Smith wrote its compositions intermittently over the course of 34 years, beginning in 1977, before performing them live in November 2011 at the Colburn School's Zipper Hall in Los Angeles.

He was accompanied by the nine-piece Southwest Chamber Music ensemble and his own jazz quartet, featuring drummers Pheeroan akLaff and Susie Ibarra, pianist Anthony Davis, and bassist John Lindberg.

Smith started Ten Freedom Summers in 1977, when he wrote the piece "Medgar Evers" as an evocation of the eponymous civil rights activist gunned down in Mississippi in 1963.

[3] In the opinion of All About Jazz writer Mark Redlefsen, Smith's use of echo-laden, atmospheric sounds in his previous work culminated on Ten Freedom Summers, whose somber mood reflects the pieces' titles.

[4] Each section's pieces are meant to represent significant figures associated with the Civil Rights Movement during 1954 to 1964 and concepts relevant to the formation of institutions that evolved from human interaction, including government, media, and megacorporations.

[12] Bob Rusch believed the performances are not inspired by contemporary Civil Rights Movement music by artists such as Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Mahalia Jackson, or Aretha Franklin, because Smith's Golden Quintet exhibit an astral, chamber sound.

[19] Reviewing for The Guardian in August 2012, Fordham called the record "a landmark in jazz's rich canon",[12] while Bill Shoemaker of The Wire regarded it as "a monumental evocation of America's civil rights movement".

"[21] AllMusic's Thom Jurek viewed the box set as Smith's best work, writing that it "belongs in jazz's canonical lexicon with Duke Ellington's Black, Brown & Beige and Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite.

"[9] In Cadence Magazine, Rusch was less enthusiastic about the box set, believing it would have benefitted from being released as four separate albums; listening to the entire record for him was "exhausting, but also involving and inspiring".

However, he added that Smith's ensemble on the second disc is "more compact", with the trumpeter able to play distinctively and interact with Davis' piano, and advised listeners to "focus there, and keep the faith.

[30] Ten Freedom Summers was one of three finalists for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, along with Aaron Jay Kernis's classical composition "Pieces of Winter Sky" and "Partita for 8 Voices" by Caroline Shaw, who ultimately won the award.