To Write in the Light of Freedom

by William Sturkey

  The Freedom Schools received widespread support from within Mississippi and across the country. Local African Americans donated most of the land and structures used for Freedom School classes, a risky venture since all buildings known for supporting civil rights activities were under constant threat from white supremacists. Black Mississippi adults cleared areas for Freedom School classes, cleaned and painted classrooms, delivered daily lunches, transported students, housed teachers, and even at times protected the schools from attacks. Local African Americans also opened their homes to Freedom Summer volunteers, organizing places for them to stay and feeding them all summer long. Those interracial interactions in black homes and neighborhoods had a major impact on everyone involved and created lasting relationships between people from completely different backgrounds. Fifty years later, many of the African American hosts are still in contact with the volunteers they helped house during the 1964 Freedom Summer. Without the support of local black communities, the Mississippi Freedom Schools would not have been nearly as widespread, well organized, or productive.53

  Freedom Schools were also bolstered by a great deal of outside support, especially in the form of material donations. COFO needed all sorts of provisions to run what was essentially a statewide independent school system, including basic educational supplies such as notebook paper, manila folders, pencils, crayons, scissors, tape, staples, and all the reading material they could get. Throughout the spring of 1964, COFO tapped into its growing network of liberal allies across America and asked them to donate supplies to the upcoming Mississippi Freedom Summer. The civil rights activists received an enormous response. Dozens of church groups, academic departments, nonprofit organizations, “Friends of SNCC” chapters, individuals, and the parents of Freedom Summer volunteers sent hundreds of boxes of school supplies, books, and magazines from every corner of the United States. Some even donated expensive educational tools such as microscopes, film projectors, or sewing machines, which gave young black students access to instruments their regular schools could never afford. The books were particularly important for Freedom School students. Because of local segregation laws, most African Americans did not have access to Mississippi’s public libraries. Aside from the Bible, the only books they used were those provided by the public school system. But these texts were extremely problematic because white school officials censored schoolbooks and usually only gave African American students the tattered hand-me-down books from white schools. With the boxes of books that arrived in Mississippi that summer, Freedom School administrators were able to organize a number of “Freedom Libraries” across the state. Not all the books were new, but at least they were not censored. Access to black writers such as James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston generated powerful reactions among many students. Overall, the donations from external benefactors were essential to the Freedom School experience.54

  Freedom School classes were exciting and spirited. Most schools opened each day with freedom songs to warm up for class activities and academic instruction. Many students already knew freedom songs from previous movement experiences. Those who did not know the songs learned quickly with the help of their peers and teachers. Classes began in earnest after the singing. Daily subjects varied widely among Freedom Schools, depending on the composition of teachers and students, but the curriculum at virtually every school was flexible and adjusted to meet student needs. Instructors had to teach what students wanted to learn or the voluntary schools would have sat empty all summer long. Some teachers offered remedial lessons on basic arithmetic, grammar, or technical skills. Others focused on drawing, painting, writing, or French, if that was what pupils desired. Freedom School students requested a wide variety of activities. In Holly Springs, a group of students spent time researching and writing a play based on the life of Medgar Evers. In other places, students urged teachers to allow open debates over topics such as the role of nonviolence in the movement. Debates were popular among Freedom School students. Some students travelled across town or to nearby communities to debate young people from other schools. Students relished the newfound opportunities to share their strong opinions. Former Freedom School student Anthony Harris remembered the importance of the debates in “building self-confidence that you can express yourself and you don’t have to be timid.”55

  Much of what happened in those Freedom School classrooms was improvised. Classrooms became participatory democracies and flexible academic communities. Freedom School teachers facilitated discussions and introduced lessons, but students dictated much of the in-class activities. Freedom School students wrote plays and poems, read books and magazines, and helped plan future protests. They also created and embraced leadership roles, fulfilling one of the primary objectives of the Freedom School program. In the schools, they learned and grew, but out on the streets they led. Throughout Freedom Summer, students ventured into their communities to help canvass potential voters, attend mass meetings, join local marches, and conduct sit-ins. Freedom School students had a large presence in their communities and their energy and enthusiasm was inspiring to see. It is impossible to list all that they did, but many of their actions are chronicled in the essays published in this collection.56

  Perhaps the most impressive student initiative was the organization of a Freedom School Convention, which took place in Meridian between August 7 and 9. The Freedom School Convention brought together students from across the state under the banner of the Mississippi Student Union (MSU), a short-lived youth organization composed almost entirely of Freedom School students. This type of statewide meeting had been conceived as part of the initial Freedom School plan, and in July Freedom School administrators began seriously contemplating ways to execute the idea. They called an organizational meeting in Jackson and invited several high school–age Freedom School students to join. On July 25, a small group of student leaders from the Meridian, McComb, Columbus, and Vicksburg Freedom Schools met with older COFO activists in Jackson to finalize the convention planning. The students appreciated the advice of older activists, but refused to allow all the decisions to be made for them. At one point during the organizational meeting, the group of Freedom School students asked the older activists to leave the room so they could discuss some of the plans on their own. Roscoe Jones, one of the Freedom School students present at the meeting, recalled Freedom School Convention Chairwoman Joyce Brown of McComb telling her young colleagues, “We all have a mind. They’re not going to tell us everything to do. We want to think outside the box.” After the organizational meeting, Freedom School administrators told teachers that each school should select three delegates to attend the convention (some schools sent more) in Meridian, which held the largest school in the state. Meridian students, with the help of older local activists, were placed in charge of helping to secure temporary housing for convention attendees.57

  The Mississippi Freedom School Convention opened on August 7, 1964, the night of veteran activist Dave Dennis’s stirring eulogy to slain civil rights worker and Meridian native James Chaney. Upon arriving in Meridian, dozens of Freedom School student representatives attended Chaney’s memorial service and joined a peaceful march in his honor. Convention activities began the following Saturday morning at 9:30. Freedom School student representatives, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-five, met for two days, split into four committees each day to discuss specific issues facing their communities. Saturday’s committees focused on public accommodations, housing, foreign affairs, and medical care. Sunday’s committees concentrated on federal aid, city maintenance, job opportunities, and voter registration. Beyond the committee work, student representatives also engaged in debates, shared stories from their schools and communities, and attended speeches given by movement leaders such as Bob Moses, Staughton Lynd, and the legendary labor activist A. Philip Randolph, who was visiting Mississippi from New York. The Convention ended with attendees adopting a statewide Freedom School Convention Platform based on the conclusions of
the eight committees. The platform was an ambitious and comprehensive list of demands and suggestions that the students sent to the president of the United States and a number of other influential politicians.58

  The Freedom School Convention was a powerful moment for both students and older movement veterans. Roscoe Jones remembered the importance of “the fact that we were all together and we were together in a common cause.” Just as in their individual Freedom Schools, convention attendees spent those days learning, debating, and growing. Of course, they also sang, opening each day by locking arms with their African American brothers and sisters from across the state and belting out the freedom songs that had carried each of them through the long, hot days of that life-changing summer. The convention solidified camaraderie among Freedom School students and emboldened many young leaders by exposing them to similarly engaged peers. After the convention, attendees returned to their home schools and shared the experience with their local classmates. The convention also had a major impact on older activists who were heartened by the interactions they witnessed between the student leaders. Freedom School coordinator Staughton Lynd remembered riding back to COFO headquarters with Bob Moses after the convention. Years later, Lynd still remembered Moses sitting quiet, but “aglow” in the backseat of the car, “as if what he had seen at that Freedom School Convention was the reason he was doing all that he was doing.” The inspirational Freedom School students, wading with bright eyes through the cruel oppression of Mississippi Jim Crow, could always arouse older adults. The way they talked about their hopes and dreams made it clear to many veteran activists that change was indeed coming to Mississippi.59

  The Freedom School Newspapers

  Not every student was able to participate in the Freedom School Convention, but the schools allowed for nearly all of their voices to be heard. From Charles Cobb’s original prospectus in the fall of 1963 to the New York City Curriculum Conference the following March, Freedom School organizers recognized the value of encouraging student expression and consistently stressed the importance of expressive critical thinking. As was explained in the original Freedom School curriculum, “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.”60

  This approach was a radical change from the experiences of most Freedom School students. For generations, black Mississippi youths had been told what they could not say or think. Many had grown up learning ways to mask their true feelings as an essential tool of survival in the Jim Crow South. Black Mississippi youths had always felt the oppression, but few had been given the opportunity to voice their objections. By facilitating and encouraging expression, Freedom Schools fostered revolutionary approaches to critical thinking and social engagement. In Freedom Schools, civil rights activists asked young people to evaluate their society and articulate ways to change it. From those discussions emerged a wave of young people ready to engage their environments in new, remarkable ways. The students used the gift of expression to challenge the status quo in their neighborhoods, cities, state, and country. They became capable social and cultural critics empowered with the ability to challenge every aspect of their oppression. It was a powerful transformation for thousands of young people who had been told their entire lives that the finest opportunities of their society were not for them. The articles published in Freedom School newspapers capture the essence of the importance of student expression.

  By mid-July, statewide Freedom School coordinator Staughton Lynd noted the existence of at least twelve school newspapers being produced by Freedom School students. While some newspaper articles included the authors’ full names, others displayed only first or abbreviated names to protect writers’ identities. Students of all ages wrote articles, but most authors were reportedly between the ages of thirteen and fifteen.61

  One of the most intriguing aspects of the emergence of Freedom School newspapers was the lack of movement coverage in other Mississippi papers. Most local white-owned daily newspapers ignored movement coverage altogether. African American papers that provided movement coverage were subject to threats and economic reprisals. Because of this constant intimidation, very few Mississippi newspapers covered movement activities at all. As young people filled the void of movement journalism, the Freedom School newspapers represented an important development in the history of African Americans and civil rights coverage in the Mississippi press. Taken as a whole, these informal broadsheets more than doubled the number of pro–civil rights papers in Mississippi.62

  Freedom School students were thrilled to have the opportunity to organize and publish their own words. As Greenwood-based teacher Judy Walborn reported, “The idea of the student newspaper is the hottest thing going. The students reacted very enthusiastically to it!!” Freedom School teachers offered assistance, but it was mainly students who developed and ran the Freedom School newspapers using the typewriters and mimeograph machines donated from across the country. A Clarksdale teacher described the exciting process of producing the local Freedom School newspaper. In a letter home, the volunteer wrote, “The place looked just like a newspaper office with people running in and out, with typewriters going, and newsprint everywhere. It was excellent experience for the kids too . . . They did most of the work and made most of the decisions.” McComb teacher Ira Landess worked with students on their newspaper after regularly scheduled classes and reported, “I think the kids composed an excellent first newspaper!”63

  The Freedom School newspapers strengthened a growing student voice in Mississippi, opening new forums of creativity to Freedom School students who wrote ardently for their school newspapers. Newspapers provided safe spaces for expression, giving the students venues where they could criticize their society, report on movement activities, communicate with each other, and express their innermost hopes and dreams. The young writers plugged their struggle into the long history of black resistance, insisting that they were building upon the foundations established by leaders such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, and Sojourner Truth. They also used the newspapers to write about their own lives, composing and publishing both heart-wrenching and inspirational poems about their present realities and future prospects. Some students used the newspapers to engage each other over the definition of freedom, constantly redefining what freedom meant and what it could be. They also challenged their peers and even older local black adults, criticizing those who they thought were not doing enough to change their societies. The determined young writers, galvanized by the Freedom School experience, could not understand why some African Americans moved so slowly or even not at all. Parents, grandparents, and community elders were all subject to critique, and many of those generational conflicts appear in the Freedom School newspapers. Some students even describe arguments with older community members. The Freedom School newspapers demonstrate the fundamental seeds of change growing in the Freedom School students. Their unbridled ambitions reverberate throughout their writings. The schools changed their lives, and students regularly used newspaper essays to offer dramatic affirmations of their personal transformations. As Bossie Mae Harring testified in the Drew Freedom Fighter, “[S]omeone has opened our eyes to freedom and we will walk in the light of freedom until we achieve the victory.”64

  Freedom School newspapers were distributed at businesses and churches in local black communities. Students also shared the newspapers with parents, siblings, and neighbors. There were no official distribution networks or subscription lists, but the papers made their way into the hands of local African Americans through informal exchanges. The reactions of black Mississippi adults to the young generation’s newspapers are largely lost to history, but surely many of them were impressed and inspired by the young people’s growth and ambition. According to one source of local lore, a poem in the McComb Freedom’s Journal inspired adults to build and protect a new community center after the KKK bombed their original b
uilding. Regardless of distribution or readership, the power of the newspapers often rested in the sheer act of expression. For many students, the audience was an afterthought. Dozens of students loved writing for these small-scale publications and encouraged their peers to contribute. As the editors of the Meridian Freedom Star told potential contributors, “The FREEDOM STAR is your paper and any articles which you would like to submit for publication are welcome.” Their attitude reflected the general approach of Freedom School students who always encouraged more people to attend the schools and refused to take no for an answer. As an eleven-year-old Palmer’s Crossing student named Rita Mae told her peers, “I like to go to Freedom School. You would like it too. If you want to come and don’t have a way, let us know.” The hundreds of articles published in this collection clearly demonstrate how Freedom School students felt about the power of expression and illuminate how much they enjoyed producing their own newspapers.65

  After Freedom Summer, Freedom School students remained on the frontlines of the desegregation movement. In the fall of 1964, Mississippi became the last state in America to desegregate its schools. In a controversial measure called the “Freedom of Choice” plan, white schools in some districts opened doors to some black students who were willing to integrate. Freedom School students were at the center of school integration efforts in several cities. In an early effort, Jackson-based Freedom School teacher Florence Howe and her student volunteers canvassed local neighborhoods trying to get parents to register their children. That autumn, eleven former Freedom School pupils were among the forty-three black students to register in the previously all-white Jackson schools. Other Freedom School students attempted to desegregate white high schools in Hattiesburg, Canton, and Meridian. Even more helped desegregate schools the following year, bravely becoming one of the few black students at several schools across the state. Freedom Schools helped prepare dozens of young people for that often harrowing experience. Former student Glenda Funchess explained the impact of Freedom Schools on her experiences with public school integration. “If it wasn’t for that training that we got during the 1964 Freedom Summer project,” she recounted, “I don’t think that we would have been able to withstand the hostility and isolation and the humiliation that we were confronted with on a daily basis.”66