To Write in the Light of Freedom

by William Sturkey

  10. Impeachment Trial of Thomas W. Cardoza, State Superintendent of Education (Jackson, MS: Power & Barksdale, State Printer, 1876), Mississippi Department of Archives and History (hereafter, MDAH), Jackson, MS; and “The Cardoza Articles,” Hinds County Gazette, March 15, 1876, 1.

  11. Gathright quoted in Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 9.

  12. The salaries of teachers in white schools fell as well, but their pay became increasingly disproportionate to that of black schoolteachers. By 1910, white instructors were earning twice the salary of their African American counterparts. See Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 246, 249; and Noble, Forty Years of the Public Schools in Mississippi, 141–142. For more on the Redeemers’ response to public education, see C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1971, orig., 1951), especially 51–74.

  13. See Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 10.

  14. See Noble, Forty Years of the Public Schools in Mississippi, 98–104.

  15. Span, From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse, 176. African Americans often had to supplement their own schools with private funds because their tax dollars were disproportionately spent on white students, a phenomenon historian James Anderson has dubbed “double-taxation.” James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), quoted on 156.

  16. Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 199–215, statistic on 201.

  17. The Mississippi Constitution of 1890 can be found through the Mississippi History Now website using the following link: http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/103/index.php?s=extra&id=270

  18. Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 108.

  19. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 3–32. For a firsthand account of attending black public schools in Mississippi, see Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South (New York: Bantam Dell, 1968).

  20. Gladys Noel Bates, interview with Catherine Jannik, December 23, 1996, The University of Southern Mississippi Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 45–60; Edward S. Bishop Sr., interview with Charles Bolton, February 27, 1991; “Community in Which I Live” (Gladys Noel Bates Papers, Box 3, “Speeches and Papers, 1948, 1968, 1991–1992.”

  21. For more on the NAACP’s strategy against segregated education, see Mark Tushnet, The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1950 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); and Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  22. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 33–95, statistics found on 87.

  23. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), especially 1–89. As Charles Payne had pointed out, the involvement of clergy varied widely depending on location. See Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), especially 191–201. For more on Medgar Evers, see Michael Vinson Williams, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2011).

  24. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), especially 1–110.

  25. Charles Cobb, interview with John Rachal, Sept. 21, 1996, transcript, F341.5.M57 vol. 668, University of Southern Mississippi Oral History Program, Hattiesburg, MS. For more on the relationship between the Mississippi movement and the Kennedy administration, see Dittmer, Local People, especially 153–157.

  26. LIFE, June 28, 1963. For more on the volunteers themselves, see Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

  27. For more on the debates and concerns over the involvement of white volunteers, see Dittmer, Local People, especially 214–241; and Wesley C. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 143–182.

  28. Census of the Population: 1960, Volume I, Characteristics of the Population: Part 26, Mississippi (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1961), 26–118.

  29. Upon arriving in Mississippi, dozens of Freedom School teachers wrote letters home describing the often stunning lack of knowledge and educational poverty of their students. See Elizabeth Martinez, ed., Letters from Mississippi: Reports from Civil Rights Volunteers & Poetry of the 1964 Freedom Summer (Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2007).

  30. Charlie Cobb, “Prospectus for a Summer Freedom School Program,” Box 14, Folder 13, MFDP Papers.

  31. Jon Hale, “Early Pedagogical Influences on the Mississippi Freedom Schools: Myles Horton and Critical Education in the Deep South,” American Educational History Journal 34, No. 2 (2007): 315–330. For more on Highlander, see John Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932–1962 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1988).

  32. Myles Horton, The Long Haul: An Autobiography, ed. by Judith Kohl and Herbert Kohl (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 99.

  33. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 73; and Katherine Mellon Charron, Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

  34. Clare Russell, “A beautician without teacher training: Bernice Robinson, citizenship schools and women in the Civil Rights Movement,” The Sixties, No. 4 (2011), 1–31.

  35. Horton, The Long Haul, 99; Charron, Freedom’s Teacher; and Septima Poinsette Clark and Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement (Navarro, CA: Wild Tree Press, 1986); Clark, “Southern Christian Leadership Conference Citizenship Education Program,” Box 10, Folder 9, Myles Horton Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (hereafter, SHSW); and Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 66–67.

  36. For more on the importance of education in southern black communities, see Charron, Freedom’s Teacher; Clark and Brown, Ready from Within; Constance Curry, Silver Rights (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1995); Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Chana Kai Lee, “Anger, Memory, and Personal Power: Fannie Lou Hamer and Civil Rights Leadership,” in Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights–Black Power Movement, ed. Bettye Collier Thomas and V. P. Franklin (New York: New York University Press, 2001); Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (New York: Dutton, 1993); and Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

  37. Dittmer, Local People, especially 112–114 for McComb school; Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 125; Jill Titus, Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 146–150; Boston Freedom Schools,” Box 14, Folder 6, MFDP Papers; “Freedom Diploma” and “Freedom School Materials: For Freedom STAY-OUT Feb. 26, 1964,” Box 15, Folder 5, MFDP Papers; “Harlem Parents Committee Freedom School Lessons Guide,” Box 15, Folder 9, MFDP Papers; “Attendance Falls Off At Freedom Schools,” New York Times, March 17, 1964; and “Harlem Organizes ‘Freedom Schools,’” New York Times, October 13, 1963.

  38. Sandra Adickes, interview with William Sturkey, July 5, 2010, New Brunswick, NJ, recording in author’s possession; and “Participants at the COFO Curriculum Conference,” “Curriculum Planning for Summer Project,” and “Curriculum Planning for Summer Project” all found in Box 5, Folder 6, MFDP Papers. For more on planning the Freedom School curriculum, see Sandra Adickes, Legacy of a Freedom School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), especially 23–52. For more on the National Council of Churches and the Civil Rights Movement, see James F. F
indlay, Jr., Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

  39. “Participants at the COFO Curriculum Conference,” “Curriculum Planning for Summer Project,” and “Curriculum Planning for Summer Project” all found in Box 5, Folder 6, MFDP Papers; and Lynd, interview.

  40. “Freedom Schools, Curriculum, general,” Subgroup D, Appendix A, Reel 67.340,864 SNCC Papers (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1982).

  41. “Freedom Schools, Curriculum, general,” Subgroup D, Appendix A, Reel 67.340,1022, SNCC Papers.

  42. Freedom School Curriculum, Box 1, Folder 11, Ellin Papers.

  43. Freedom School Curriculum, Box 1, Folder 11, Ellin Papers.

  44. Lynd, interview; and “Guide to Negro History, Box 1, Folder 12, Ellin Papers.

  45. Staughton Lynd, interview with William Sturkey, December 8, 2009, Niles, OH, recording in author’s possession.

  46. Stanley Zibulsky, interview with William Sturkey, July 9, 2010, Queens, New York, recording in author’s possession.

  47. Freedom School Curriculum, Box 1, Folder 11, Ellin Papers.

  48. Charles Cobb, “Freedom Schools, Day, Noel, 1964,” Subgroup D, Appendix A, Reel 67, File 342, Slide 342, SNCC Papers; “Freedom Schools, Curriculum, general,” Subgroup D, Appendix A, Reel 67.340, SNCC Papers; “Prospectus for a Summer Freedom School Program,” Box 14, Folder 13, MFDP Papers; “Freedom Schools, Day, Noel, 1964,” Subgroup D, Appendix A, Reel 67, File 342, Slide 342, SNCC Papers; and “Freedom Schools, Curriculum, general,” Subgroup D, Appendix A, Reel 67.340, SNCC Papers.

  49. Mary Aickin Rothschild, A Case of Black and White: Northern Volunteers and the Southern Freedom Summers, 1964–1965 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 97. Also see Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi (New York: Bantam Books, 1991).

  50. Memo from President Young to Mr. Keebler, Oxford, OH, May 5, 1964, Box 1, Folder 1, Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 Collection (hereafter Miami-FS), Peabody Hall, Miami University Western College Archives, Oxford, OH; “Courses Planned for Rights Drive,” New York Times, April 4, 1964, 30; Lynd, interview; and Mark Levy, interview with William Sturkey, July 8, 2010, New York City, recording in author’s possession.

  51. Arthur Reese, “Freedom Schools—Summer 1964,” The Detroit Teacher, December, 1964, 4; “School Data,” Box 1, Folder 4, Harry J. Bowie Papers, 1964–1967, SHSW; Freedom School teacher quoted in Elizabeth Martinez, ed., Letters from Mississippi: Reports from Civil Rights Volunteers & Poetry of the 1964 Freedom Summer (Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2007), 108; and Adickes, interview.

  52. “Freedom School Data,” Box 1, Folder 4, Bowie Papers, SHSW; and Lynd, interview.

  53. Adickes, interview; Lynd, interview; Levy, interview; Herbert Randall, interview with William Sturkey, July 6, 2010, Shinnecock Indian Reservation, Southampton, NY, recording in author’s possession. For more on the role of local African Americans protecting civil rights activists, see Akinyele Omowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2013).

  54. “Books Needed in Mississippi Freedom Schools,” Box 14, Folder 17, MFDP Papers; Adickes, interview; Lynd, interview; “Materials Needed for Mississippi Summer Project,” Box 15, Folder 9, MFDP Papers; “Adopt a Freedom School,” Box 4, Folder 12, MFDP Papers; letters acknowledging donations can be found in Box 14, Folders 17–19, MFDP Papers; and Adickes, interview.

  55. “Freedom Songs,” Box 14, Folder 11, MFDP Papers; Lynd, interview; Glenda Funchess, interview with William Sturkey, December 16, 2009, Hattiesburg, MS, transcription in author’s possession; “Seeds of Freedom,” play by Holly Springs Freedom, Box 17, Folder 6, MFDP Papers; and Anthony Harris, interview with William Sturkey, October 22, 2010, Hattiesburg, MS, recording in author’s possession.

  56. These general activities are mere examples of the widespread Freedom School student activism. Hundreds of Freedom School reports are available in the collections cited throughout this introduction. For scholarly examinations of Freedom School student activism, see Jon N. Hale, “A History of the Mississippi Freedom Schools, 1954–1965” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 2009); William Sturkey, “Houses of Liberty: The Impact of Freedom Schools during SNCC’s 1964 Freedom Summer” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2007), especially 57–71; and Adickes, The Legacy of a Freedom School, especially 55–36.

  57. “Meridian to Host Freedom School Convention,” Freedom Star, July 23, 1964, Box 16, Folder 6, MFDP Papers; Lelia Jean Waterhouse, “Report from Jackson,” Freedom Star, July 30, 1964, Box 98, Folder 9, SNCC-King; numerous Freedom School Convention reports found in the August 19, 1964, issue of the Freedom Star, Box 4, Folder 3, Mark Levy Papers (hereafter, Levy Papers), Queens College, City University of New York Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library Special Collections, Flushing, NY; Joyce Brown quoted in Roscoe Jones, interview with William Sturkey, September 18, 2011, Meridian, MS, recording in author’s possession (Mr. Jones was the assistant chairman of the planning committee); and COFO Freedom School Convention Press Release, Box 14, Folder 16, MFDP Papers.

  58. COFO Freedom School Convention Press Release, Box 14, Folder 16, MFDP Papers; Memo to “Parents of Freedom School Convention Delegates,” Box 101, Folder 3, SNCC-King; Lelia Jean Waterhouse, “The Freedom School Convention of August 7–10, 1964: Three Reports,” Box 4, Folder 3, Levy Papers; “1964 Platform of the Mississippi Freedom School Convention,” Box 6, Folder 3, Lynd Papers; Jones, interview; Levy, interview; and Lynd, interview. Thanks also to Mark Levy for supplying a spreadsheet containing the names and ages of many of the Freedom School Convention delegates. For more on the murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, see William Bradford Huie, Three Lives for Mississippi (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000, orig., 1965), 120–121.

  59. Jones, interview; and Lynd, interview.

  60. Freedom School Curriculum, Box 1, Folder 11, Ellin Papers.

  61. Untitled Correspondence from Staughton Lynd, date unknown, Box 6, Folder 3, Lynd Papers; and “Summary of Moss Point COFO Summer Program,” Box 6, Folder 2, MFDP Papers.

  62. Several activists did produce smaller publications. These included The Mississippi Free Press, E. W. Steptoe’s The In former in Amite County, P. D. East’s The Petal Paper, Arrington W. High’s Eagle Eye in Jackson, and Colia Liddell’s North Jackson Action. See Julius E. Thompson, The Black Press in Mississippi, 1865–1985 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993); David R. Davies, ed., The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2001); Susan M. Weill, In a Madhouse’s Din: Civil Rights Coverage by Mississippi’s Daily Press, 1948–1968 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002); and William Sturkey, “‘I Want to Become a Part of History’: Freedom Summer, Freedom Schools, and the Freedom News,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 95, No. 3–4 (Summer–Fall 2010), 348–368.

  63. Judy Walborn, “Dear Staughton, Tom, and Sue,” July 7, 1964, Box 14, Folder 17, MFDP Papers; Clarksdale volunteer quoted in Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, 114; and “Weekly Report,” submitted by Ira Landess, July 25, 1964, Box 1, Folder 4, Bowie Papers, SHSW.

  64. Bossie Mae Harring, “The Fight for Freedom,” Drew Freedom Fighter, July 20, 1964, 1, Box 1, Folder 2, Jerry Tecklin Papers, SHSW.

  65. “Notice to Students of the Meridian Freedom School,” Freedom Star, July 30, 1964, 4, Box 98, Folder 9, SNCC-King; and Rita Mae C., Untitled Essay, Freedom News, July 25, 1964, 3, Box 1, Folder 1, Adickes Papers, SHSW.

  66. Florence Howe, “Mississippi’s Freedom Schools: The Politics of Education,” Harvard Educational Review, 35 (1965), 155–156; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 96–116; “19 Negroes Apply at Canton High,” The Clarion-Ledger, September 4, 1964; “18 Negroes seeking tran
sfer to Canton,” Hattiesburg American, September 3, 1964; “Meridian leaders take legal action,” Hattiesburg American, September 4, 1964; “Integration Sought By Meridian Group,” The Clarion-Ledger, September 5, 1964; “Canton, Summit Integration Attempts Are Turned Back,” The Clarion-Ledger, September 9, 1964; “Canton School Turns Back Negro Pupils,” Clarksdale Press Register, 8 September 1964; “High Schools in Jackson Bar Negroes,” Clarksdale Press Register, September 10, 1964; Hymethia Washington Thompson, interview with Jon Hale, July 4, 2012, Jackson, MS, transcript in author’s possession; and Funchess, interview. For more on “Freedom of Choice,” see Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, especially 141–166.

  67. See also Jon Hale, “The Student as a Force for Social Change: The Mississippi Freedom Schools and Student Engagement,” The Journal of African American History 96, no. 3 (Fall, 2011): 325–348; Rothschild, A Case of Black and White, 110–115; and “Issaquena M.S.U. Freedom Fighter, August, 1965,” Mississippi Student Union Folder, FIS.

  68. “Massive School Boycott in Indianola, COFO news release, Freedom Schools,” Miscellaneous Folder, FIS.

  69. Dittmer, Local People, 332; “Massive School Boycott in Indianola, Press Release 22 February 1965,” FIS; “The Mississippi Student Union Convention—December 1964,” miscellaneous folder, FIS; and “Freedom Fighter: Issaquena MSU,” Mississippi Student Union Folder, FIS.

  70. http://www.childrensdefense.org/about-us/our-history/.

  71. http://www.childrensdefense.org/programs-campaigns/freedom-schools/.

  72. LaKersha Smith, “Telling Their Side of the Story: Mississippi Freedom Schools, African Centered Schools and the Educational Development of Black Students” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2007), especially 77.

  73. Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Teaching,” American Educational Research Journal 32, No. 3 (Fall 1995): 465–491; and Ladson-Billings, Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994).