Temporary, alternative free schools for American Southern blacks
Freedom Schools,[1] which operated during the mid-1960s, were temporary, alternative, free schools for African Americans and other minorities. Prominent in the South but present throughout the United States, they were originally part of a nationwide effort during the civil rights movement to organize African Americans to achieve social, political and economic equality. The movement consisted of a series of programs challenging the inequalities of segregated Southern education, transforming learning into a tool for liberation and empowerment and providing knowledge and critical thinking skills, and continues to influence educational and social movements. Their curriculum differed from that of the public schools: going beyond reading and writing to explore African American history, civic engagement, and the philosophy of nonviolent resistance in the context of its association with the civil rights movement. They encouraged students to think critically and explore their creativity.[2]
Almost 40 Freedom Schools were established, serving over 2,500 students in one summer; students also included parents and grandparents. Classes were held in church basements, community centers, or homes due to threats to safety and lack of resources. Most teachers were activists, and African Americans and whites contributed to the success of the Freedom Schools.[3]
Origins
Despite the Supreme Court's ruling of 1954 in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which struck down segregated school systems, Mississippi and many other states, still maintained separate and unequal white and "colored" school systems during the mid-1960s. On average, the state spent $81.66 to educate a white student and $21.77 for a Black student. Mississippi was one of only two states without a mandatory-education law; many children in rural areas were sent to work in the fields, and received little education; the curriculum was different for white and Black students; the white school board of Bolivar County mandated that "Neither foreign languages nor civics shall be taught in Negro schools. Nor shall American history from 1860 to 1875 be taught."[This quote needs a citation]
Students faced more de facto segregation during the decade following Brown than before. Many white schools were half-full, but schools reserved for African Americans, Latinx and other minorities were overcrowded, underfunded and understaffed. In severe cases, students attended school in shifts to avoid overcrowding and accommodate the limited staff. Many schools showed significant progress in integration, providing access to better resources, higher educational quality and opportunities for African American students; test scores indicated that the performance gap between African American and white children began to decrease, demonstrating the impact of equal access to education.[4] Some schools refused to integrate African American and white children, however, shutting public schools for years to avoid following the Supreme Court ruling.[5]
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist Charles Cobb proposed in late 1963 that SNCC sponsor a network of Freedom Schools, inspired by examples used previously in cities. In the summer of 1963, the county board of education in Prince Edward County, Virginia closed the public schools rather than integrate them after a lawsuit following Brown; Freedom Schools emerged in their stead. About 3,000 students participated in a September 1963 Stay Out for Freedom protest in Boston, opting to attend community-organized Freedom Schools. On October 22, 1963 (known as Freedom Day), more than 200,000 students boycotted the Chicago Public Schools to protest segregation and poor school conditions; some attended Freedom Schools instead. In a similar February 3, 1964 Freedom Day protest, over 450,000 students participated in a boycott of the New York City public schools in the largest civil-rights demonstration of the 1960s,[citation needed] and up to 100,000 students attended Freedom Schools.
Change was slow; many schools remained segregated until the late 1960s,[6] but African Americans and minorities were closer to integrated educational systems with each boycott. Freedom Schools, led by SNCC and NAACP advocates, filled educational gaps; students were educated in churches, community centers, or homes led by boycotting teachers or civil-rights advocates, enhancing their understanding of civic duty in the fight for desegregation.
Mississippi schools
The Mississippi Freedom Schools were developed as part of the 1964 Freedom Summer civil-rights project, an effort that focused on voter registration drives and educating Mississippi students for social change. The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO)—an umbrella civil-rights organization of activists and funds drawn from SNCC, CORE, the NAACP, SCLC—coordinated Freedom Summer.[7]
The project was essentially a statewide voter-registration campaign, and its framers called for one thousand volunteers to assist. Activists made plans to conduct a parallel Democraticprimary election; the systematic exclusion of Black voters resulted in all-white delegations to presidential conventions, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was created. The Democratic and Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegations attended the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
In December 1963, during planning for Freedom Summer, Charles Cobb proposed a network of "Freedom Schools" that would foster political participation in Mississippi elementary and high-school students and offer academic courses and discussions. Activists organizing the Freedom Summer project accepted Cobb's proposal, and organized a curriculum-planning conference in New York in March 1964 sponsored by the National Council of Churches. Spelman College history professor Staughton Lynd was appointed director of the Freedom Schools program.
During Freedom Summer, more than 40 Freedom Schools were set up in Black communities throughout Mississippi to attempt to end political displacement of African Americans by encouraging students to become active citizens and socially involved in the community. Over 3,000 African American students attended these schools in the summer of 1964. Students ranged in age from young children to the elderly, with the average age about 15. Teachers were volunteers, most college students themselves.[8]
With few exceptions, Freedom School teachers were amazed at the enthusiasm of their students. One volunteer wrote home,
Dear Mom and Dad, The atmosphere in class is unbelievable. It is what every teacher dreams about—real, honest enthusiasm and desire to learn anything and everything. The girls come to class of their own free will. They respond to everything that is said. They are excited about learning. They drain me of everything that I have to offer so that I go home at night completely exhausted but very happy.[9]
Political and educational objectives
The Freedom Schools had political and educational objectives. Teachers would educate elementary and high school students to become social-change agents participating in the civil rights movement, most often in voter-registration efforts. Their curriculum was divided into seven core areas that analyzed the social, political, and economic context of precarious race relations and the civil rights movement. Leadership development was encouraged in addition to traditional academic skills. Education at Freedom Schools was student-centered and culturally relevant.[10] Curriculum and instruction were based on the student needs; discussion among students and teachers (rather than lecturing) was encouraged, and curriculum planners encouraged teachers to base instruction on student experiences.
Kathy Emery, Sylvia Braselmann and Linda Gold, who edited Freedom School Curriculum, 1964, describe the movement's political and educational objectives as surrounding questions and activities that encourage discussion and strengthen the relationship between school and students' lives.[11] The schools were student-focused, allowing students to think for themselves with connections to current events. Education had always been an integral part of African-American freedom, desegregation, and empowerment. After the Jim Crow era, education became a form of resistance in which where the enslaved would receive education from Christian missionaries and newspapers. This gave them hope for freedom, and inspired resistance.[12]
Curriculum
Curriculum was developed with conferencing and discussion by teachers and directors. Teachers wrote an outline, keeping in mind life in Mississippi and the time they had to teach. The curriculum, based on questions and activities, had to be teacher-friendly and useful to the students. According to Josh Davidson, who contributed to an article entitled "Exploring the History of Freedom Schools—Civil Rights Teaching", "Through reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and civics, participants received a progressive curriculum during a six-week summer program that was designed to prepare disenfranchised African Americans to become active political actors on their own behalf".[3] The Freedom School curriculum was intended to cultivate intellectual and life skills–not preparing students for a world of labor in factories, but a life where they could be active politically: participating in democracy, advocating for their rights, and challenging the system of racial hierarchy. The focus was on questions and discussion, rather than the memorization of facts and dates. Instructions to teachers included
In the matter of classroom procedure, questioning is the vital tool. It is meaningless to flood the student with information he cannot understand; questioning is the path to enlightenment... The value of the Freedom Schools will derive mainly from what the teachers are able to elicit from the students in terms of comprehension and expression of their experiences.[This quote needs a citation]
The final curriculum outline had three sections: academic, citizenship and recreation. Its purpose was to teach students social change within the school, regional history, Black history, how to answer open-ended questions, and academic skills. The academic curriculum consisted of reading, writing, and verbal activities based on the student's experiences. The citizenship curriculum encouraged students to ask questions about society, and the recreational curriculum required the student to be physically active. In most Freedom Schools, the citizenship curriculum focused on two sets of related questions for class discussion:
Why are we (teachers and students) in Freedom Schools?
What is the Freedom Movement?
What alternatives does the Freedom Movement offer us?
What does the majority culture have that we want?
What does the majority culture have that we don't want?
Freedom Schools opened during the first week of July 1964, after approximately 250 Freedom School volunteer teachers attended one-week training sessions at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. The original plans had anticipated 25 Freedom Schools and 1,000 students; by the end of the summer, 41 schools had been opened to over 2,500 students.
Freedom Schools were established with the help and commitment of local communities, who provided various buildings for schools and housing for the volunteer teachers. While some of the schools were held in parks, kitchens, residential homes, and under trees, most classes were held in churches or church basements.[13] Attendance varied throughout the summer. Some schools experienced consistent attendance, but that was the exception. Because attendance was not compulsory, recruitment and maintaining attendance was perhaps the primary challenge the schools faced. In Clarksdale, Mississippi, for instance, the average student attendance during the first week was fifteen, the second week was eight, but at any point during the summer the school may have had in attendance as many as thirty-five students. It was not uncommon for adults to attend class regularly.
Instruction was changed based on local conditions. In rural communities where students were expected to work during the school day, classes were often held at night. In schools that maintained traditional school hours, typically in urban areas, citizenship curriculum and traditional academic courses were offered in the morning and special classes such as music, drama, and typing were offered in the afternoon. In many instances, entire school days would be devoted to voter registration efforts. It was imperative for SNCC activists that students would be invested in civil rights activity because this cadre of students was expected to remain in the state to enact social change.
At the conclusion of the Freedom School term, activists and students organized a student-led conference on August 8, 1964, the day after the funeral of James Chaney, one of the victims in the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. The conference was held in Meridian, Mississippi, at the former Meridian Baptist Seminary. The school was described as "the palace of the Freedom School circuit."[14] Each Freedom School sent three representatives to the conference to form a youth platform for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The student delegates discussed issues related to jobs, schools, foreign affairs, and public accommodations and proffered recommendations for the state party. By the end of the conference, students prepared a statement that demanded access to public accommodations, building codes for each home, integrated schools, a public works program, and the appointment of qualified blacks to state positions.
Freedom School teachers and students remained committed to the Freedom School concept. In early August 1964, plans were being made to continue the Freedom Schools during the upcoming school year, and some volunteer teachers had already agreed to stay. Students decided, however, during the Freedom School Conference in early August to not continue the schools. Yet students implemented the leadership and activism experienced during the summer in their own schools. Some students returned to school and demanded better facilities and more courses. Students in Philadelphia, Mississippi, returned to school wearing SNCC "One Man, One Vote" buttons—for which they were expelled.[15]
Freedom Library Day School, Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Freedom Library was founded by John E. Churchville in 1964.[16] Over the next few years he began to offer evening classes and eventually converted the library into a school. Upon the founding of this school, he prepared a short set of essays which were published in the book, What Black Educators Are Saying, edited by Nathan Wright Jr. and published in 1970.[17] This essay includes much of Churchville's thoughts on the state of the Black Power movement as well as his ideas for the pedagogy of his new Freedom School. He denigrates the ideas of both the cultural and progressive nationalist movements as being facades and without teeth. For him, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement which called for total and complete revolution both here and everywhere on earth, was the most accurate and true to its principles. They identified both intragroup and intraindividual issues facing black people in America and the only way to truly become a revolutionary was to be born-again; acted on by an outside power which began to rid you of these deficiencies. The schools themselves were based on a simple set of priorities. If education is the indoctrination of the young into an ideological system, then the Freedom School must reeducate black children to reject the dominant ideology and construct a new system. To do this, the first element of pedagogy to be established must be the new ideology of the school. After this, teachers must be found who can bridge the gap between identity and alienation, being object lessons for their students both inside and outside the classroom. Finally, the curriculum was designed to explain the objective situation of black people and teach the tools and skills to deal with this reality. The curriculum as described by Churchville was merely a vehicle for teaching revolutionary truth; the content was mostly irrelevant as it was the analysis which would demonstrate the reality. The school was raided by the FBI on August 13, 1966 on suspicion of harboring militant groups. After the raid, Churchville dropped out of activism.
Lesser-Known Freedom Schools
Prince Edward County Virginia, 1963-1964
The Prince Edward Free School was founded when the county closed its public schools to prevent integration. As a result, the community ran “free schools” to allow African American children to receive an education. The public schools were closed for a period of 5 years in an attempt to avoid the precedent set by Brown V. Board of Education. In response, African American and minority communities, civil rights leaders and organizers, and families built “free schools” run by community members.[18] A key location in the Virginia area was the Prince Edward Free School, which provided academic instruction, cultural education and raised student civic awareness and political understanding. The NAACP and local churches had provided space, teachers, textbooks, etc, and public schools were eventually reopened following a Supreme Court decision. While this school isn’t directly associated with the Freedom Schools under Freedom Summer, it follows in the examples of others. Being built on the resilience, and dedication of community members who found this education style a form of resistance against the segregation they were facing.[19]
Boston Massachusetts, 1963-1964 - Freedom Stay Outs
The Freedom Stay Outs were a series of protest days where students and families boycotted schools to resist de facto segregation through zoning and overcrowding policies. Students would attend the “Freedom Schools,” which were held in churches, basements, or community centers instead of attending their public schools. The first of these many protests took place on June 18, 1963. When this issue was taken up with the superintendent, Frederick Gillis, at the time, he claimed it was the result of residential patterns and the education system, and districts were not based on ethnic or religious factors.[21] Committee Chairwoman Louise Day Hicks refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong with the infrastructure or education system in these schools. As a result, community leaders, activists, clergy, and more formed the Freedom Stay-Out Committee, co-led by Noel A.Day and Reverend James Breeden, which had organized the Boston Freedom Schools. Noel. A Day had moved to Boston after receiving an education from Dartmouth in New York to be a social worker and later became a community organizer. Breeden was a priest at St. James Church in Roxbury, who was an activist, community organizer, and one of the 15 Freedom Riders arrested in Mississippi in 1961. Around 2 weeks later, another protest occurred, where 8,260 students skipped class and 3,000 attended classes at a Freedom School.[20]
1964 New York City Freedom Day Boycott
Following the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, students faced an increase in segregation in the decade after the ruling as a result of redlining, zoning laws, and opposition to integration by parents and school systems. According to a source by Tenement Museum, the number of schools deemed segregated went from 52 in 1954 to over 200 by 1964. Public Schools in white neighborhoods were half full, while African American and Puerto Rican schools were overcrowded and underfunded.[22] Specifically, Harlem, a majority African American neighborhood had only one High School in the early 1960s and students were forced to attend school in shifts in order to avoid overcrowding. While also lacking libraries, gyms, and special education classes as well as English classes. By the early 60s, opposition to these conditions grew in New York with Milton Galamison, a pastor and civil rights activist being the leading voice in the fight for integrated schools. After years of constant protest and pressure for leaders to make a change. Leaders compromised claiming they would set a plan that would integrate some schools in the span of five years. Unsatisfied, numerous leaders organized a single day protest called the “Freedom Day Boycott”. On the day of the boycott, February 3, 1964, over 460,000 students either walked out of classes or stayed home entirely. With over 90,000 of those students attending “Freedom Schools” stationed in parks, churches, and homes directed by teachers who were boycotting as well.[23] This movement, being double the size of the March on Washington, was the largest protest of the Civil Rights Era. While this freedom school didn’t last more than a day, it’s crucial to mention because the smallest differences can lead to reform. Following the boycott, the Board of Education announced that they would start a program that would bus students from minority to majority neighborhoods to fill the under filled white schools.[24]
Legacy
The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) operates a nationwide modern Freedom School program. This program is coordinated through the Children's Defense Fund's Black Community Crusade for Children initiative. The CDF Freedom Schools national program operates over 130 summer program sites in 24 states across the country serving nearly 7,200 children.[25]
The Philadelphia Freedom Schools[26] still persists as an independent community education initiative operating a modern version of the Mississippi curriculum with an emphasis on academic scholarship, social action and intergenerational leadership. Philadelphia Freedom Schools[27] are organized through a lead agency, Communities In Schools.[28]
William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale (eds.), To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.
Jon N. Hale, The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
