1960’s Mississippi Freedom Schools helped Black Americans in the Deep South vote

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Freedom Schools were opened in southern states as part of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The most famous ones were established in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Photo credit: Civil Rights Teaching

The anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington today gives us the opportunity to think about the courageous and dedicated teachers, both Black and White, who tirelessly worked towards creating a more equal society in our country. Some of them dedicated their teaching expertise to teach in Freedom Schools during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, particularly during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

Freedom schools were the brainchild of New York City math teacher Bob Moses, an African American educator with unique vision. Under his direction, these alternative schools were organized and staffed by White political activists, teachers, and college students. They came from all over the United States to participate in the endeavor.

The goal of the summer program was to empower disenfranchised African American community to register to vote and to exercise their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights to political participation. Volunteers also hoped to help bridge some of the gap created by educational neglect. The neglect had long been rampant in states ruled by Jim Crow laws. Both Black and White citizens realized that only through education and participation in the democratic process could African Americans ever hope to improve their lot.

The enterprise was not without danger. On the first day of Freedom Summer, three volunteers involved in the program—Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney—disappeared. They were investigating the firebombing of the church facility in Mississippi designated for their voter recruitment activities. Six weeks later, the badly beaten and bullet-ridden bodies of the three missing men were discovered buried in an earthen dam in nearby Neshoba County, Mississippi.

To learn more about freedom schools and Freedom Summer, click on this link to the History Channel.

Teacher Irene Hartley taught school out of her suitcase in a migrant camp

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There are many fine teachers in American history who invested their time, effort, and talent in contributing to their communities. One of them was Irene Hartley, who established a school for migrant children in California.

In 1938, in California’s Kern County, there were no schools for migrant children because state school officials believed migrant children didn’t live in the state long enough to enroll.

But Irene Hartley, a former teacher from Oklahoma who had relocated to California to pick cotton, opened a school with a suitcase. Her suitcase contained: eight books, twelve pencils, thirty sheets of paper, and a small blackboard that folded in half.

The photo above, snapped by famous Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange, shows Irene teaching fourteen migrant children sitting on the ground under a cottonwood tree beside a migrant labor camp. In the photo, she holds open a book entitled “The Story of America” and the children are leaning forward to see because there is only one book. Her suitcase is open on the ground, serving as her desk.
Irene volunteered to teach every afternoon from 4 PM to 6 PM after picking cotton all day from 5 AM to 3 PM. She conducted lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic to children ages 5 to 13 who had not been able to attend school for more than 6 months. Some of them had not been to school in two years.
In Kern County in 1938, there were more than 15,000 migrant children who had no school. About 2,000 were enrolled, but more than 13,000 worked in fields or lived in tents. Irene’s school had a rule: any child who came for lessons had to teach another child what they learned that day. So 14 children became 28, then 42. Irene kept attendance on the inside of her suitcase lid with chalk: “Feb 8 — 14 present — 2 absent picking peas.”
In 1939, the state finally opened a migrant school in a tent. Irene was hired as its first teacher. She was paid $90 a month. The amount was more money than she ever made picking cotton.

She kept her suitcase. It is now in the Smithsonian.

 

Yoshiko Uchida writes about Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII

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Many teachers are busy creating lessons for the second semester. Some of these lessons may be about World War II war relocation camps. If you are, you will no doubt want to examine  Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family by Yoshiko Uchida. This slender volume is a beautifully written personal history of the author’s Japanese American family.

In the book, the author describes her life as one of 110,000 Japanese American internees, many of whom were American citizens. Following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, these individuals were incarcerated in relocation camps. As the daughter of Japanese immigrants, Yoshiko was a twenty-year-old student in her senior year at the University of Berkeley in San Francisco at the time. She describes her existence before the bombing, and daily life in the relocation camp. In the specific case of Yoshiko, her family was incarcerated first in Tanforan, California, and then in Topaz, Utah, for the duration of World War II.

Her purpose in writing Desert Exile is to describe an internment camp experience, and how she felt when she was  imprisoned by her own government simply because she happened to look like the enemy.

As a children’s author, Yoshiko has created a canon of Japanese American literature where none existed before. She is considered the first Nissei writer to devote an entire career to writing for young people about her own cultural heritage. In this role, she has offered important books for young readers of all ethnic backgrounds.

You can read Desert Exile for your own edification. Or you can suggest it as leisure reading for your students. Or you might want to incorporate it in whole or in part in your lesson plans. Any way you go, the book is a great resource. You can find Desert Exile on amazon.com.

Chalkboard Champion Sandra Adickes braved danger during Freedom Summer

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Sandra Adickes was an energetic and idealistic thirty-year-old New York City English teacher in 1964, the year she ventured south into Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to teach in a Freedom School. The goal of the summer program was to empower the African American community to register to vote, and to help bridge some of the gap of educational neglect that had long been a tradition in that Jim Crow state. Both educators and Civil Rights activists realized that only through education and participation in the democratic process could African Americans hope to achieve their long-denied American Dream.
The enterprise was not without danger. On the first day of Freedom Summer, three workers involved in the program disappeared while investigating the firebombing of the church facility designated for their voter recruitment activities. Six weeks later, as Sandra Adickes conducted her classes in Hattiesburg, the badly beaten and bullet-ridden bodies of the three missing men were discovered buried in an earthen dam in nearby Neshoba County.
At summer’s end, Sandra’s fearless students decided—on their own—to integrate the Hattiesburg Public Library in what became, in effect, a graduation trip with an emphasis on civic reform. Sandra was arrested in the effort. Read her riveting story, and what became of her courageous students, in her book Legacy of a Freedom School. You can also find a chapter about this remarkable teacher in my book, Chalkboard Champions.