Amid a rising wave of campus activism, 21 students from across the country are spending this summer in Cambridge and Washington D.C., learning how to organize and fight for civil rights as part of a Harvard-sponsored fellowship.

Civil Rights Summer (CRS), now in its first summer, seeks to provide an “in-depth academic study and social history” to support the next generation of Civil Rights leaders, according to CRS Director Andra Rose.

The program grew out of an identified need to encourage social activists and train students to take action, according to program officials.

“We may be training the next Martin Luther King, Jr. or Cesar Chavez,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of Harvard’s Civil Rights Project, one of the three programs sponsoring CRS. The other two sponsors are the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Since the program is brand new this year, officials said they had hoped it would draw 300 applications. However, thanks mostly to Internet distribution, more than 1300 students applied. Because of the overwhelming demand for the spots, the staff hopes to expand the program in future years—perhaps boosting the program next summer to 30 students if funding comes through.

After selecting the candidates, CRS staff worked with a coalition of 180 civil rights groups to place the students in internships. Organizations in which students were placed this year included the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and the National Education Association (NEA).

Students began their summer with a week-long seminar on the Harvard campus, where they heard from a “daily overload” of four or five speakers, many of whom spoke about their personal involvement in the Civil Rights movement, according to participant Najiba Akbar, a rising junior at Wellesley College.

The speakers taught students about the history of the Civil Rights movement, local and national organizing strategies and about modern mass movements.