The Role of Freedom Schools in the Civil Rights Movement
A lecture by Dr. Jon Hale

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides, and the YWCA was pleased to host a lecture by Dr. Jon Hale, Assistant Professor of Education at College of Charleston. Dr. Hale has done extensive research on Freedom Schools that were essential to the Civil Rights Movement. He shared some of this important history. 
                                                                                 
Jon Hale, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, B.S., University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; M.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

An excerpt from Dr. Hale’s work:

“Building up our own Institutions”: The Role of Freedom Schools in the Civil Rights Movement

Education has been an important site of resistance and community activism during the Civil Rights Movement. While many consider the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and integration as the means to equality, the history of education in the South reveals that grassroots networks put forth effective models of education that sought to structurally reform American society. This research focuses on the history of the Mississippi Freedom Schools as an effective model of educational organization that developed during the Civil Rights Movement. Grassroots organization challenged and pushed forward the larger movement toward integration. Local communities throughout Mississippi organized around the issue of providing students with a citizenship education and sponsoring schools, staff, and resources for this end. The Freedom Schools connected to localized issues of segregation of public spaces and voting discrimination. They trained students to become activists in some instances and in other instances, helped point students toward resources that had been denied under a system of Jim Crow.

The Freedom Schools connected to other educational models that directly organized around issues of social, political, and economic change or reform. Highlander Folk School, in Eastern Tennessee, organized an adult education program that first served union leaders struggling to win organized labor battles. Ella Baker, a community organizer with origins in the Harlem branch of the YWCA, began outreach and community based programs that facilitated dialogue and action among local community members. Septima Clark and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the Citizenship Schools, a widely popular adult education program that taught the literacy skills needed to vote. This grassroots organization supplanted the legal challenges put forth by the NAACP and pressured local governments to make decisions regarding the allocation of funds and resources.

This history examines trends of organizing around education for institutional change during the Civil Rights Movement. This type of organization and use of schools, with roots that extend back well into the 1930s, is currently reflected in Bob Moses’ use of the Algebra Project, the implementation of Algebra and AP math courses in underfunded high schools, and the Freedom Schools, with over 2000 afterschool programs today. These issues also connect to a nascent legislative push for education as a constitutional right. As a point of discussion in a contemporary context, this history and its implications serve as a starting point to examine educational funding, resource (and curricular) allocation, and the role of public education in today’s community, and the tools needed to address these issues in the community.

Dr. Jon Hale