1964 Ad

National Catholic Reporter, July 30, 2004 by Arthur Jones

They were Freedom Schools. Forty-one schools across Mississippi meant equally to draw attention to racism in the Mississippi's education system, to further the voter education drives that had been a civil rights priority in the state for three years, and to educate the undereducated in what the civil rights movement was about.

It was summer, 1964.

There's a tendency, in the photographs of smiling faces then and now, to underestimate the tension and dangers of the times, the courage of the organizers, young teachers and students, more than 2,000 of them.

The 1,000 "student-teachers," mainly college-age white kids (though not exclusively so, there were many African-Americans, too) from Southern and Northern colleges were not do-gooders. This was a risky battle against a violent and entrenched hatred. There were church bombings, random and widespread beatings. More than 1,000 black and white volunteers and civil rights workers were arrested statewide.

Freedom Summer and the schools came out of a concerted effort by the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which came together that year with the Congress of Racial Equality and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations Freedom Summer Campaign to push for more voter registration in the state that had the lowest percentage of registered voters in the country.

Staughton Lynd, Mississippi Freedom Schools director, later said the idea grew from Bob Moses of the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and others who set up voter registration schools in 1961, and "Nonviolent High," established for expelled black high schoolers. The first curriculum was devised in the Lynd's apartment on Spellman College campus in Atlanta.

Nonviolence was the intent, education was the means for Mississippi students trapped in poorly funded, badly supplied, inadequate buildings in a state with a huge racial divide.

Yet before the summer was over, three young civil rights workers were dead. Arrested on phony traffic violations as they went to Philadelphia, Miss., to investigate a church bombing, then released, the bodies of black volunteer James Chaney, and white coworkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were not discovered for six weeks. The whites were dead from gunshot wounds, Chaney had been beaten to death.

The murders, the schools, the three years of Mississippi voter registration and the invigorated media attention shifted a lackadaisical nation into one that began to understand and then press for what became the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Today's six Freedom Summer Schools--for the concept continues on in Mississippi and five other states this year--should be seen as living testimonials to a courageous generation.

The utility of the Freedom Summer School to those involved has not abated. Here are some of the voices from then and now.

John O'Neal, actor, playwright and artistic director of Junebug Productions, a traveling theater:

I was 23 during Freedom Summer. I felt like one of the youngest SNCC employees but was actually one of the oldest. I wondered about the people I worked with--how did they know so much about what they were doing? How could they be so bold? And bold they were. Our staff made $10 a week and hadn't been paid for three or four months. Yet we took on this enormous task under [the Council of Federated Organizations]--schools, a statewide voter registration drive, a theater company, a union, health care clinics, a brick-making factory and much, much more. Our idea was this: Whatever the state refused to provide the black people of Mississippi was our job to put on the table.

Corinne Barnwell, Radcliffe University graduate, political activist, church volunteer and retired social worker:

I was assigned to teach at Mount Nebo Missionary Baptist Church on Tunica Street in Jackson. I had never lived in the Deep South before, and I spent my first few days staggering around in my sandals overwhelmed by the weather. All Of us (mainly white) volunteers from out of state stayed with local black families. Living with my family in Jackson was my first exposure to what I would call intense community. All our needs were met, sometimes in mysterious ways. Freedom teachers needed a ride to a mass meeting at midnight--out of the blue, a 16-year-old neighbor would show up in the driveway at just the right time. Nine of us volunteers would pile into the car and off we'd go.

Kendra Rogers of New Orleans won a full scholarship to Trinity College in Washington, where she starts her freshman year in September:

My first summer at the People's Youth Freedom School was in 1998 after 6th grade. Honestly, I would never have gone if I hadn't been dragged there, kicking and screaming, by my mother. I've lived around political activists all my life. At first I was intimidated. I was one of the few white kids involved and I only knew two or three other students. What started out as scary soon switched to eye-opening. We were given the skills to interpret history and see where systemic racism operates in our country. It gave me real-world knowledge that allowed me to understand, as a white woman, how my privilege operates and how it affects other people. Well, maybe I didn't learn all that in my first year, but I made good friends and I decided -to come back again. I brought another friend back with me.