FREEDOM SCHOOLS BY VIOLA M. BROOKS President California State Association of Colored Women's Clubs, Inc. rt n,A"t'Oll h ( '-l in . ·~o rill a tor, AN ACCOUNT OF A NEW AND POWERFUL INSTRUMENT IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS FIELD TODAY / ( I COVER: Drawing by Charles White. Used by permission of the artist. The John Henry and Mary Louisa Dunn Bryant Foundation Los Angeles 29, California Printed in the United States of America Printed by the Bryant Foundation for the Cali­ fornia State Association of Colored Women's Clubs, Inc. Additional copies, at twenty-five cents each, may be obtained at the Aquarian Spiritual Center Book­ shop, 1302 West Santa Barbara Avenue, Los Angeles 37, California. January, 1965. .25 v q n fl tl a1 SOMETHING NEW: THE FREEDOM SCHOOL MOVEMENT. Something new appeared on the American scene in 1964. Something honest, modest, youthful. Some­ thing (now that we can look back on it) very determined, fearless and moral in the finest sense of the word. Something America has needed for a long time. America will yet thank everyone who had anything at all to do with it. For this new thing will have a lot to do in the next few years, literally, with saving America from the social gangrene of discrimination - our country's inheritance from 250 years of slavery followed by 100 years of misery inflicted on "second­ class" citizens through segregation, intimidation, Jim Crow and lynching. The new and powerful instrument is the FREEDOM SCHOOL MOVEMENT. The MISSISSIPPI SUMMER PROJ·ECT and the FREEDOM SCHOOL MOVEMENT grew out of a long succession of struggles for equality. The participants in the Project were and are mainly students, but they have drawn into the work many important adult forces from both inside and outside of Mississippi. That all participants were willing to risk arrests, beatings and even death is an especially noteworthy factor. Coordination of the work of all civil rights organi­ zations in the state was the chief factor guaranteeing their success. The vision of what to do was both modest and practical. The achieved result for the Summer Project was twice what had been expected and projected. The entire effort moved harmoniously toward a continuation of the plan on a twelve-months basis; the summer work merged into fall and winter work, and everyone recognized this was an inevitable direc­ tion in which to move. But the tremendous thing, the great thing, was the maturing of view which occurred as the summer con­ frontation took place: the Freedom Schools served; they met the local need; and leadership was found and was trained and did go back to hundreds of 3 communities where it is right now acting as leaven in the growing political consciousness of urban and rural communities all over Mississippi. More: the Freedom Schools had national impact. Students from all over the country went back to their campuses, carrying with them the story of what Mis­ sissippi really is like. Many nadonal stories appeared in magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, the Reporter, the New Republic, the Nadon and LIFE; and honest accounts of their activities appeared in the New York Times and ocher newspapers. There were radio and television interviews, such as the David Susskind "Open End" discussion with nine of the young people who were down there. A book about the Project and the Schools was written. Many lawyers, many academic leaders, were involved, and took back to their communities the horrifying truth that a police state exists within our borders denying every elementary human right to forty per cent of the American cidzens living there. CHARACTERIZATION OF THE FREEDOM SCHOOLS: For the Project is no Madison Avenue dream, no Advertising Council creation. It is so down-to-earth that it has shaken the very foundations of white supremacy in Mississippi. And the Freedom Schools are nor just "classes," nor are they mere "discussion groups." The Freedom Schools are centers in which local leadership of the liberation movement is being shaped. The Freedom Schools are training camps in which policies and program are examined in the light of experience, and corrective steps are proposed, debated and agreed upon. The Freedom Schools are forums where mistakes can be analyzed freely and where steps to remedy incorrect actions may be critically debated by the participants in the struggles. The Freedom Schools are planning rooms where the younger officers in the a rmy of liberation can examine and correct their own shortcomings, where they can react collectively to emergencies, and where they can participate in mapping tomorrow's cam- 4 paigns on better lines than yesterday's. The hot steel of determination is forged in struggle; but it takes continuing, regular analysis to uncover errors and to evolve correct strategy, and better tac­ tics and methods of work. The Freedom Schools are forms of organization which make continuing, regu­ lar, discussion and analysis possible. But at the same time they are in the midst of struggle, and are effec­ tive channels for coordination of struggle. The con­ solidation and strengthening of the unity achieved in struggle is one of the most valuable functions of the Freedom Schools. COORDINATION, COOPERATION AND MIRACLES OF COUR~GE. For a long time, ;nd in many parts of the country, we have been needing centers in which leadership could be developed; we have been in great need of training camps where our new and youthful leader­ ship could have experience; we have needed forums where our own efforts, and the actions and policies of the prejudiced could be examined and discussed; we have needed an organized way in which our young people could come to grips with themselves in the sense of recognizing their own shortcomings and attempting to correct them; coordination has been an ideal, but until the Freedom School Movement we did not have the key to practical coordination on a statewide basis. ' For long, too, we have needed the type of program that could and would inspire the cooperation U:ation­ ally of men and women of character and determina­ tion. In the Mississippi Summer Project, with its Freedom School orientation, we found that type of program. It meets the ieeds of this period; it is flexible and adaptable and yet disciplined and practical. When I think of the miracles of courage that grew out of the Freedom School Movement; when I con­ sider the love expressed in death by the three young men of Philadelphia, Mississippi; when I regard the results - two thousand young people trained in the very heart country of Prejudice- I am overwhelmed with happiness and hope! We all owe a great debt of gratitude, and our full 5 support, to the courageous young people who brought into existence in 1964 the greatly needed civil rights training mechanism of the Freedom School Move­ ment. We should give all possible aid to the over-all organization-COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations-and to SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which is the group reportedly providing around three out of every four field workers and dollars at COFO. What better mechanism do we need? What more productive fo.rm of organization does anyone propose for the current period and circumstances? Does any­ one know a better way to assist our youth to the full and useful lives they desire and deserve? Is there any better method of dealing at local levels with multiple­ faced reaction than through trained youth steeled in struggle? To all these questions there is only one answer: The Freedom School Movement is the mechanism and the form of organization best adapted to today's needs in the South; and adaptations of the idea for other parts of the country should be developed as quickly as possible. A REPORT TO OUR STATE BOARD­ AND A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE. Now I would like to tell you how the Mississippi Project and the Freedom School Movement came to the attention of our Federation in California. It was June of 1964 and we were attending a State Board meeting in Fresno. Our California State Asso­ ciation of Colored Women's Clubs had a heavy agenda, but we made way for a report by a young white student who had flown from New York to Los Angeles the night before expressly so chat she could bring us up to dare on the civil rights situation in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Her report couched us deeply. We decided then and there co find ways to help. The srudenr returned the same day to Los Angeles. The next morning, wanting co gee word about the struggle our to as many people as possible, she visited several newspaper offices. I am going to quote tn full one of rhe stories It written then, as an introduction to what I am going :s to say about Freedom Schools. The article, by Joel Garcia, was headlined AN "OUTSIDER" IN THE DEEP SOUTH: 11 .. .. .. .. (! When an "outsider" from the North travels to the ~t deep South to fight for civil rights he must expect p beatings and sometimes humiliating experiences. r Even if the "outsider" happens to be a 25-year-old blue-eyed dishwater blond, like Joyce Barrett, a mem­ e ber of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com­ e mittee. Visiting San Fernando this week on a whirl-wind, state-to-state, fund-raising tour, the Philadelphia civil­ rightist told of her personal experiences at the hands of Atlanta, Georgia police and of a man who "beat n me in the street during a sit-in demonstration." "One of the most humiliating experiences I had was when a female secretary in the Atlanta Police n Department, on the orders of police, stripped me of 's all my clothes in front of a cell full of male pris­ '" oners," she said.