Charles E. Cobb, author of “On the Road to Freedom,” spoke to students and other guests about the importance of ordinary people working together in the civil rights movement in Mississippi, and the path they paved for Barack Obama to win the presidency.

Cobb is a civil rights activist and a journalist who reported for National Public Radio and National Geographic.

Shirley Phan, freshman counselor education major, said that she came to hear Cobb to learn about his experience in the civil rights movement and become aware of what went on during those times.

Maria Segura, senior social work major, said that she hoped to “gain some knowledge of what their struggles were and what we can learn from that.”

“On the Road to Freedom” tries to shed light on people Cobb thinks have been written out of history of the civil rights movement. The book talks about the civil rights movement as being much more than a sit-in or protest movement, Cobb said.

Cobb told a story of a civil rights activist named Sam Block who in Greenwood, Miss. in 1962, stood up to a sheriff who wanted him to leave when he was going to register to vote.

Block told the sheriff, “I’m here to stay. I came here to do a job and this is my intention. I’m going to do this job.”

Cobb said that Mississippi was a state he was most deeply involved in as a young civil rights organizer because racial oppression defined Mississippi. Cobb said that the state was especially notorious because many parts of the state were out-of-the-way places.

Cobb said that young people such as college students and older people helped lead the Civil Rights movement.

“What other young people including Sam Block were beginning to do was organizing people for change,” Cobb said.

Cobb said that the presidency of Barack Obama has some of its deepest roots in the civil rights struggle.

“Although I do not subscribe to the view that we are now living in some kind of post-racial America, I do think that Barack Obama’s election confirms one significant attribute of change in the racial dynamic of the United States,” Cobb said.

Still, Cobb said, more needed to be done. Cobb pointed out that Frederick Douglas said, “If there is no struggle, then there is no progress.”

Catherine Robledo can be reached at [email protected].