up there in terms of importance.”

As a student at Dillard University in New Orleans, Dennis participated in a sit-in at a Woolworth’s Department Store, the first organized demonstration in the state’s largest city. The sit-in ignited something in Dennis, and he joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and worked with student groups and overarching civil rights groups related to the movement.

Dennis played a key role in integrating the Louisiana State Fair in 1961. He and others would spread rumors throughout the community that caused the fair to lose money, forcing integration to recoup losses.

“Dave Dennis was the lone CORE field secretary in the area in 1961, and the Fair doesn’t get integrated without him,” said LSUS graduate student Mikal Barnes, a researcher on Joiner’s Civil Rights Heritage Trail project in Caddo Parish. “Simpkins would organize a fake protest because he knew there were informants in his meetings. Dennis and others spread the rumor throughout the community, and the entire police force shows up expecting a riot. Businesses don’t want to get tarnished during a Fair riot, so they don’t show up either, and the Fair loses a lot of money. They lose so much money that they integrated the Fair.”

For all of his involvement and organizing, the moment Dennis is most widely-known for is the Summer of 1964, a mass push for voter registration. This is when he and others deployed citizens from across the country to pressure the state of Mississippi to recognize the voting rights of African-Americans. The events of that summer would become the 1988 film Mississippi Burning starring the late Gene Hackman.

His efforts to push for a better America landed him in jail 30 times and unlike many participants in the movement, he has lived to speak about it and share those experiences with an audience in his hometown.

To learn about the Freedom Summer, and how an HBCU student with no interest in protests, marches or creating movements became an icon for American civil rights, don’t miss his lecture on Friday, March 15, 2025, at 6 p.m. in the LSUS Science Lecture Auditorium.

“Opportunities like these are golden, irreplaceable,” Joiner said. “One of our big emphases is to talk to these heroes and get their impressions, learn from them. You can’t help but admire his intelligence, honesty and demeanor. We’re so damn lucky that he wants to come here.”