What were the Freedom Schools?

Freedom Schools were set up in Mississippi in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, with the aim of giving young black school children agency and a future. They remain one of the more inspiring and progressive programs in American History, yet so few know about them. We're hoping to change that. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there. And I don't know if I
said or not, but I'm Josh Clark and this is
Stuff you should Know. And uh, I'm pretty excited about

(00:24):
this one. Freedom Freedom Schools. Yeah, we would be the
best singing duo ever. If that's how it worked, I
would just go big and you would just lou read it.
Yeah exactly. Is that what I'm doing, is lou reading.
I don't even know my own heritage sort of speak singing. Okay,
you know, yeah, that's what Lou Reid did. Uh. Maybe

(00:45):
go to the refrigerator, baby, remember again about the fridge, right,
give me one of those frozen snicker bars. You're not
the ice cream kind, actual snicker bar. I put into
the freezer. It over here, baby, that's the one, and
Nico would go, I am placing it in the threes. Uh.

(01:08):
Was she German? Uh? Yeah, she had to be German?
Was she German? I mean she was if not German,
Austrian or something. Well, I'm just saying I didn't even know.
I knew nothing about her except Nico sat in with
the velvet underground for a while and then my amazing
vocal talents, and that was good. That's what included me
to the idea that she was a German. There's a

(01:29):
movie about her later years that I want to see
that came out this year or something. I think it's
called Taken. So, Chuck, we're talking about freedom schools, as
we already said, and then we got silly. Now we're
getting back to it. Okay, that's right, because this is
not a silly topic, but it has a c o
a at the beginning. Should we talk about that? Yeah? Yeah,

(01:49):
So this is about the freedom schools, which, as you
will very soon find out, Uh, we're in Mississippi during
the civil rights movement. I mean, like in probably the
most dangerous place in the country. Yeah, during the most
dangerous point in the civil rights movement. That's where this
this story takes place. That's right. And freedom schools were great,

(02:10):
and they were a great thing, and we're happy to
be talking about them. But uh, in a lot of
the quotes and and a lot of the curriculum of
the freedom schools themselves. Uh, they use the word negro
and it's obviously not a word that people use anymore,
but some of the like curriculum class titles feature that word.
And so just letting everyone know that that's coming. And

(02:30):
we're not gonna say we're just gonna read their curriculums
in their plots as it existed back then. Yeah, I
think this this heads up. Yeah, we're and we were
just kind of sticking to the vernacular at the times
being used in context within reason of course. So um
so this this takes place in the summer of nineteen

(02:50):
sixty four. But I want to go back a little
further than that, the n with the the groundbreaking see
Changing Board Brown Versus Board of Education ruling where the
Supreme Court said, you know that that separate but equal
thing that we said back in was constitutional. Word, that's
not true. Segregation is not constitutional, it's not legal anymore.

(03:14):
Everybody needs to integrate schools at least, but they failed
to say and do it by nineteen sixty four or
nineteen sixty or next year. They just said I think
something like in a like a deliberate and speedy manner
or something like that. Um, and so Mississippi said, oh,
you didn't tell us when we had to do it
by Yeah, let me just dig my heel in here

(03:37):
and the other one in here, and we're just going
to keep our schools segregated. And not only segregated, Mississippi
had some of the poorest excuses for schools for African
American students in the country. Um, the state average for Mississippi,
I think in nineteen sixty was that they spent four

(03:58):
times more on schools for white children then they did
on schools for black children. That was just the state average.
In some towns it was way worse. You're talking about budgets,
spinning budgets. In Tunica, they spent a hundred and seventy
two dollars and eighty cents per white pupil on average
in nineteen sixty two. That's per year. It was in

(04:20):
that year, a hundred and seventy two eight. They spent
five dollars and ninety nine cents per black people. Yeah,
and that's just kind of how it was like. You
went to school in share cropper schools or what they
were called. If you were a black kid and you
were you got a terrible education by comparison, um, white kids,
schools usually ran for about six months out of the year.

(04:42):
If you were an African American kid in Mississippi, your
school might run three if if it was even open
that year. The rest of the time, you were expected
to be out in the fields working and just knowing
your place basically. Yeah. And you know, as you'll see
throughout this podcast, those sharecropper schools not only did they
fail them fundamentally on things like literacy and maths and

(05:02):
things like that, but they also failed them historically because
and I think things have gotten a lot better, but
one could make the argument that history classes still fail
historically and telling the true picture of some of these things.
But back then it was like at the sharecropper schools,
here you're learning white history, and it's not just like
this is the important history, but like this is the

(05:24):
only history. Yours does not matter. Yeah. Um. And even
worse than that, when they were taught about their heritage
or whatever, it was usually in relation to slavery, and
it was also in relation to how, um, how black
people preferred to be slaves and if they were far
worse off after the War of Northern Aggression freed them
and that that was they weren't interested in politics, they

(05:46):
weren't really self starters, and they needed white people that
guide them. That was the education you got as an
African American kid in Mississippi around the time of the
Civil Rights struggle, and um by the time nineteen four
role around, there was a lot of agitation going on
in the African American community. A lot of people saw, hey,

(06:07):
there's no integration going on. Things have haven't changed at all.
We're being kept down by Jim Crow air laws, and
we're going to agitate for change. And in response to that,
there was a lot of violence against that agitation for change,
from the KKK, from the state police, from local sheriffs,
from the local sheriff's redneck like you could get yourself

(06:28):
killed just by going to vote, registered to vote. Yeah,
And if the police were not inciting or committing the
violence themselves, they certainly would turn a blind eye to
anything that was going on and not do police work.
So it's in this context, around December of nine three
that a guy named Robert Moses, who uh was one

(06:49):
of the members of I believe he was with Core
the no I'm sorry, he was with Snick the student
Non Violent Coordinating Committee UM in Mississippi, and he said,
I've got an idea. We're gonna call it Freedom Summer. Yeah,
and the Freedom Summer. And by the way, big shout
out to Dave Rouse, big shout out one of our

(07:11):
stable of writers these days from the old house Stuff
Works dot com website, Davis helping us out. And boy,
he does a great job. He does. It's always a pleasure,
So thanks Dave. But yeah, the Freedom Summer was in
nineteen sixty four, and the whole goal of the Freedom
Summer was really to get people registered to vote on
mass right. That was the stated goal of it. Yeah,

(07:33):
for sure, the subtext of it. UM. John Hale wrote
a book on Freedom Summer and Freedom Schools, which we're
gonna talk about, and he actually helped Dave out with
this article, so shout out to John Hale too. But
he had a quote from John Lewis, the Great John
Lewis UM, who said, basically, the point of Freedom Summer
was to force a showdown between local authorities and federal

(07:54):
authorities because the local authorities were abusively enforcing white supremacy
and federal and full um authorities were turning a blind
eye to it, and so they said, we need to
we need to put ourselves invisible harm's way and and
force a showdown between these two entities. Yeah, in nineteen
sixty four is key. It wasn't just sort of picked

(08:16):
um randomly. It was key because the Civil Rights Act
was going to be signed in July that year, but
it did not include black voting rights protection. And uh,
the Democratic National Convention was going to be at the
end of August of that year in Atlantic City. And
this is basically like, let's get black folks registered to
vote so they can go in there and unseat these Dixiecrats.

(08:38):
To the Southern Democrats who were still very much segregationist
in Mississippi there for the for the Democratic Convention, their delegation,
the Mississippi delegation was all white. Yeah, and that was
another big, big goal, was to create a separate black
delegation for that National Convention. So to get this to
force the showdown between local authorities and federal authorities. The

(09:02):
the the civil rights activists like Robert Moses working in
Mississippi had zero illusions that that the federal government was
going to come down and help them out no matter
what they were doing. Instead, they would be forced to
act if white Northern kids, the children of these federal authorities,
came down to Mississippi and put themselves in harm's way

(09:25):
to kids meaning you know, college students, kids, to old
folks like us, right, exactly, youngsters that they weren't sitting
down like twelve year olds. No, no, no, nothing like that,
but like college students who wanted to come down and
help people who truly believed in the cause of civil rights. Yeah, white, liberal, progressive, Northern,
oftentimes Jewish, but not always. But as far as getting

(09:46):
the federal authorities to pay attention, that first descriptor is
the most important one, white because again they knew in Mississippi,
no federal authorities were going to pay attention to that.
And I mean they had good reason to think that
Kennedy had the Civil Rights Act as far back as
nineteen sixty but agreed not to bring it up in
Congress because they were still trying to figure out how

(10:07):
to keep the Dixiecrats happy and maybe get some sort
of integration going or civil rights going. And um, they've
just been left hung out to draw by the federal
authorities so many times that they were totally right in
that assumption. Yeah, and they knew that in order to
really affect change. Um, like you said, they were going
to get no assistance from the federal government, so they

(10:28):
need to do it on the ground, grassroots style. Um.
And what they were really looking towards was the future,
and they knew that getting kids involved was the key
and the only way to do that. Or they figured
the best way to do that, and I think they
were right was to devise what was called the Freedom
Schools in the summer of nineteen sixty four, which ended

(10:48):
up being one summer schools, community based summer schools where uh,
they had core curriculums for sure, but what they really
were trying to do is teach young black kids about
their history and their self worth and give them a
path forward in the United States. Yeah, with a voice,
like give them an education that they couldn't find anywhere

(11:09):
in those sharecropper schools, where the share cropper schools point
was to keep them down, uneducated, and out of politics
so that they couldn't vote. Um. These Freedom Schools were
meant to do the exact opposite, to teach them their
self worth, but also to say, like, here's how you
can actually enact change and to create the next generation

(11:30):
of civil rights activists in Mississippi. That was the point
of the Freedom school Yeah, And like it was hitting
me as I was reading this, how progressive that was
for nineteen sixty four, because that would be progressive now
in places like even Georgia. Absolutely, And it's still going
on now, is we'll see, like the the Children's Defense
Fund revived the Freedom Schools back in the eighties, and

(11:50):
I think they still have them, and it does still
have a tinge of subversion. Sadly teaching black kids in
America their self worth. Yeah, that's that's sad. All right,
that's a great preamble. Should we take a break? All right,
we are going to take a break, and we're gonna
come back and really dig into the mission of the

(12:10):
freedom schools. Right after this and thing. Okay, So freedom

(12:37):
Schools again launched and proposed by s n c C
Snick Snick leader Charlie cobb Uh in December sixty three,
and they had three. The original idea was let's get
eleventh and twelfth graders because they're just on the cusp
of being in you know, in the real world. Um
arguably already were in the real world. Yeah, you know

(12:59):
what I'm saying. Uh. And they had three stated purposes
that they wanted to accomplish. Supplement what they aren't learning
in high school simple enough. Number two, give them a
broad intellectual and academic experience during the summertime to bring
back to students in the classrooms I guess in the fall,
and then form the basis for statewide student action like

(13:21):
here's how you can boycott something, Here's how you can
raise awareness, like teach them how to be grassroots activists.
And also one of the things that they wanted to
teach them that we'll see is this is how things work. Like,
here's the nuts and bolts of this power structure that
we live in that holds us down. And here, understanding
how it works, you can start to poke around and

(13:42):
figure out how to overcome that. That was a huge,
huge part of it. That's right. So it all starts
with volunteers. And these, like we said, are mainly college students. Uh.
They saw this by way of ads in the New
York Times and other groups in college emphasis that basically
said hey, this is what we want to do. You've

(14:03):
been watching this on TV every night. Um, I know
that You might live in Manhattan or Brooklyn or someplace,
but if you are a young white liberal progressive and
you really want to make a difference, get off your
couch and come down to Mississippi for the summer, endanger
your life and helped teach these kids. Yeah, and I

(14:23):
think I think something like a thousand I saw, like
as much as there a bunch of people answered this call. Um,
like northern mostly white college students came down to Mississippi
for this Freedom Summer, not just the Freedom schools. Yeah. Yeah,
I think two hundred and eighty of them ended up
being teachers out of about the seven hundred or so

(14:44):
who volunteered for the Freedom Summer. Yeah. And I've heard
different stories on how the people who got selected to
be teachers for the Freedom schools were selected. This article
makes it sound like, um, the greener ones, the ones
who really shouldn't be put in harm's way, were assigned
to the Freedom schools. But from what I've read, they

(15:05):
were very much in harm's way as being teachers of
these freedom schools. But regardless of of who got assigned
to become a Freedom school teacher or why, they were told,
you're gonna have to pay your way to and from Mississippi.
You're gonna have to pay your own room and board,
so expect to have to shell out over two hundred
bucks or up to two hundred bucks over the course

(15:28):
of the summer. Yeah. It also said they would uh
live basically in the homes of local black families. I
wonder if they paid them rent. I don't know if
they paid them rent. But the black families who did
put these white Northern college students up over the summer
to teach freedom schools very much put their own families
and homes in harm's way. Because the Freedom school and

(15:51):
actually the whole Freedom Summer volunteers who came down, they
didn't take Mississippi by surprise. The white power establishment Mississippi
knew they were coming and they were very unhappy about this.
They said publicly that these people would be treated as invaders,
that this was a a second war of Northern aggression.
They doubled the number of highway patrol officers and not

(16:12):
to keep the peace. Um. They they knew they were
coming down, and they were not happy about these Freedom
schools or the Freedom Summer in general. Yeah, and I
guess we should go ahead and say right off the
bat to add gravity to the situation. And there may
be a short stuff in here. I've been wanting to
do one on the disappearance of these three men. But
the CORE Training Crew Congress of Racial Equality was CORE

(16:35):
and they were helping out with the Freedom rides in
the early sixties on the buses in Selma in the
Deep South. And there were three gentlemen, Andrew Goodman and
Michael Scherner, two white men, and another colleague, James Cheney,
a young black man that worked with CORE. They went missing,
um in Longdale, Mississippi, and we're basically taken in murders.

(16:58):
So this is at the area. This is before a
few months before the Freedom Schools were to launch, and
you're going down there knowing that these men disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. I'm pretty sure it was like a week
before basically, because it happened like they got the news
during the orientation in Oxford, Ohio that they held for
the Freedom School teachers. The news came through that these

(17:20):
three guys had gone missing and then were later found murdered,
and some people did back out and we're like, I
can't take this risk, but it seems like most of
them pressed on right. Yeah. Absolutely, and I think some
people's um resolve was doubled by that kind of thing too.
But their disappearance and ultimately their deaths proved that idea
that these the civil rights activists in Mississippi needed these

(17:44):
white Northern volunteers to come down because James Cheney, he
was a local Mississippi activists, he was a black guy.
And Um Schwarner, Michael Schwerner and good Goodman, both of
them were white. And because they went missing along with Cheney,
a hundred and fifty FBI agents and two hundred where

(18:05):
are the sailors from the local naval station jags showed up,
Sure showed up to search for these guys. And Michael
Scharner's widow said, this never would have happened if if
my husband had been a black man, and all this
was happening because he was white. I do want to
there's this is rife with a lot of quotes that
a lot of them were not going to read, but
I did want to read this one from Howard's inn. Uh,

(18:28):
this is the message at this orientation that you talked
about at the Western College for Women in Oxford, so
you're showing up, You're like, I want to volunteer. I
want to do the right thing. They sit you down
an auditorium and say this. You'll arrive in Rleville, which
is a place in Ruleville in the delta. It will
be a hundred degrees. You'll be sweaty and dirty. You

(18:48):
won't be able to bathe often, or sleep well or
eat good food. I don't know about that, but there
was some pretty decent food that kind of stuck out
to me. Howard's in mine at not? I thought so.
The first day of school, there may be four teachers
and three students. Uh, And the local Negro minister will
phone you to say you can't use his church basement
after all because his life has been threatened. And the
curriculum we've drawn up um Negro history and American government

(19:12):
maybe something you know only a little about yourself. Well,
you'll knock on doors all day in the hot sun
to find students. You'll meet on someone's lawn under a tree.
You'll tear up the curriculum and teach what you know.
And it seems like that's really kind of what happened.
It was very prescient. Yeah, I don't know if that
quote was long after him describing it, but if that's
what they told them at orientation before the Freedom schools,

(19:33):
then yeah, that's exactly how it ended up. And how many.
I think originally they were gonna target, like I said,
eleventh and twelfth graders, twenty schools, about a thousand students.
But when you know, when school they started, parents heard
about this and brought everybody. Basically they did something like
I've seen as much as but um, at least two

(19:55):
thousand students were enrolled in Freedom Schools in Mississippi this summer,
and double the number of schools plus one some. I
think Hattiesburg had six different schools. Meridian had a school
with two hundred two hundred students. That was the biggest one.
Um it was. And they originally intended, like you said,
eleventh and twelfth graders, maybe as young as middle like

(20:18):
middle schoolers possibly, but really that was it, and it
ended up being elementary school kids. I believe there was
an eighty year old enrolled at one of the Freedom schools.
Um and it just became a sensation in Mississippi among
the African American community. UM. And there was a there
was a New York Times article, they sent a reporter

(20:40):
down to kind of cover this, and they the reporter
was in Holly Springs and there was a school teacher
from Chicago named Aviva Futtorian, and she said, we're probably like,
are you from outer space? Kind of sounds like it
the silver jumped suit she was wearing it, but um
she said that they were teaching under a suite gum tree.

(21:00):
And this became kind of like ah. That was another
reason why that Oxford quote from Howard's Inn was so pressy.
And it's like a lot of times like they didn't
have any place to actually meet. They had to meet
outside or on somebody's front porch or something like that,
because someone might say, like he said in the in
the quote, like hey, use my church basement. But then

(21:21):
when the KKK found out there, you know, they may
burn across it in that churchyard, and then that preacher
has to say, I'm sorry, I can't take the risk. Well,
so you know, Schwerner and Cheney and Goodman when they
went when they were murdered, kidnapped and murdered, they were
investigating the burning of the church that they were going
to be holding their Freedom School that's what they were

(21:41):
doing out there, and they went to go find out
what happened, and that's when they went missing. Yeah, so
message sent loud and clear. So school was outside, which
is every kid's favorite thing, right, and then we'll as
we'll see, there was another There was at least one
school that got fire bombed and burned to the ground
after school had already started. I don't think any It
was like after hours. But the next day the um

(22:03):
school met in the like yard next to this burned
down building that they've been meeting in the day before.
Pretty amazing. So there was a lot of I mean,
this wasn't just going to school. They were there's a
whole state full of white people who violently did not
want you to be learning this stuff. Yeah. They were
just as organized on you know, the defense of this

(22:27):
or I guess the offense, which would that be. Uh,
they weren't defending it, No, to go on the offensive. Sure,
I just got mixed up in my head. Yeah, you
got all right. So uh, in the spring of nineteen
four they met and they were like, listen, we need
to get a curriculum together because this is a real school.
They're gonna tear it up, but we're gonna we're gonna

(22:48):
get it down at least. Uh. And the final one
and had sections for like I said, reading, writing, arithmetic,
the three RS, and science. But the bulk of it was,
um what they called citizen curriculum. Citizenship curriculum, which is
basically like African American civics, which they had never heard
of and never learned. Like I'm sure parents told them

(23:13):
stories and stuff, but as far as going to school,
they had never encountered anything like this before. Well, I mean,
depending on the age of their parents to their parents
might have never heard anything like that before either. Um.
So there was The Citizenship Curriculum was broken into seven units,
and each one built upon the last unit. It was
meant to basically say, here's the status quo, here's what's

(23:36):
wrong with the status quo, here's how to change to
the status quo, or basically the three buckets you could
put everything in, and um, the one I haven't read
all of them, but I went and read the fourth
one called the Power Structure Unit four, and I would
strongly recommend. I think, um, the student Non violent Coordinating
Committees digital archive has it like digitized? Yeah, that's when

(24:00):
you sent me right, but go read it. It's called
Uniform Introducing the Power Structure, and it explains how and why, uh,
white people are taught to be afraid of and hate
black people, how black people are taught that their inferior,

(24:22):
and that the reason behind the whole thing is money
and profits, and that all of the racism and hatred
and fear and crime and all that stuff is all
just window dressing around this power structure that's meant to
keep people servile and available for cheap labor so that
some people can profit more off of their work. It's

(24:45):
the most disgusting thing I've ever read, but it's also
one of the most eye opening. And it was designed
for eleventh and twelfth graders back in the sixties, and
it still rings true today. Yeah, the one that I'm
gonna dig in and read, I didn't have time, but
uh number six Material Things and Soul Things. So this

(25:07):
is almost the last one um on the Citizenship Curriculum units,
and that is that black people will not achieve true
freedom by trying to acquire more stuff, but by using
their insights about oppression to create a new kind of society.
And I think that's so important in these in this curriculum,
it's like, we're not trying to teach you like, hey,

(25:27):
go out there and uh try and gain status in
society so you can get a bigger house or or
things that you see that these white people have, which
I'm sure was you know, you covet things. That's what
people do, so I'm sure that was a natural inclination,
like I want the stuff that they have. But it's
so important to say like that the stuff isn't what matters, well,

(25:48):
not only just stuff in general, but there's they kind
of walk the students through it in this curriculum where
they say, like, what are some things that white people
have that you don't have that you wish you had?
What are some things white people have that you don't want?
Um and what the purpose of this curriculum wasn't to
teach black kids to hate white kids. As a matter

(26:09):
of fact, it actually teaches them to understand white people more.
Let me read you this quote from this unit, for
we have learned that although it seems that white people
have better schools, for instance, that they pay for it
by learning lies and by learning to hate and be afraid.
We have learned that we are misled by these lies too,
that the myths have taught us to believe that we

(26:30):
are inferior and dumb and that we have made no
contributions to society. So it's just it's saying like, don't
hate white people. They're they're being duped by this too.
But they're they're Patsy's in this power structure too. They
just happen to not be the group that's being stepped on,
you know, but they're still being used and abused. Yeah,

(26:51):
school children in particular for context um and well, and
it's interesting to when you just talked about like, uh,
they wanted the same things, not necessarily stuff as the
white students, one of the most popular classes because you know,
they would get in there and say this is what
I want to learn. And that's the whole part about

(27:11):
tearing up the curriculum. One of the most popular subjects
in one of these schools um was French, and they
wanted to learn French because they knew white kids had
a French teacher. Like something is innocuous is at Like
I want to learn French too, write? And I mean
that was the point in schools, not just like sit
down and shut up and listen, this is what we're
here to teach you. It was what do you want
to learn? What are you guys going to feel good

(27:33):
about yourselves for knowing that you can't? You didn't know
when you came in here. And so teaching in the
Freedom Schools that summer was super improvisational and spontaneous. They
really did tear up the curriculum and a lot of
a lot of cases. Um, sounds like a good model
for schools period. Yeah, it sounds like one of those
like Waldorf schools or a monessary school or something like that.

(27:55):
It sounds very much like one of those child Yeah. Um,
but I mean that was that was the point was too,
not to to drill them with what the adults thought
they should learn, but to to raise up their self
worth and self esteem and whatever that took. Is what
they taught them. Yeah, and it's cool that they didn't. Um.
Not only were they concerned about civics and the core academics,

(28:16):
but something that could have very easily been pushed to
the side is creative pursuits. And they really embraced that
because they found that these students were natural poets and
really eager to get in there and read and write poetry. Um.
They read Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and Gertrude Stein
and wrote a lot of poetry themselves. Some of it

(28:37):
is just heartbreaking, some of it inspiring, some of it both. Um.
There was one school in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, UH, Freedom School
students of St. John's Methodist Church. They wrote their own
declaration of independence and it's it's all in here in
this article. We can't go through the whole thing, but
I encourage you to like read this thing and full.
It's really hetty like advanced stuff. It really is. Um.

(29:00):
There are also newspapers were really big at the freedom schools.
They and they qualified as alternative newspapers. And that guy
John Hale, the professor from South Carolina who wrote the
book on Freedom Schools. Literally literally, he says that UM,
in Mississippi that summer the Freedom schools, student run newspapers

(29:21):
were the biggest source of civil rights news in the
entire states, and that they were the state's first taste
of alternative news. Ever. But that like almost all of
the forty one schools had their own newspapers, and in
some communities that's that's how some adults were learning what
they needed to do to go register to vote by
reading it in the student run Freedom School newspaper. Yeah,

(29:43):
I was a newspaper staffer. I think you were too,
probably right, were you just starting your own papers? But
I was a newspaper staffer in high school. And there's
something about like putting together a publication that even I
see little kids, uh doing for fun, and I remember
doing for fun. So it's it doesn't surprise me that

(30:05):
like that the newspaper was every school had their own,
and it seems like they were really really into it.
I could see your your little family news, the extra
extra mom puts too much hot sauce and eggs this morning.
Well it's it's on my mind because I just got
back from vacation and uh we went with one to
three four older girls plus my younger daughter, and they

(30:26):
did a the Beach Blotter. They put together their own
little magazine for the week, and I just remembered, I'm like, man,
kids are just drawn to putting together newspapers and magazines.
And these kids in the Freedom schools leapt at the chance,
uh to interview people and to you know, be little
cub reporters. And type this stuff up. They were really
big on taking typing classes because that would lead to

(30:49):
work obviously later on as well. Um, I just thought
it was really kind of a cool part of this
whole thing. Yeah, I know, it's super cool. As was
the theater. There was a traveling group called the Free
Southern Theater that would form a play called in White America.
Then they would go around to freedom schools and perform
this play. And there were music groups. Uh, the great
great folk singer and activist Pete Seeger went down there,

(31:11):
of course, and toward the Freedom schools it was like,
here's how you play a G chord and sing about
like things that matter? Right, pretty great. Why don't you
go on over to the fridge give me the frozen
snicker ball. No, no, I don't even like frozen snickers
that's the big reveal at the end of the song.
But you know, lu Reid does or did um alright,

(31:32):
so should we take another break? Yeah, Okay, we're gonna
take a break, everybody, so sit tight and we'll be
right back and h So, like I said, Chuck, this

(32:04):
experiment in pushing Mississippi into the civil rights era was
not well received by the white power establishment, and I
think it kind of varied from one community to another,
and but none none of them were happy from what
I understand, and the ones that were unhappiest with the
Freedom Schools were very, very violent UM in retaliation for

(32:28):
these things. This one summer, this Freedom Summer, lasted ten weeks.
I think the Freedom Schools lasted six weeks, but the
Freedom Summer itself lasted ten weeks. And in that ten
week period, thirty homes of of black residents, thirty seven
black churches were fire bombed. In one summer in Mississippi,

(32:49):
UM demonstrators were shot at thirty five different times by
the police. Okay, UM eight volunteers were attacked or beaten
by white mobs or police officers. There were six known
murders that summer related to the Freedom Summer, and UM
female volunteers were UM sexually assaulted. It was a really violent,

(33:13):
dangerous place to be doing what they were doing at
the time. Yeah, that was. There was one town, Macomb, Mississippi.
There were more than a dozen bombings in two months,
more than twelve bombings in a two month period, twelve
and a half and there were they were called the
bombing capital of the world at the time. Again, local
police turning a blind eye. I get the impression that,

(33:35):
like they actually qualified as the bombing capital of the world. Yeah,
it wasn't just a thing written in a freedom school paper, right,
It wasn't like an offhanded comment like they may have
qualified as the bombing capital of the world. It's crazy.
And even if there wasn't like direct violence, there was
indirect violence, intimidation, intimidation. People would probably drive by and

(33:58):
uh say the worst things, right exactly. So, Um, it
was not a it was a struggle to just make
it through this summer UM, but they did as a
matter of fact. And one of the goals of this
um Freedom Schools was to create or help get the
Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party, the antidote to the Dixiecrats in Mississippi.

(34:21):
UM seated at the Democratic National Convention. And um, they
they attempted to do that and actually got a meeting
at the Credentials Committee of the d n C, but
we're ultimately turned down. Yeah, they had delegates. This is
just amazing. They had delegates from all forty one of
these schools and they met at a statewide convention in Meridian, Mississippi. Um,

(34:44):
a place I have been through on a greyhound bus. Wow,
that's a country song and emotion right there. For sure.
That was a place where they stopped us and the
drug dogs got on. Oh got you in Meridian? Huh yeah?
And I was like, oh, interesting, I never thought about
gray buses. Is probably a great way to transport drugs,
but probably not. Hey, uh, speaking of country music, have

(35:06):
you seen that Ken Burns documentary? Not yet. I've heard
it's great. Good. I'm into country music. Now. Well, I
saw your Dixie Chicks tattoo on your next so I
wonder what that was it just pen right now, I
haven't I haven't pulled the trigger all the way. Okay, Yeah,
I'm looking forward to seeing that. So uh, they wrote
these these kids, these delegates went down there, they wrote

(35:26):
their own political platform for the m f d P.
And it was it's amazing, like, these are kids that
in six weeks time went from just uh, basically having
no hope whatsoever to fully forming a delegation and and
writing their own political platform and presenting it in public, right.

(35:48):
And it wasn't it wasn't like, hey, let's get these
kids citied at the d N c like the Mississippi
Democratic Freedom Party was made up of adult activists, but
the the kids from the Freedom Schools helped write their platform. UM.
They also formed from this delegation that met at the
end of the summer, the Mississippi Student Union, and this

(36:09):
actually brought to fruition one of the other stated goals
of Freedom Schools, which was creating the next generation of activists.
Because when Freedom School was over and UM Share Propper
School started back again or even integrated schools around the state,
all of a sudden there were kids wearing like one Man,
One Vote buttons, which could get you expelled and actually

(36:30):
did get some kids expelled. But they were like little
civil rights activists showing up to school, aware now of
the situation they were dealing with and ready to take
it on. Yeah, twenty five of them volunteered to be
the first to desegregate their local high schools. So that
call comes out like we have to desegregate, Um, who's
going to be the one? I know, just the people

(36:52):
to walk in there, and twenty five of these graduates
of the Freedom Schools did so. Yep, UM, So it
was it was a big deal. I mean, they managed
to create UM the next generation of activist leaders. But
one of the other kind of the through lines of
the civil rights struggle during this time and of the
Freedom Schools themselves, was the idea that if you had

(37:16):
I think the quote was, um, if you have strong
people or no, strong people, don't need strong leaders. And
a civil rights activist named Ella Baker said that, and
the point was, like, if you teach everybody how to
how to how to struggle for themselves, how to fight
for themselves, to stand up for themselves, you don't have
to wait around for Martin once in a you know,

(37:38):
handful of generations person like Martin Luther King Junior to
come along and lead the way. The people can lead
the way themselves. And that was one of the things
that they were doing with the Freedom Schools, not just
trying to come up with like the next leaders they
needed leaders, sure, but also to make everybody who came
through the Freedom school like aware and ready for action.
So one of the sad um sad legacies was, you know,

(38:02):
we said at the beginning that what they wanted to
do was one of their big goals was to seat
the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at that sixty four convention
in August, and they won a public hearing which was
a big win in and of itself with the d
n C Committee that was broadcast on live TV. Uh
the widow of Michael Scharner showed up to talk. Uh

(38:23):
Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Showed up to talk. And
the last one and this is just very sad and shameful.
The last speaker and they said, uh, Dave describes her
as the most dangerous to that democratic establishment was a
former sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer. Did you see her testimony? Yeah,
she was brave as they come. She was as brave

(38:45):
as they come. But yeah, but her testimony was interrupted
on national TV by President Lyndon Johnson. He called an
impromptu press conference in the middle of her testimony. So
all the TV breaks away, of course, because the president
as a press conference they need to get to. And
everyone was thinking, all right, this is big news. He's
gonna announce his VP pick for the six four election

(39:07):
or something like that, and he basically got on TV
and sort of ad libbed had today as the nine
month anniversary of the assassination of JFK and uh, Black
people all around the country and white liberal progressives are going,
what's a nine month anniversary? Right, like, are you kidding me?
Not just liberals in in um civil rights activists, but

(39:28):
the news too, sall right through and it actually backfired
because Johnson interrupting Fannie Lew Hamer became news itself, and
so Fannie lu Hamer's testimony stayed on the news for
days afterward, got way more exposure because of Johnson's clumsy,
ham fisted attempt. And the reason why her testimony and

(39:49):
the idea of a Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party was a um.
It was a threat to the to the Democrats was
because if you got rid of the Dixiecrats, if you
forced integration on the South, you're going to lose the
solid South. The South had always voted Democrats because they
hated the Republicans, because the Republicans were the party of

(40:10):
Lincoln who forced reconstruction on them. So Reconstruction comes along
and all of the Southerners went Democrat and they formed
the Dixiecrats right well. When Johnson signed the Civil Rights
Amendment in nine he said to an aid, we just
handed the South to the Republicans for a very long time.
And it's still the case still today, you're hard pressed

(40:33):
to find a county in the South that's blue. They're
all red. Yeah, well that's not quite true, but no,
it's but but I mean, okay, let me put it
this with Atlantas. But how many Atlantas are there in
the South that I'm saying it? You know, like anywhere else,
the urban centers are where the blues are. But I mean,

(40:54):
like the north, the northern and southern suburbs, they're all read.
I mean, Atlanta's a little island of blue and a
thing of red. Yeah. This is weird to think that
that's the legacy of of this this time still yeah. Yeah, so, uh,
some of these students ended up to go on and
do great, great things, I think, dare I say many

(41:17):
of them went on to do great things on a
smaller scale. But some we're sort of known nationally, uh,
and we're pioneers in the black community. One man Eddie
James Carthon, He was the first black mayor uh in
the Mississippi Delta. UM, very very big deal. He was
elected mayor at the age of eight, which I mean
back then though, was like fifty today. Sure, you know,

(41:40):
agings really regress since since then. And we talked earlier
about the fact that these these schools continue. Um, they
only operated in but a few of them were transformed
into Freedom centers and they were meeting places, uh for
the Mississippi Student Union. They were community meeting places, educational resources. Uh.

(42:03):
Kindergartens would go there during the day, they would have
adult classes at night. And in the nineteen eighties is
when the Children's Defense Fund created its own version of
the Freedom Schools. All those years later and they now
operate in eighty seven cities across twenty eight states, with
their main focus being literacy. Yeah, it's pretty great, but
they still honor their African heritage because the school day

(42:25):
begins with a Harambie traditional African welcoming celebration with songs
and chants that goes a little something like go on
over to the free. Have you noticed like it's kind
of transformed into singing. It was talking before You're ditching
your lou read this and guess so about growing him? Uh? Well,

(42:46):
if you want to know more about Freedom schools, there's
a lot of it archived out there on the internet,
and you could do a lot worse than starting out
at the Student Non Violent Coordinating committees digital archives. They've
got a lot of cool stuff on there. Um just
really really well done, nice short, punchy articles that linked
to the next thing and the thing and just make
you want to keep reading. Um. Well, since I said

(43:09):
Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, it's time for a listener, mate.
So this was the This is the gentleman who wrote in.
We had a few people that wrote in trying to
explain our confusion on due process. Oh is this the
guy's like? Which which one was that in? That was in?
It was in paraphilias. Paraphilias because we're talking about like

(43:32):
people going to prison for gay sex in their own
home right consenting in Texas in the twenty one century.
And this is from Keith from Philadelphia. Not a Colm
law professor, guys, just a law student. But I thought
I could help clear this up. And the lawrence of
e Texas due process point due process is essentially broken
up into two prongs procedural procedural. That's a bill three

(43:57):
year old procedural and substant of did I say that right?
Procedural due process is exactly what Josh was talking about.
Provides you, notice, um, an opportunity to be heard before
rights are taken away from you. Substantive due process is
what the court was referring to, and lawrence concept is

(44:18):
somewhat complicated, but simply stated, substantive due process just means
certain rights that are so fundamental that no amount of
process or procedure could ever legitimately deprive you of them.
In other words, consenting adults have such a fundamental right
to privacy behind closed doors that to punish them for
having consensual sex will violate their due process rights, no

(44:40):
matter how much procedure they are afforded it. I mean,
that is as clear as bell as bell future law professor.
I'm losing it here. Thank you Keith from Philly. Thank
you Keith. That was a I mean, I emailed them
a media and he's like a lot of people have
written and thanks to everybody wrote in and get a
at um. But I emailed them back and I was like, Keith,

(45:02):
because is the first one I've fully gotten. Yeah, Keith,
And I think if you stroll on over to your refrigerator,
you will find a frozen sticker bar waiting on you
because we snuck into your home in the middle of
the night. Whereas Chuck would say, a flozen one. If
you want to get in touch this like Keith did,
you can go on the stuff you Should Know dot
com and check out our social links. Or you can
send us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up,

(45:23):
spank it on the bottom, maybe send it along with
a frozen snicker bar to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
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