Freedom Schools Research Articles

William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale, eds., To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. Pp. 220. Cloth $36.00.

William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale, eds., <i>To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools</i>. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. Pp. 220. Cloth $36.00.

Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society and One Mississippi, Two Mississippi: Methodists, Murder, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in Neshoba County

Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society and One Mississippi, Two Mississippi: Methodists, Murder, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in Neshoba County

Schooling for Freedom: Education and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi

John Hale's book about the Freedom Schools during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and Crystal Sanders's work on the largest Head Start program run by the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) from 1965 to 1968 sit at the end of a long line of histories of the black freedom struggle's mass movement years in Mississippi. Mississippi civil rights histories form well-trodden ground, from trailblazers John Dittmer and Charles Payne and nearly twenty-five years of subsequent scholarship and research supported by the building of new archives, to oral histories collected around the recent movement milestone anniversaries and reunions. There is always room for more accounts and fresh vantage points, given the nature of mass movements simultaneously orchestrated on multiple levels and in multiple locales, each with its own nuance and host of characters. Each book illustrates the cacophony of stories, voices, opinions, conflicts, political scuffles, and sacrifices that constitute a mass of movements with many routes to vaguely defined (and not always agreed upon) goals. As I have said elsewhere, full stories are messy and complicated, reflecting the reality of life. Recognizing these activist pasts becomes more relevant with the new phase of mass protest in the persistent struggle for black freedom, particularly around the global and domestic Black Lives Matter movement.

Book review: White L, Free to be Mohawk: Indigenous Education at the Akwesasne Freedom School

Book review: White L, <i>Free to be Mohawk: Indigenous Education at the Akwesasne Freedom School</i>

‘전후’ 여자와 ‘패전 후’ 남자의 민주주의 학습 ─ 시시 분로쿠 『자유학교(自由学校)』를 중심으로 ─

‘전후’ 여자와 ‘패전 후’ 남자의 민주주의 학습 ─ 시시 분로쿠 『자유학교(自由学校)』를 중심으로 ─

The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by Jon N. Hale

Reviewed by: The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by Jon N. Hale Dwana Waugh The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. By Jon N. Hale. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 300. $60.00, ISBN 978-0-231-17568-5.) In The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Jon N. Hale deftly argues that many civil rights advances "were not won in the halls of Congress on Capitol Hill but in the rooms of grassroots schools across Mississippi" (p. 71). Hale examines the development, implementation, and legacy of the Mississippi Freedom Schools from 1964 through [End Page 1018] the 1970s. The book explores seven Freedom School locations that served as viable, independent alternatives to the state's segregated public schools. Using Freedom Schools as a key vehicle for analysis, Hale identifies African American primary and secondary school students as crucial activists on the front lines for educational liberation. This book adds to the growing body of long civil rights movement scholarship. Hale uses organizational records, volunteers' memoirs, oral interviews, and a wealth of secondary sources to assert that Freedom School students learned participatory democracy from the everyday functions of their curriculum. The author's richly detailed account of the day-to-day work of Mississippi Freedom Schools demonstrates that black students studied and engaged in direct-action protest tactics, acted in plays dramatizing the stories of slain activists, canvassed for votes in their local communities, and advocated for the same academic curriculum that white students had in public schools. Remarkably, Hale traces the experiences of some of the volunteer teachers as well as a handful of students after the demise of the Freedom Schools. Many of the participants remained deeply committed to civil rights causes and activism. The author's examinations of the Freedom School curriculum and innovative pedagogy in chapters 4 and 5 are the most exciting aspects of this study. Hale illustrates the challenges posed by racial and gendered stereotypes. Organizers perceived Freedom Schools as a safer space for incoming white female volunteers. Many of the white volunteers brought their racial prejudices to bear by assuming the "inferiority of black education," often leading to an initial dismissal of students' academic abilities (p. 91). Between 1965 and 1966, the schools suffered from growing racial divisions between students and teachers. Students felt abandoned by some of the Freedom Summer volunteers who returned home in 1964. White volunteers who remained experienced fatigue and faced the shifting, separatist ideologies of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Yet Hale demonstrates that daily interactions between predominantly white teachers and predominantly black students shifted racial perceptions and resulted in candid, eye-opening conversations. While there is a dearth of studies of the day-to-day work within integrated schools, Hale's study offers an examination of early faculty desegregation not often reflected in desegregated schools until after the Supreme Court's decision in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968). Freedom Schools provide insight into the early relationships between a black student body and white teachers as well as early implementation of "culturally relevant teaching" (p. 211). While Freedom Schools continued as an alternative to segregated public schools in Mississippi until 1966, the 1964 student-led Meridian conference decided that black students would organize around existing public schools. Students joined the Mississippi Student Union (MSU), a statewide, student-led union, which used direct-action tactics to demand equity within public schools. It is not clear how and why black students chose to abandon Freedom Schools. Students' choice of public education over alternative Freedom Schools may indicate their interest in compelling the state to act in behalf of their educational interests, undergirding Hale's argument for the continuity of students' civil rights activism. [End Page 1019] Hale's account is a welcome addition to the study of educational, civil rights, and southern history. Understanding the curriculum and pedagogy of Freedom School volunteers offers a glimpse into practical classroom strategy for diverse learners in this age of global diversity. Moreover, the study also signals a sense of hopefulness that training primary and secondary schools for participatory democracy can address the...

Education for Liberation

Education for Liberation Jill Ogline Titus (bio) Jon N. Hale. The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. xi + 300 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $60.00. Crystal R. Sanders. A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. xii + 250 pp. Figures, map, notes, bibliography, and index. $27.95. Crystal R. Sanders’ and Jon N. Hale’s excellent new books on grassroots educational projects in Mississippi during the 1960s paint a vivid picture of the centrality of education to civil rights activity in the state. Taking education for liberation and participatory democracy as central themes, both books delve deeply into the relationship between the education of African American youth and the unfolding struggle for racial justice. While both books stand alone beautifully, when read in tandem they offer a particularly rich interpretation of the connections between classroom programs and grassroots empowerment. While Hale focuses on the Freedom Schools and Sanders on Head Start, both ground their respective stories within the rich history of black Mississippians’ lengthy quest for freedom in all forms; both define “education” expansively—looking beyond the students immediately served to examine the impact of these programs on the larger community; and both explore the long-term legacy of these investments in human capital. Both authors have conducted impressive oral history work, grounding their accounts in an extensive and diverse interview base, and both tell their stories with passion and vigor. Pushing back against the short shrift that was historically provided to the Freedom Schools in accounts of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, Hale argues that this minimization of the schools’ role has obscured the extent to which “young people still in middle and high school were on the front lines of the civil rights movement” and served as catalysts for local action in communities across the state (p. 2). In fact, the book makes a compelling argument that “the schools were by far the most successful initiative of the Freedom Summer campaign,” as measured by their success in cultivating new forms of protest among attendees (p. 15). While the story of the Mississippi Freedom [End Page 348] Democratic Party’s rejection of the compromise offered at Atlantic City and the impact of the summer’s tensions on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) are well known, by emphasizing the continuing activity engendered by the Freedom Schools, Hale shifts the narrative from the costs of the summer project to its gains. The Freedom Schools carries the story beyond August 1964, highlighting ongoing activity after Atlantic City and the schools’ impact on the development of federally funded educational initiatives such as Head Start. While highlighting antecedents such as Highlander Folk School workshops, the Citizenship Schools operated by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), McComb’s Nonviolent High, and the Freedom Schools organized by Northern blacks boycotting urban school systems in protest of systemic segregation and discrimination, Hale argues that Mississippi’s Freedom Schools—originally proposed by SNCC organizer Charlie Cobb—constituted “the most significant network of schools that illustrated the extent to which the civil rights movement incorporated education into its overarching goals and organization” (p. 35). Yet he is careful not to denigrate pre-1964 activities by portraying the schools as students’ first introduction to democracy in action. Indeed, he devotes an important chapter to following seven students whose exposure to civil rights activities in their hometowns throughout the early years of the 1960s eventually led them to the Freedom Schools as a channel for expanding their involvement in the movement. Once enrolled, the students encountered “one of the most progressive curricula in American history”: an educational experience built around citizenship, creative expression, and African American history and literature (p. 93). Developed in consultation with such luminaries of the movement as Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Bob Moses, and Bayard Rustin, the schools were intended to supplement, not replace, the instruction students were receiving in the state’s public schools. Academic subjects received coverage, but instructional models were more horizontal than vertical, with teachers encouraging students to take the lead in deciding what to study, how to approach...

The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by Jon N. Hale

The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by Jon N. Hale

Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation by Ben Keppel

Reviewed by: Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation by Ben Keppel Dara R. Walker Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation. By Ben Keppel. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2016. vii + 225 pp. Paper $45. In historical memory and scholarship, Brown vs. Board of Education looms large as one of the central legal challenges to political and social inequality in the United States. Reflecting on this vast literature in 2004, just fifty years after the landmark case, Waldo E. Martin issued a call to his fellow historians to consider the social and culture history of the monumental campaign.* In many ways, Ben Keppel’s Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation is a response to this charge. In a history of the years following the US Supreme Court’s decision, or what the author calls the Age of Brown, Keppel examines how Americans responded to cultural changes that were products of calls for desegregation. At the center of this history are three “cultural first responders”: Harvard-trained psychiatrist Robert Coles, comedian Bill Cosby, and television producer Joan Ganz Cooney. In tandem, these individuals used the tools of their trades to help answer one [End Page 285] essential question: “what does the phrase ‘public education’ require of the rest of us?” (13) The first chapter characterizes the Age of Brown as a historical reenactment of the Reconstruction era. Although the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments represented an opening for African Americans to lay claim to citizenship after emancipation, the American polity had failed to fully embrace its new citizens. It would take the work of abolitionist Fredrick Douglass and others to transform a culture that had relied on racial inequality for centuries. Keppel argues that by the 1950s, public education had become a site of this struggle, or a twentieth-century Civil War. The second chapter examines the trajectory of public schooling in the United States during the 1960s, when Americans from all stripes wrestled with the cultural transformations Brown imbued in American schooling. Using Septima Clark and Marcus Foster as key examples, Keppel suggests that the pedagogical practices and school-centered approaches of Clark and Foster illustrate the cultural impact of Brown. These “new abolitionists,” which included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists and their work with Freedom Schools, reshaped meanings of public education. Clark approached learning as a reciprocal process at the Highlander Folk School, while Foster worked with students and parents to lobby Sacramento legislators for increased school funding. In chapters 3, 4, and 5, Keppel takes the reader on a journey outside of the schools and into the world of social scientists and popular cultural figures. Each of these “cultural first responders” used their platform to push the country to reconsider the purpose of public education at a moment when federal programs like the War on Poverty pushed for greater citizen participation. Robert Coles, the author of the Children of Crisis series, used his fieldwork in Mississippi to support efforts to bring the Head Start Project to the state. Cosby, who saw himself as a teacher, created the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids cartoon to raise racial awareness and to provide positive images for black children during the 1970s, when representations of African Americans were largely limited to news coverage of social unrest and protest. Cosby sought to provide an alternative to these depictions and the children’s shows that portrayed white children’s lives as normative. And of course, he brought the same agenda to his primetime show, the Cosby Show in 1984. Like Cosby, Joan Ganz Cooney, the creator of the Children’s Television Workshop and a producer for the popular children’s show Sesame Street, used her platform to transform the meaning of public education. Established in 1970 and set in New York City, the show represented a form of educational television that tried to imagine the world as it could be. It allowed American children the opportunity to integrate virtually without [End Page 286...

From Reconciliation to Revolution: The Student Interracial Ministry, Liberal Christianity, and the Civil Rights Movement by David P. Cline

Reviewed by: From Reconciliation to Revolution: The Student Interracial Ministry, Liberal Christianity, and the Civil Rights Movement by David P. Cline Carolyn R. Dupont From Reconciliation to Revolution: The Student Interracial Ministry, Liberal Christianity, and the Civil Rights Movement. By David P. Cline. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. xx, 276. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-3043-4; cloth, $85.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-3042-7.) In From Reconciliation to Revolution: The Student Interracial Ministry, Liberal Christianity, and the Civil Rights Movement, David P. Cline chronicles a little-known cohort of theological students who aimed to promote racial understanding and justice within American Protestantism. The Student Interracial Ministry (SIM) traced its shared origins with the better-known Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to the 1960 Easter weekend conference at Shaw University. Theological students at the Shaw [End Page 1013] conference created SIM with goals similar to SNCC's, except that SIM intended to work in the church. Like SNCC, SIM changed over its eight-year existence. Its field of endeavor expanded beyond its original confines, and its members often worked in key centers of civil rights movement activity and embraced changing movement philosophies. SIM grew from its initial cohort of seven students—four of whom were white and three black, six men and one woman—into a ministry that placed scores of students for summer, semester, or full-year internships in interracial ministry settings. Operating mostly from Union Theological Seminary in New York, SIM interns developed projects in locations as far apart as Minneapolis and southwest Georgia. Student interns lived in interracial settings, "created pastoral exchanges," ran urban ministries, staffed youth programs, and joined forces with existing civil rights organizations (p. xiii). They endured arrest, received little pay, and lived in difficult situations, but they often asked for more work, sometimes returning to positions for a third or fourth time. A chapter on SIM's work in southwest Georgia is especially intriguing. Most readers versed in civil rights history will recognize Charles Sherrod from his work organizing Albany's black community in 1961 and 1962. Indeed, traditional narratives suggest Martin Luther King Jr. famously sabotaged the Albany movement in July 1962, humiliating himself and leaving the local movement demoralized and stalled. Cline, however, follows Sherrod as he returned to southwest Georgia under the auspices of SIM in 1965. Over the next three years, SIM and SNCC worked to politically and economically empower African Americans in twenty southwest Georgia counties. The two organizations argued regularly over the role of white people in the movement and about Sherrod's leadership style, but Sherrod and SIM ultimately outlasted SNCC in the area. SIM workers created a Freedom School, built and staffed Head Start Centers, and offered cultural programs to black southwest Georgians. SIM collapsed abruptly in 1968, ostensibly due to loss of financing. But Cline shows that broader debates about the goal of theological education, the purpose of the church, the direction of the civil rights movement, and the complicity of American Christianity in black oppression also precipitated SIM's demise. SIM's story intersects with the career trajectories of important civil rights leaders. In addition to Charles Sherrod and his wife, Shirley Sherrod, Jane Stembridge and the Reverend James Lawson also figure into this narrative. Of interest to historians of religion, future scholars in the discipline served with SIM, notably Lawrence H. Mamiya, coauthor with C. Eric Lincoln of The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham, N.C., 1990), and RalphE. Luker, author of The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885–1812 (Chapel Hill, 1991). As the subsequent careers of these figures demonstrate, SIM worked perhaps its most profound transformation on the interns themselves. Ultimately, From Reconciliation to Revolution is the history of an organization. Though Cline's narrative is always well contextualized, it sometimes struggles to extend its analysis broadly enough and lacks the drive of a vigorous argument. Cline's meticulously researched story may not offer enough to [End Page 1014] readers who want to understand the broadest trends in American Protestantism, especially as they relate to the civil rights movement. Still, the work of SIM is a...

Transfer of Instructional Practices from Freedom Schools to the Classroom

The instructional practices of three current classroom teachers who formerly served as Servant Leader Interns (SLIs) in the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools (CDFFS) Program were examined. Haskell (Transfer of learning: cognition, instruction, and reasoning. Academic Press, San Diego, 2001) outlined eleven principles of transfer of learning, which were used to survey the levels of transfer established from service in Freedom Schools to practice in the traditional classroom. Individual surveys, The Freedom School Pedagogies Teacher Observation Record along with interviews of each participant was used for data collection; all three components were used to triangulate the findings. The findings from this study verified that low transfer was observed when minimal application of the principles of learning were applied. This study revealed that for transfer to occur at high levels, it is imperative that adherence to all 11 principals is made and the understanding of transfer, the application of transfer, and reflection on transfer are implemented. If transfer of instructional practices is a goal of CDFFS for SLIs, the CDFFS program should consider implementing transfer of learning theory in future SLI training.

Black Leadership and Outside Allies in Virginia Freedom Schools

In July 1963, students from Queens College (QC) and a group of New York City teachers traveled to Prince Edward County (PEC), Virginia, to teach local black youth in Freedom Schools. The county had eliminated public education four years earlier to avoid a desegregation order. PEC Freedom Schools represented the first major effort to recruit an integrated group of outside teachers and students to educate black students in a civil rights battleground over an entire summer.In contrast to the racial and class tensions that arose between black leaders and predominantly white volunteers in other civil rights campaigns, PEC volunteers willingly deferred to the expertise of local and outside black leaders. This paper identifies the relatively modest scope and well-defined mission of the program, the real-world experiences of volunteers, and the high quality of black leadership as factors that led to this positive outcome.

To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools

Fifty years after Freedom Summer, To Write in the Light of Freedom offers a glimpse into the hearts of the African American youths who attended the Mississippi Freedom Schools in 1964. One of the most successful initiatives of Freedom Summer, more than forty Freedom Schools opened doors to thousands of young African American students. Here they learned civics, politics, and history, curriculum that helped them instead of the degrading lessons supporting segregation and Jim Crow and sanctioned by White Citizen's Councils. Young people enhanced their self-esteem and gained a new outlook on the future. And at more than a dozen of these schools, students wrote, edited, printed and published their own newspapers. For more than five decades, the Mississippi Freedom Schools have served as powerful models of educational activism. Yet, little has been published that documents black Mississippi youths' responses to this profound experience.

To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools ed. by William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale

Reviewed by: To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools ed. by William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale Erin Krutko Devlin To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools. Edited by William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale. Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. Pp. [viii], 220. $40.00, ISBN 978-1-62846-188-6.) To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools is an edited volume of primary source material drawn from Freedom School newspapers produced during Freedom Summer in 1964. Editors William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale have gathered articles, essays, and poems written by Freedom Summer students in eleven communities across Mississippi. The text provides students, teachers, and scholars with access to a collection of sources that have invaluable insights about local [End Page 482] civil rights campaigns as viewed from the perspective of Freedom Summer students themselves. An introduction grounds the collection in the long grassroots struggle to gain access to educational opportunity and equity in the state of Mississippi. Sturkey and Hale also emphasize the connection between education and social activism in the black freedom struggle by tracing the influence of the Highlander Folk School and the Citizenship Schools initiative. The editors highlight the pedagogical intentions of Freedom School organizers, connecting those intentions to this project by noting the central importance “of expressive critical thinking” in the educational curriculum offered to students (p. 32). Student newspapers provided Freedom School students with an outlet to develop writing skills and to share and assimilate knowledge gained about African American history, culture, and literature emphasized in other parts of the curriculum. Students used the newspapers to develop a critique of systemic racism in Mississippi and to commit themselves to movement activism. The excerpts provided from the newspapers provide insight into “the intellectual liberation” of students as expressed in their own words (p. 45). To Write in the Light of Freedom is organized into chapters focused on a particular Freedom School publication and presented in alphabetical order by community of origin. Each chapter is prefaced with a brief description of local community organizing, includes editorial notes on the unique strengths and features of individual newspapers, and contains student work from one or more issues of the publication. This book would be more useful as a research resource if the archival locations of specific newspapers and issues were provided. The editors note that the materials gathered in the collection were located in a wide range of repositories, but the transcribed materials contained in the text are not annotated. Nevertheless, this unprecedented collection of primary source materials from the Freedom School newspapers will be a powerful teaching tool, particularly for high school and college students. As the editors note, the book “offers contemporary youths a unique opportunity to learn about the Civil Rights Movement from the perspectives of people their own age and connect it to their lives today” (p. 46). Erin Krutko Devlin University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Black Youth Activism and the Reconstruction of America: Leaders, Organizations, and Tactics in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 79, NO. 1 | 5 79 No.1 BLACK YOUTH ACTIVISM AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICA: LEADERS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND TACTICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND By Sekou Franklin Since the early twentieth century, young people have been instrumental in reconstructing American political culture and the social and political life of African Americans.1 From the NAACP Youth Council and the Southern Negro Youth Congress in the 1930s and 1940s to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Student Organization for Black Unity in the 1960s and 1970s, young people were the frontline activists during the two major protest waves of the twentieth century. Young Blacks then helped to propel the Pan-African and Black feminist movements of the 1970s, as well as the Free South Africa Movement/Student Divestment Movement of the 1980s. The Black Student Leadership Network was another group that set up dozens of freedom schools in ORZLQFRPHFRPPXQLWLHVGXULQJWKH¿UVWKDOIRIWKHV ,Q WKH VHFRQG GHFDGH RI WKH WZHQW\¿UVW FHQWXU\ \RXQJ SHRSOHDI¿OLDWHGZLWKWKH0RYHPHQWIRU%ODFN/LYHV0DWWHU protested racialized violence and police killings of African Americans. This article provides an overview of Black youth DFWLYLVP IURP WKH V WR WKH WZHQW\¿UVW FHQWXU\ ,W gives special attention to four periods of Black youth activism: Black youth activism from the 1930s-1940s; the modern Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement between the 1950s-1970s; the Free South Africa Movement/Student Divestment Movement in the 1980s, followed by Black Student Leadership Network and other youth-oriented movements; and grassroots youth activism LQWKHWZHQW\¿UVWFHQWXU\VXFKDVWKH0RYHPHQWIRU%ODFN Lives Matter. Through a diverse array of organizations and movement networks, young Blacks have immersed 6 | BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 79, NO. 1 79 No.1 themselves in or launched numerous social movement campaigns since the 1930s. As indicated in Table 1, some initiatives were spearheaded by independent formations such as the economic justice campaigns led by the Southern Negro Youth Congress; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s efforts to form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; the Student Organization for Black Unity’s mobilization campaign in support of historically Black colleges and universities; and the Black Student Leadership Network’s freedom schools. Other groups such as the NAACP Youth Council and the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer program operated under the umbrella of its national organization. Still, a loose network of activists coordinated other initiatives such as the Youth Marches for Integrated Schools, Freedom Rides of 1961, Free South Africa Movement/Student Divestment Movement, and Juvenile Justice Reform Movement activities. Table 1. Black Youth-Oriented Movement-Building Initiatives, 1930s-2015 Organizations/Movements/Networks Year(s) Sample of Activities/Initiatives NAACP Youth Council 1936-present • voting rights • anti-poll tax campaign • boycotts, sit-ins, marches Southern Negro Youth Congress 1937-1949 • tobacco workers’ strike • labor schools, citizenship schools • Right to Vote Campaign • Abolish the Poll Tax Week • youth legislatures Youth March for Integrated Schools (Organized by national civil rights leaders) 1958 & 1959 • school desegregation rallies Student Sit-In Movement 1960 • 50,000 students protesting segregated businesses & public accommodations Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1960-early 1970s • local community organizing • voting rights initiatives • desegregation campaigns • freedom schools • Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Freedom Rides (Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, & Nashville Students) 1961 • protests of segregated bus stations and transportation facilities Student Organization for Black Unity 1969-1975 • Black People’s Union Party • North Carolina Black Political Assembly • clothing centers & food buying clubs • campaign to save historically Black colleges and universities Free South Africa Movement/ Student Divestment Movement/ 1980s • shantytowns, boycott & protests at more than 100 colleges and universities Black Student Leadership Network 1991-1996 • freedom schools • National Day of Action Against Violence • anti-childhood hunger initiatives AFL-CIO’s Union Summer Program 1996-present • local unionization & economic justice campaigns Juvenile Justice Reform Movement 1990s-mid 2000s • advocacy initiatives to close youth prisons • opposed zero-tolerance policies, organized anti-violence/mentoring programs Black Lives Matter/ Movement for Black Lives Matter 2013-present • protest state violence & police killing of Blacks • organize “die-ins” & sit-ins • promote restorative justice initiatives and criminal justice reforms BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL...

Relationship between Academic Self-Concept and Students’ Performance among School Age Children

Students’ academic performance plays an important role in producing the best quality graduates who will become great leader and manpower for the country thus responsible for the country economic and social development. This article sought to study the relationship between academic self-concept and students’ performance among school age children. A descriptive correlational design was utilized in this study. This article was carried out in freedom school for basic education boys and girls at Cairo governorate. A purposive sample was composed of 182 school age children and their teachers. Tools of data collection consisted of three parts: 1-Structured Questionnaire: it consisted of students’ socio-demographic characteristics including personal data; such as gender, age, and family history, family size. 2- Academic Self-Concept Scale, 3-Academic Performance Rating Scale. Results indicated that there was a significant statistical relationship between academic self-concept and students’ performance among school age children. This finding implies that there was a wide gap in how males develop their self-concept as compared with female students. The relationship between gender and academic performance was investigated. It was concluded that students’ academic self-concept can affect their performance. The students with high academic achievement receive reward and have more opportunities in future. The researchers recommended implementing psycho-educational program in formal and informal curriculum for parents, teachers to provide a chance for students express themselves and developing their self-esteem and self-confidence.

From Freedom Schools to Freedom University: Liberatory Education, Interracial and Intergenerational Dialogue, and the Undocumented Student Movement in the U.S. South

Freedom University is a modern freedom school that provides liberatory education and leadership development to undocumented students banned from Georgia’s top public universities following the passage of Policy 4.1.6 in 2010. The author discusses how Freedom University draws from both the Southern Freedom School tradition and Latin American popular education methods to provide education for social action. The article also presents a first-hand account of interracial and intergenerational dialogues between undocumented youth and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) veterans, and features photographs that illuminate how undocumented youth recombine SNCC’s tactics of non-violent civil disobedience with new symbols and meanings. In doing so, the article demonstrates how the legacy of freedom schools and student activism in the Black Freedom Movement are shaping the new freedom dreams of undocumented youth today.

Creating Counter-Spaces of Resistance and Sanctuaries of Learning and Teaching: An Analysis of Freedom University

Background/Context In 2011, the Georgia Board of Regents passed an educational policy that denies qualified students without documentation access to five selective institutions of higher education in the state. As a form of civil disobedience, Freedom University in Athens, Georgia, was founded to cultivate a space where students without documentation can continue their postsecondary educational pursuits. Research Questions The research questions that guided this study are: (a) In what ways does Freedom University serve as a sanctuary of teaching and learning from the perspectives of faculty members? and (b) What challenges and successes have been and continue to be experienced by the faculty of Freedom University in developing sanctuaries of teaching and learning for students without documentation? Research Design This qualitative case study included in-depth interviews with three founding faculty members. It also included document analysis that was based on historical aspects associated with the formation of Freedom Schools during the Civil Rights era and the concept of school as sanctuary to understand the pedagogical and philosophical underpinnings associated with the establishment of Freedom University. Through constant comparative data analysis, the authors uncover how Freedom University operates as a sanctuary for students without documentation. Findings The findings demonstrate that Freedom University is a postsecondary sanctuary school because it centers students’ experiences within the curriculum and embodies transformational resistance by both students and faculty. Conclusions/Recommendations The authors suggest that, by creating sanctuaries at a post-secondary level, students without documentation are afforded a space to continue their education not for a college degree but for the sake of learning.

A Critical Approach to Social Emotional Learning Instruction Through Community-Based Service Learning

The traditional teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic alone will not fully prepare students to lead with integrity, govern fairly, analyze problems, and work collectively with people different from themselves. Social emotional learning (SEL) has been described as one of the missing links in academic education, but a restrictive approach to SEL instruction focuses primarily on emotional and behavioral containment rather than development of active citizenry. Out-of-school programs that provide opportunities for youths to conduct community service learning projects, however, can be a valued resource for supporting critical social emotional learning and social political development. The Chicago Freedom School (CFS) is one such program. This article features the voices of youths’ ages 14–16 who participated in CFS during the 2008–2009 Freedom Fellowship, using content analysis. It also discusses future implications for school mental health professionals and SEL instruction.

The Black Arts Movement (1965–1976): An Interview with Playwright J.e. Franklin

The Black Arts Movement (1965–1976)An Interview with Playwright J.e. Franklin La Donna L. Forsgren (bio) FORSGREN: Let’s go back in time. You were telling me a really interesting story earlier about your first experience watching a professional production. Could you talk about that a little bit? FRANKLIN: It was at Judson Poets’ Theatre down in the Village. I was living in the Judson Poets’ House, which was around the corner and upstairs from the theater. Reverend Howard Moody was the minister at the time and I had just come to New York from the South. I went to see a production of a play by Rosalyn Drexler. The name of the play was Home Movies [1964]. Barbara Ann Teer and James Anderson were in the play. They were the first black actors that I had ever seen on the professional stage. Of course, I’d seen Black actors in the films. I’d seen Lena Horne, Cab Calloway. I’d seen all those black performers, but not on the live stage. It was the first time that I started getting a passion, a spark that made me want to write for the stage. I remember … just seeing Barbara, James Anderson, and George Bartenieff on the stage, being so happy doing what they were doing. What they were doing made me want to write something for people to be on the stage and be that happy, doing what they were doing. That’s really what lured me into wanting to be a playwright. When I went down to Mississippi in 1964 to work with the Freedom Democratic Party, which was really the beginnings of the party, [I] started working in voter registration at the Freedom School in Harmony, Mississippi, and wrote my first play, A First Step to Freedom. It was not a full-length play, by the way. Maybe I thought it was a full length play because I had never written one. But, thinking back on how the play might have been, it might not have even been a one-act play, but it was a play that was drawn from the students’ words and their understanding of what was going on in their lives. I was very good at listening to dialogue and then recording what the children had said. And based upon the stories that they had told about their conflict in the community: white riders, night riders coming in and shooting them up, and their conflicts that their parents had with the white people in the community. I wrote a play based upon the words and the language and the images that they had used and I did it because the children had no books and the children could not read. The children were in their seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, still struggling to read the Fun with Dick and Jane [1940] book—students who were just totally turned off, students who had been taken out of school and sent to [End Page 1139] pick some white man’s cotton, who were marked “present” and just passed on from one grade to the next. I was heartbroken by what I saw and I didn’t know how to fix it. We didn’t have any books. We were chased out of every place we tried to set up a school in and so we ended up just trying to conduct classes under the trees. Someone had sent an old rickety typewriter and a mimeo machine. At that time you had to ink a drum and it was called a mimeograph machine. You had to ink the drum and then you had to hook the paper on the drum and you had to crank it up with your hand and print the plays up. So I wrote this play, A First Step to Freedom, on legal sized paper and read the play out loud to the children whose words I had used to write the play. Based upon their memory of what they had said, they were able to match up the lines on the paper, in the script, with what they had said and they learned how to read that way. And...