By Les Etienne, Education & Research Director
“In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you can change that system. That is easier said than done.” Ella Baker, 1969
provide true equality in education “with all deliberate speed,” we find ourselves at a critical moment in the South. To both the trained and untrained eye, many of the landmark gains of fifty and sixty years ago have slowly been eroded and continue to take a severe beating at every turn.
This power dynamic maintains both an institutional and social grip on the people and shows no signs of slowing its pace. In fact, there are many examples of the tides of injustice growing stronger by the minute. Along these lines, the consistent need to confront power has always been connected to grassroots libratory non-hierarchical leadership and movement building. This important work combats the dire circumstances associated with those in power and their deleterious agendas and is critical to the current political moments in the South, and the shape of resistance against injustice.
In this commemorative period around the Freedom Summer of 1964, we find stories that leave an indelible affect on the analysis of the Southern Freedom Movement and how ordinary people played a role in establishing a culture of resistance. One story of particular interest can be found in the temporary summer schools set up by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the Freedom Summer. These “Freedom Schools” played a vital role in the development of political education in the movement for young people in the Mississippi communities where the Freedom Summer took place. Set up to coincide with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s efforts in forging a new path for Blacks in electoral politics and the community centers that would serve Freedom Summer communities, Freedom Schools left a redemptive model for libratory education.
The significance of the SNCC Freedom Schools was in the way they aimed to reach young people around the common issues relating to brutal racism and having a self-determined view of self through collective dialogue. The schools operated beyond Freedom Summer, and in other states where SNCC worked like Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas, but the common thread even within that course of history is that they worked within a larger Southern Movement that was connected in struggle. So students did not only receive basic academic lessons, they were also encouraged to question and confront power, and use what they came up with to engage in direct action that was meant to break the practices of Jim Crow throughout the region.
Students did not only receive basic academic lessons, they were also encouraged to question and confront power, and use what they came up with to engage in direct action that was meant to break the practices of Jim Crow throughout the region.
Another source of emancipatory educational power in the era of the Southern Freedom Movement can be found in the Citizenship Schools that were run first in the Sea
Islands of South Carolina. These schools utilized basic and popular education to teach Black adults, many of whom had not attended school past elementary age. The schools taught content needed pass the racist “tests” designed to disenfranchise Black voters. The teaching and learning was designed to create an atmosphere where the student was comfortable, had a level of political education to augment any general academic knowledge learned, and was designed for the student to ultimately become the teacher. Within this story of libratory education we find yet another example of a movement-specific arm of grassroots leadership that would go on to be housed at two significant organizations. The Highlander Folk School and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference both ran variations of Citizenship Schools to prepare Black voters in multiple states during the fight for freedom in the South.
Both the SNCC Freedom Schools and the Citizenship Schools showed strategic community power. The Schools pushed forward a de-colonized version of the South through “bottom up” participatory methods. Romanticizing the Freedom Summer and its Freedom Schools, SNCC, the Citizenship Schools, or people associated with them however can become somewhat of an empty endeavor when considering the current and past political moments since 1964. With this in mind, this history can become a call to action that is motivated by the people’s connection to the legacy of struggle found in the organizations and communities of the Southern Movement Alliance. Therefore the organizing efforts, undergirded by the historical grounding of the past, become the vehicle for a level of inspired southern grassroots movement building.
Project South and the Southern Movement Alliance connects to this rich history in an effort to operate in a continuum of Southern Freedom Movement work. Using the examples such as the Freedom Schools and the Citizenship Schools helps to develop the context for models for action, cultural inspiration, and the power of organizing. Further, the development of an intentional political education arm in movement building provides all stakeholders with exposure to the organizing strategy and the conditions, or fronts of struggle, that have sparked the need for the people to intervene.
The University Sin Fronteras (UNSIF) plays a vital role as a political and popular education arm of the Southern Movement Alliance and the Southern Movement Assembly process that collaborates with other anchor organizations to advance the Southern Freedom Movement in the 21st century. The aforementioned historical references show that Freedom Movements in the South have always relied on a level of alternative teaching and learning through popular education, modified academics with “the three R’s” as a base, and through cultural expression.
A typical UNSIF class consists of a beginning brief lecture to set the tone for the lesson, a round robin discussion, small group work, another round robin discussion to initialize thoughts, and finally a short 1-page paper to reflect on critical learning. This approach amplifies participatory learning by activating each participant’s own personal analysis and moving the discussion towards a collective understanding about the topic. Also, the framework is constructed to decolonize western education and offer the “students” a chance to formulate a more liberated way of knowing.
Over the last two years, campuses in San Antonio, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; and Atlanta, Georgia have been developed to explore the roots of oppression and colonization. Topics have included labor and migration, the sovereignty of the body, health and healing, place-based histories, environmental justice, and the use of art and culture in resistance. The University utilizes the historic lessons offered by the Freedom Schools’ use of discussion as a means to form questions, the Citizenship Schools’ approach to adult learning, and the Colegio San Jacinto Trevino Liberation School’s inclusion of theater of the oppressed in their curriculum. The University carries out its mission to embody and reflect the principles, concerns, and ethics of global people’s struggles as a public and accessible space for education that advances systematic social change. Further, the “University Without Walls” approach grounds the curriculum in a level of mobility that allows for courses to be available anywhere that the movement needs them.
The key principles of “OLE” Organizing, Liberation, and Emancipatory Education, UNSIF is integral to the 2014 Unite to Fight Summer Organizing Institute through daily classes that will provide context to the various fronts of struggle and daily movement capacity-building activities. In doing this, the important role that collective and shared knowledge can play in organizing for action will be highlighted as a way to fortify Southern Movement Assembly actions throughout the region.
In essence, the University Sin Fronteras, in the legacy of Freedom Schools endeavors to put EVERY HAND ON THE HAMMER of justice!