Teachers and students of the movement understood the violent pushback their plans for liberatory education would inspire. Freedom schools directly challenged white nationalism and inequitable access to quality education at a time when the state sanctioned violence and joining the movement was criminal, regardless of age. Just one year before, Bull Conner and his police force in Birmingham arrested over 1,000 children in K-12 schools. The students were then expelled.
But they proceeded with their plans. Movement veterans developed a curriculum for the schools that was radical for its time. Arguably some of the greatest minds of the movement gathered to write it, including Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Bayard Rustin, and Myles Horton. These activist educators not only shaped the movement, but also understood the essential role education would play.
They met in New York in March 1964 to write what was arguably the most progressive curriculum in the history of education in the United States. The curriculum and the larger purpose of the schools pushed the boundaries of education in the United States. As curriculum writers noted, they aimed to instill a “more realistic perception of American society, themselves, the conditions of their oppression, and alternatives offered by the Freedom Movement.”
By May the curriculum was printed and copied on a ditto machine. The Freedom School coordinator, Staughton Lynd, a history professor at Spelman, weighed down his car and distributed it to the teachers.
When Freedom Schools opened their doors in early July of 1964, some schools like those in Hattiesburg had over 600 students enroll. In Canton, an area organized by Dave Dennis and the Congress of Racial Equality, over 200 students attended five different Freedom Schools.
Teachers were prepared to deliver seven formal units of study. It was equivalent to a social studies curriculum today that included history, civics, and current events.
Students examined the power structure of United States society, who made the rules, and why. Students explored differences between “the North” and what they knew as the South and the former Confederacy. They discussed Black culture in relation to capitalism in a unit called “material things versus soul things.”
They learned of rebellions against enslavers predating the Declaration of Independence—a document that was also critically analyzed for its contradictions. Students explored the ongoing Civil Rights movement, linking what they were studying to what was occurring outside the classroom walls.