Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there. And I don't know if I
Speaker 1: said or not, but I'm Josh Clark and this is
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know. And uh, I'm pretty excited about
Speaker 1: this one. Freedom Freedom Schools. Yeah, we would be the
Speaker 1: best singing duo ever. If that's how it worked, I
Speaker 1: would just go big and you would just lou read it.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Is that what I'm doing, is lou reading.
Speaker 1: I don't even know my own heritage sort of speak singing. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, that's what Lou Reid did. Uh. Maybe
Speaker 1: go to the refrigerator, baby, remember again about the fridge, right,
Speaker 1: give me one of those frozen snicker bars. You're not
Speaker 1: the ice cream kind, actual snicker bar. I put into
Speaker 1: the freezer. It over here, baby, that's the one, and
Speaker 1: Nico would go, I am placing it in the threes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Was she German? Uh? Yeah, she had to be German?
Speaker 1: Was she German? I mean she was if not German,
Speaker 1: Austrian or something. Well, I'm just saying I didn't even know.
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about her except Nico sat in with
Speaker 1: the velvet underground for a while and then my amazing
Speaker 1: vocal talents, and that was good. That's what included me
Speaker 1: to the idea that she was a German. There's a
Speaker 1: movie about her later years that I want to see
Speaker 1: that came out this year or something. I think it's
Speaker 1: called Taken. So, Chuck, we're talking about freedom schools, as
Speaker 1: we already said, and then we got silly. Now we're
Speaker 1: getting back to it. Okay, that's right, because this is
Speaker 1: not a silly topic, but it has a c o
Speaker 1: a at the beginning. Should we talk about that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is about the freedom schools, which, as you
Speaker 1: will very soon find out, Uh, we're in Mississippi during
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. I mean, like in probably the
Speaker 1: most dangerous place in the country. Yeah, during the most
Speaker 1: dangerous point in the civil rights movement. That's where this
Speaker 1: this story takes place. That's right. And freedom schools were great,
Speaker 1: and they were a great thing, and we're happy to
Speaker 1: be talking about them. But uh, in a lot of
Speaker 1: the quotes and and a lot of the curriculum of
Speaker 1: the freedom schools themselves. Uh, they use the word negro
Speaker 1: and it's obviously not a word that people use anymore,
Speaker 1: but some of the like curriculum class titles feature that word.
Speaker 1: And so just letting everyone know that that's coming. And
Speaker 1: we're not gonna say we're just gonna read their curriculums
Speaker 1: in their plots as it existed back then. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this this heads up. Yeah, we're and we were
Speaker 1: just kind of sticking to the vernacular at the times
Speaker 1: being used in context within reason of course. So um
Speaker 1: so this this takes place in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. But I want to go back a little
Speaker 1: further than that, the n with the the groundbreaking see
Speaker 1: Changing Board Brown Versus Board of Education ruling where the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court said, you know that that separate but equal
Speaker 1: thing that we said back in was constitutional. Word, that's
Speaker 1: not true. Segregation is not constitutional, it's not legal anymore.
Speaker 1: Everybody needs to integrate schools at least, but they failed
Speaker 1: to say and do it by nineteen sixty four or
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty or next year. They just said I think
Speaker 1: something like in a like a deliberate and speedy manner
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um, and so Mississippi said, oh,
Speaker 1: you didn't tell us when we had to do it
Speaker 1: by Yeah, let me just dig my heel in here
Speaker 1: and the other one in here, and we're just going
Speaker 1: to keep our schools segregated. And not only segregated, Mississippi
Speaker 1: had some of the poorest excuses for schools for African
Speaker 1: American students in the country. Um, the state average for Mississippi,
Speaker 1: I think in nineteen sixty was that they spent four
Speaker 1: times more on schools for white children then they did
Speaker 1: on schools for black children. That was just the state average.
Speaker 1: In some towns it was way worse. You're talking about budgets,
Speaker 1: spinning budgets. In Tunica, they spent a hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: two dollars and eighty cents per white pupil on average
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two. That's per year. It was in
Speaker 1: that year, a hundred and seventy two eight. They spent
Speaker 1: five dollars and ninety nine cents per black people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's just kind of how it was like. You
Speaker 1: went to school in share cropper schools or what they
Speaker 1: were called. If you were a black kid and you
Speaker 1: were you got a terrible education by comparison, um, white kids,
Speaker 1: schools usually ran for about six months out of the year.
Speaker 1: If you were an African American kid in Mississippi, your
Speaker 1: school might run three if if it was even open
Speaker 1: that year. The rest of the time, you were expected
Speaker 1: to be out in the fields working and just knowing
Speaker 1: your place basically. Yeah. And you know, as you'll see
Speaker 1: throughout this podcast, those sharecropper schools not only did they
Speaker 1: fail them fundamentally on things like literacy and maths and
Speaker 1: things like that, but they also failed them historically because
Speaker 1: and I think things have gotten a lot better, but
Speaker 1: one could make the argument that history classes still fail
Speaker 1: historically and telling the true picture of some of these things.
Speaker 1: But back then it was like at the sharecropper schools,
Speaker 1: here you're learning white history, and it's not just like
Speaker 1: this is the important history, but like this is the
Speaker 1: only history. Yours does not matter. Yeah. Um. And even
Speaker 1: worse than that, when they were taught about their heritage
Speaker 1: or whatever, it was usually in relation to slavery, and
Speaker 1: it was also in relation to how, um, how black
Speaker 1: people preferred to be slaves and if they were far
Speaker 1: worse off after the War of Northern Aggression freed them
Speaker 1: and that that was they weren't interested in politics, they
Speaker 1: weren't really self starters, and they needed white people that
Speaker 1: guide them. That was the education you got as an
Speaker 1: African American kid in Mississippi around the time of the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights struggle, and um by the time nineteen four
Speaker 1: role around, there was a lot of agitation going on
Speaker 1: in the African American community. A lot of people saw, hey,
Speaker 1: there's no integration going on. Things have haven't changed at all.
Speaker 1: We're being kept down by Jim Crow air laws, and
Speaker 1: we're going to agitate for change. And in response to that,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of violence against that agitation for change,
Speaker 1: from the KKK, from the state police, from local sheriffs,
Speaker 1: from the local sheriff's redneck like you could get yourself
Speaker 1: killed just by going to vote, registered to vote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if the police were not inciting or committing the
Speaker 1: violence themselves, they certainly would turn a blind eye to
Speaker 1: anything that was going on and not do police work.
Speaker 1: So it's in this context, around December of nine three
Speaker 1: that a guy named Robert Moses, who uh was one
Speaker 1: of the members of I believe he was with Core
Speaker 1: the no I'm sorry, he was with Snick the student
Speaker 1: Non Violent Coordinating Committee UM in Mississippi, and he said,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea. We're gonna call it Freedom Summer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Freedom Summer. And by the way, big shout
Speaker 1: out to Dave Rouse, big shout out one of our
Speaker 1: stable of writers these days from the old house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com website, Davis helping us out. And boy,
Speaker 1: he does a great job. He does. It's always a pleasure,
Speaker 1: So thanks Dave. But yeah, the Freedom Summer was in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, and the whole goal of the Freedom
Speaker 1: Summer was really to get people registered to vote on
Speaker 1: mass right. That was the stated goal of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, the subtext of it. UM. John Hale wrote
Speaker 1: a book on Freedom Summer and Freedom Schools, which we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about, and he actually helped Dave out with
Speaker 1: this article, so shout out to John Hale too. But
Speaker 1: he had a quote from John Lewis, the Great John
Speaker 1: Lewis UM, who said, basically, the point of Freedom Summer
Speaker 1: was to force a showdown between local authorities and federal
Speaker 1: authorities because the local authorities were abusively enforcing white supremacy
Speaker 1: and federal and full um authorities were turning a blind
Speaker 1: eye to it, and so they said, we need to
Speaker 1: we need to put ourselves invisible harm's way and and
Speaker 1: force a showdown between these two entities. Yeah, in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four is key. It wasn't just sort of picked
Speaker 1: um randomly. It was key because the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: was going to be signed in July that year, but
Speaker 1: it did not include black voting rights protection. And uh,
Speaker 1: the Democratic National Convention was going to be at the
Speaker 1: end of August of that year in Atlantic City. And
Speaker 1: this is basically like, let's get black folks registered to
Speaker 1: vote so they can go in there and unseat these Dixiecrats.
Speaker 1: To the Southern Democrats who were still very much segregationist
Speaker 1: in Mississippi there for the for the Democratic Convention, their delegation,
Speaker 1: the Mississippi delegation was all white. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 1: another big, big goal, was to create a separate black
Speaker 1: delegation for that National Convention. So to get this to
Speaker 1: force the showdown between local authorities and federal authorities. The
Speaker 1: the the civil rights activists like Robert Moses working in
Speaker 1: Mississippi had zero illusions that that the federal government was
Speaker 1: going to come down and help them out no matter
Speaker 1: what they were doing. Instead, they would be forced to
Speaker 1: act if white Northern kids, the children of these federal authorities,
Speaker 1: came down to Mississippi and put themselves in harm's way
Speaker 1: to kids meaning you know, college students, kids, to old
Speaker 1: folks like us, right, exactly, youngsters that they weren't sitting
Speaker 1: down like twelve year olds. No, no, no, nothing like that,
Speaker 1: but like college students who wanted to come down and
Speaker 1: help people who truly believed in the cause of civil rights. Yeah, white, liberal, progressive, Northern,
Speaker 1: oftentimes Jewish, but not always. But as far as getting
Speaker 1: the federal authorities to pay attention, that first descriptor is
Speaker 1: the most important one, white because again they knew in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: no federal authorities were going to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1: And I mean they had good reason to think that
Speaker 1: Kennedy had the Civil Rights Act as far back as
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty but agreed not to bring it up in
Speaker 1: Congress because they were still trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to keep the Dixiecrats happy and maybe get some sort
Speaker 1: of integration going or civil rights going. And um, they've
Speaker 1: just been left hung out to draw by the federal
Speaker 1: authorities so many times that they were totally right in
Speaker 1: that assumption. Yeah, and they knew that in order to
Speaker 1: really affect change. Um, like you said, they were going
Speaker 1: to get no assistance from the federal government, so they
Speaker 1: need to do it on the ground, grassroots style. Um.
Speaker 1: And what they were really looking towards was the future,
Speaker 1: and they knew that getting kids involved was the key
Speaker 1: and the only way to do that. Or they figured
Speaker 1: the best way to do that, and I think they
Speaker 1: were right was to devise what was called the Freedom
Speaker 1: Schools in the summer of nineteen sixty four, which ended
Speaker 1: up being one summer schools, community based summer schools where uh,
Speaker 1: they had core curriculums for sure, but what they really
Speaker 1: were trying to do is teach young black kids about
Speaker 1: their history and their self worth and give them a
Speaker 1: path forward in the United States. Yeah, with a voice,
Speaker 1: like give them an education that they couldn't find anywhere
Speaker 1: in those sharecropper schools, where the share cropper schools point
Speaker 1: was to keep them down, uneducated, and out of politics
Speaker 1: so that they couldn't vote. Um. These Freedom Schools were
Speaker 1: meant to do the exact opposite, to teach them their
Speaker 1: self worth, but also to say, like, here's how you
Speaker 1: can actually enact change and to create the next generation
Speaker 1: of civil rights activists in Mississippi. That was the point
Speaker 1: of the Freedom school Yeah, And like it was hitting
Speaker 1: me as I was reading this, how progressive that was
Speaker 1: for nineteen sixty four, because that would be progressive now
Speaker 1: in places like even Georgia. Absolutely, And it's still going
Speaker 1: on now, is we'll see, like the the Children's Defense
Speaker 1: Fund revived the Freedom Schools back in the eighties, and
Speaker 1: I think they still have them, and it does still
Speaker 1: have a tinge of subversion. Sadly teaching black kids in
Speaker 1: America their self worth. Yeah, that's that's sad. All right,
Speaker 1: that's a great preamble. Should we take a break? All right,
Speaker 1: we are going to take a break, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: come back and really dig into the mission of the
Speaker 1: freedom schools. Right after this and thing. Okay, So freedom
Speaker 1: Schools again launched and proposed by s n c C
Speaker 1: Snick Snick leader Charlie cobb Uh in December sixty three,
Speaker 1: and they had three. The original idea was let's get
Speaker 1: eleventh and twelfth graders because they're just on the cusp
Speaker 1: of being in you know, in the real world. Um
Speaker 1: arguably already were in the real world. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Uh. And they had three stated purposes
Speaker 1: that they wanted to accomplish. Supplement what they aren't learning
Speaker 1: in high school simple enough. Number two, give them a
Speaker 1: broad intellectual and academic experience during the summertime to bring
Speaker 1: back to students in the classrooms I guess in the fall,
Speaker 1: and then form the basis for statewide student action like
Speaker 1: here's how you can boycott something, Here's how you can
Speaker 1: raise awareness, like teach them how to be grassroots activists.
Speaker 1: And also one of the things that they wanted to
Speaker 1: teach them that we'll see is this is how things work. Like,
Speaker 1: here's the nuts and bolts of this power structure that
Speaker 1: we live in that holds us down. And here, understanding
Speaker 1: how it works, you can start to poke around and
Speaker 1: figure out how to overcome that. That was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge part of it. That's right. So it all starts
Speaker 1: with volunteers. And these, like we said, are mainly college students. Uh.
Speaker 1: They saw this by way of ads in the New
Speaker 1: York Times and other groups in college emphasis that basically
Speaker 1: said hey, this is what we want to do. You've
Speaker 1: been watching this on TV every night. Um, I know
Speaker 1: that You might live in Manhattan or Brooklyn or someplace,
Speaker 1: but if you are a young white liberal progressive and
Speaker 1: you really want to make a difference, get off your
Speaker 1: couch and come down to Mississippi for the summer, endanger
Speaker 1: your life and helped teach these kids. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think I think something like a thousand I saw, like
Speaker 1: as much as there a bunch of people answered this call. Um,
Speaker 1: like northern mostly white college students came down to Mississippi
Speaker 1: for this Freedom Summer, not just the Freedom schools. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think two hundred and eighty of them ended up
Speaker 1: being teachers out of about the seven hundred or so
Speaker 1: who volunteered for the Freedom Summer. Yeah. And I've heard
Speaker 1: different stories on how the people who got selected to
Speaker 1: be teachers for the Freedom schools were selected. This article
Speaker 1: makes it sound like, um, the greener ones, the ones
Speaker 1: who really shouldn't be put in harm's way, were assigned
Speaker 1: to the Freedom schools. But from what I've read, they
Speaker 1: were very much in harm's way as being teachers of
Speaker 1: these freedom schools. But regardless of of who got assigned
Speaker 1: to become a Freedom school teacher or why, they were told,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to pay your way to and from Mississippi.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to pay your own room and board,
Speaker 1: so expect to have to shell out over two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks or up to two hundred bucks over the course
Speaker 1: of the summer. Yeah. It also said they would uh
Speaker 1: live basically in the homes of local black families. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they paid them rent. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they paid them rent. But the black families who did
Speaker 1: put these white Northern college students up over the summer
Speaker 1: to teach freedom schools very much put their own families
Speaker 1: and homes in harm's way. Because the Freedom school and
Speaker 1: actually the whole Freedom Summer volunteers who came down, they
Speaker 1: didn't take Mississippi by surprise. The white power establishment Mississippi
Speaker 1: knew they were coming and they were very unhappy about this.
Speaker 1: They said publicly that these people would be treated as invaders,
Speaker 1: that this was a a second war of Northern aggression.
Speaker 1: They doubled the number of highway patrol officers and not
Speaker 1: to keep the peace. Um. They they knew they were
Speaker 1: coming down, and they were not happy about these Freedom
Speaker 1: schools or the Freedom Summer in general. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: guess we should go ahead and say right off the
Speaker 1: bat to add gravity to the situation. And there may
Speaker 1: be a short stuff in here. I've been wanting to
Speaker 1: do one on the disappearance of these three men. But
Speaker 1: the CORE Training Crew Congress of Racial Equality was CORE
Speaker 1: and they were helping out with the Freedom rides in
Speaker 1: the early sixties on the buses in Selma in the
Speaker 1: Deep South. And there were three gentlemen, Andrew Goodman and
Speaker 1: Michael Scherner, two white men, and another colleague, James Cheney,
Speaker 1: a young black man that worked with CORE. They went missing,
Speaker 1: um in Longdale, Mississippi, and we're basically taken in murders.
Speaker 1: So this is at the area. This is before a
Speaker 1: few months before the Freedom Schools were to launch, and
Speaker 1: you're going down there knowing that these men disappeared under
Speaker 1: mysterious circumstances. I'm pretty sure it was like a week
Speaker 1: before basically, because it happened like they got the news
Speaker 1: during the orientation in Oxford, Ohio that they held for
Speaker 1: the Freedom School teachers. The news came through that these
Speaker 1: three guys had gone missing and then were later found murdered,
Speaker 1: and some people did back out and we're like, I
Speaker 1: can't take this risk, but it seems like most of
Speaker 1: them pressed on right. Yeah. Absolutely, and I think some
Speaker 1: people's um resolve was doubled by that kind of thing too.
Speaker 1: But their disappearance and ultimately their deaths proved that idea
Speaker 1: that these the civil rights activists in Mississippi needed these
Speaker 1: white Northern volunteers to come down because James Cheney, he
Speaker 1: was a local Mississippi activists, he was a black guy.
Speaker 1: And Um Schwarner, Michael Schwerner and good Goodman, both of
Speaker 1: them were white. And because they went missing along with Cheney,
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty FBI agents and two hundred where
Speaker 1: are the sailors from the local naval station jags showed up,
Speaker 1: Sure showed up to search for these guys. And Michael
Speaker 1: Scharner's widow said, this never would have happened if if
Speaker 1: my husband had been a black man, and all this
Speaker 1: was happening because he was white. I do want to
Speaker 1: there's this is rife with a lot of quotes that
Speaker 1: a lot of them were not going to read, but
Speaker 1: I did want to read this one from Howard's inn. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the message at this orientation that you talked
Speaker 1: about at the Western College for Women in Oxford, so
Speaker 1: you're showing up, You're like, I want to volunteer. I
Speaker 1: want to do the right thing. They sit you down
Speaker 1: an auditorium and say this. You'll arrive in Rleville, which
Speaker 1: is a place in Ruleville in the delta. It will
Speaker 1: be a hundred degrees. You'll be sweaty and dirty. You
Speaker 1: won't be able to bathe often, or sleep well or
Speaker 1: eat good food. I don't know about that, but there
Speaker 1: was some pretty decent food that kind of stuck out
Speaker 1: to me. Howard's in mine at not? I thought so.
Speaker 1: The first day of school, there may be four teachers
Speaker 1: and three students. Uh, And the local Negro minister will
Speaker 1: phone you to say you can't use his church basement
Speaker 1: after all because his life has been threatened. And the
Speaker 1: curriculum we've drawn up um Negro history and American government
Speaker 1: maybe something you know only a little about yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: you'll knock on doors all day in the hot sun
Speaker 1: to find students. You'll meet on someone's lawn under a tree.
Speaker 1: You'll tear up the curriculum and teach what you know.
Speaker 1: And it seems like that's really kind of what happened.
Speaker 1: It was very prescient. Yeah, I don't know if that
Speaker 1: quote was long after him describing it, but if that's
Speaker 1: what they told them at orientation before the Freedom schools,
Speaker 1: then yeah, that's exactly how it ended up. And how many.
Speaker 1: I think originally they were gonna target, like I said,
Speaker 1: eleventh and twelfth graders, twenty schools, about a thousand students.
Speaker 1: But when you know, when school they started, parents heard
Speaker 1: about this and brought everybody. Basically they did something like
Speaker 1: I've seen as much as but um, at least two
Speaker 1: thousand students were enrolled in Freedom Schools in Mississippi this summer,
Speaker 1: and double the number of schools plus one some. I
Speaker 1: think Hattiesburg had six different schools. Meridian had a school
Speaker 1: with two hundred two hundred students. That was the biggest one.
Speaker 1: Um it was. And they originally intended, like you said,
Speaker 1: eleventh and twelfth graders, maybe as young as middle like
Speaker 1: middle schoolers possibly, but really that was it, and it
Speaker 1: ended up being elementary school kids. I believe there was
Speaker 1: an eighty year old enrolled at one of the Freedom schools.
Speaker 1: Um and it just became a sensation in Mississippi among
Speaker 1: the African American community. UM. And there was a there
Speaker 1: was a New York Times article, they sent a reporter
Speaker 1: down to kind of cover this, and they the reporter
Speaker 1: was in Holly Springs and there was a school teacher
Speaker 1: from Chicago named Aviva Futtorian, and she said, we're probably like,
Speaker 1: are you from outer space? Kind of sounds like it
Speaker 1: the silver jumped suit she was wearing it, but um
Speaker 1: she said that they were teaching under a suite gum tree.
Speaker 1: And this became kind of like ah. That was another
Speaker 1: reason why that Oxford quote from Howard's Inn was so pressy.
Speaker 1: And it's like a lot of times like they didn't
Speaker 1: have any place to actually meet. They had to meet
Speaker 1: outside or on somebody's front porch or something like that,
Speaker 1: because someone might say, like he said in the in
Speaker 1: the quote, like hey, use my church basement. But then
Speaker 1: when the KKK found out there, you know, they may
Speaker 1: burn across it in that churchyard, and then that preacher
Speaker 1: has to say, I'm sorry, I can't take the risk. Well,
Speaker 1: so you know, Schwerner and Cheney and Goodman when they
Speaker 1: went when they were murdered, kidnapped and murdered, they were
Speaker 1: investigating the burning of the church that they were going
Speaker 1: to be holding their Freedom School that's what they were
Speaker 1: doing out there, and they went to go find out
Speaker 1: what happened, and that's when they went missing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: message sent loud and clear. So school was outside, which
Speaker 1: is every kid's favorite thing, right, and then we'll as
Speaker 1: we'll see, there was another There was at least one
Speaker 1: school that got fire bombed and burned to the ground
Speaker 1: after school had already started. I don't think any It
Speaker 1: was like after hours. But the next day the um
Speaker 1: school met in the like yard next to this burned
Speaker 1: down building that they've been meeting in the day before.
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing. So there was a lot of I mean,
Speaker 1: this wasn't just going to school. They were there's a
Speaker 1: whole state full of white people who violently did not
Speaker 1: want you to be learning this stuff. Yeah. They were
Speaker 1: just as organized on you know, the defense of this
Speaker 1: or I guess the offense, which would that be. Uh,
Speaker 1: they weren't defending it, No, to go on the offensive. Sure,
Speaker 1: I just got mixed up in my head. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got all right. So uh, in the spring of nineteen
Speaker 1: four they met and they were like, listen, we need
Speaker 1: to get a curriculum together because this is a real school.
Speaker 1: They're gonna tear it up, but we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: get it down at least. Uh. And the final one
Speaker 1: and had sections for like I said, reading, writing, arithmetic,
Speaker 1: the three RS, and science. But the bulk of it was,
Speaker 1: um what they called citizen curriculum. Citizenship curriculum, which is
Speaker 1: basically like African American civics, which they had never heard
Speaker 1: of and never learned. Like I'm sure parents told them
Speaker 1: stories and stuff, but as far as going to school,
Speaker 1: they had never encountered anything like this before. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: depending on the age of their parents to their parents
Speaker 1: might have never heard anything like that before either. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was The Citizenship Curriculum was broken into seven units,
Speaker 1: and each one built upon the last unit. It was
Speaker 1: meant to basically say, here's the status quo, here's what's
Speaker 1: wrong with the status quo, here's how to change to
Speaker 1: the status quo, or basically the three buckets you could
Speaker 1: put everything in, and um, the one I haven't read
Speaker 1: all of them, but I went and read the fourth
Speaker 1: one called the Power Structure Unit four, and I would
Speaker 1: strongly recommend. I think, um, the student Non violent Coordinating
Speaker 1: Committees digital archive has it like digitized? Yeah, that's when
Speaker 1: you sent me right, but go read it. It's called
Speaker 1: Uniform Introducing the Power Structure, and it explains how and why, uh,
Speaker 1: white people are taught to be afraid of and hate
Speaker 1: black people, how black people are taught that their inferior,
Speaker 1: and that the reason behind the whole thing is money
Speaker 1: and profits, and that all of the racism and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear and crime and all that stuff is all
Speaker 1: just window dressing around this power structure that's meant to
Speaker 1: keep people servile and available for cheap labor so that
Speaker 1: some people can profit more off of their work. It's
Speaker 1: the most disgusting thing I've ever read, but it's also
Speaker 1: one of the most eye opening. And it was designed
Speaker 1: for eleventh and twelfth graders back in the sixties, and
Speaker 1: it still rings true today. Yeah, the one that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna dig in and read, I didn't have time, but
Speaker 1: uh number six Material Things and Soul Things. So this
Speaker 1: is almost the last one um on the Citizenship Curriculum units,
Speaker 1: and that is that black people will not achieve true
Speaker 1: freedom by trying to acquire more stuff, but by using
Speaker 1: their insights about oppression to create a new kind of society.
Speaker 1: And I think that's so important in these in this curriculum,
Speaker 1: it's like, we're not trying to teach you like, hey,
Speaker 1: go out there and uh try and gain status in
Speaker 1: society so you can get a bigger house or or
Speaker 1: things that you see that these white people have, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure was you know, you covet things. That's what
Speaker 1: people do, so I'm sure that was a natural inclination,
Speaker 1: like I want the stuff that they have. But it's
Speaker 1: so important to say like that the stuff isn't what matters, well,
Speaker 1: not only just stuff in general, but there's they kind
Speaker 1: of walk the students through it in this curriculum where
Speaker 1: they say, like, what are some things that white people
Speaker 1: have that you don't have that you wish you had?
Speaker 1: What are some things white people have that you don't want?
Speaker 1: Um and what the purpose of this curriculum wasn't to
Speaker 1: teach black kids to hate white kids. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, it actually teaches them to understand white people more.
Speaker 1: Let me read you this quote from this unit, for
Speaker 1: we have learned that although it seems that white people
Speaker 1: have better schools, for instance, that they pay for it
Speaker 1: by learning lies and by learning to hate and be afraid.
Speaker 1: We have learned that we are misled by these lies too,
Speaker 1: that the myths have taught us to believe that we
Speaker 1: are inferior and dumb and that we have made no
Speaker 1: contributions to society. So it's just it's saying like, don't
Speaker 1: hate white people. They're they're being duped by this too.
Speaker 1: But they're they're Patsy's in this power structure too. They
Speaker 1: just happen to not be the group that's being stepped on,
Speaker 1: you know, but they're still being used and abused. Yeah,
Speaker 1: school children in particular for context um and well, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting to when you just talked about like, uh,
Speaker 1: they wanted the same things, not necessarily stuff as the
Speaker 1: white students, one of the most popular classes because you know,
Speaker 1: they would get in there and say this is what
Speaker 1: I want to learn. And that's the whole part about
Speaker 1: tearing up the curriculum. One of the most popular subjects
Speaker 1: in one of these schools um was French, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to learn French because they knew white kids had
Speaker 1: a French teacher. Like something is innocuous is at Like
Speaker 1: I want to learn French too, write? And I mean
Speaker 1: that was the point in schools, not just like sit
Speaker 1: down and shut up and listen, this is what we're
Speaker 1: here to teach you. It was what do you want
Speaker 1: to learn? What are you guys going to feel good
Speaker 1: about yourselves for knowing that you can't? You didn't know
Speaker 1: when you came in here. And so teaching in the
Speaker 1: Freedom Schools that summer was super improvisational and spontaneous. They
Speaker 1: really did tear up the curriculum and a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of cases. Um, sounds like a good model
Speaker 1: for schools period. Yeah, it sounds like one of those
Speaker 1: like Waldorf schools or a monessary school or something like that.
Speaker 1: It sounds very much like one of those child Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mean that was that was the point was too,
Speaker 1: not to to drill them with what the adults thought
Speaker 1: they should learn, but to to raise up their self
Speaker 1: worth and self esteem and whatever that took. Is what
Speaker 1: they taught them. Yeah, and it's cool that they didn't. Um.
Speaker 1: Not only were they concerned about civics and the core academics,
Speaker 1: but something that could have very easily been pushed to
Speaker 1: the side is creative pursuits. And they really embraced that
Speaker 1: because they found that these students were natural poets and
Speaker 1: really eager to get in there and read and write poetry. Um.
Speaker 1: They read Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and Gertrude Stein
Speaker 1: and wrote a lot of poetry themselves. Some of it
Speaker 1: is just heartbreaking, some of it inspiring, some of it both. Um.
Speaker 1: There was one school in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, UH, Freedom School
Speaker 1: students of St. John's Methodist Church. They wrote their own
Speaker 1: declaration of independence and it's it's all in here in
Speaker 1: this article. We can't go through the whole thing, but
Speaker 1: I encourage you to like read this thing and full.
Speaker 1: It's really hetty like advanced stuff. It really is. Um.
Speaker 1: There are also newspapers were really big at the freedom schools.
Speaker 1: They and they qualified as alternative newspapers. And that guy
Speaker 1: John Hale, the professor from South Carolina who wrote the
Speaker 1: book on Freedom Schools. Literally literally, he says that UM,
Speaker 1: in Mississippi that summer the Freedom schools, student run newspapers
Speaker 1: were the biggest source of civil rights news in the
Speaker 1: entire states, and that they were the state's first taste
Speaker 1: of alternative news. Ever. But that like almost all of
Speaker 1: the forty one schools had their own newspapers, and in
Speaker 1: some communities that's that's how some adults were learning what
Speaker 1: they needed to do to go register to vote by
Speaker 1: reading it in the student run Freedom School newspaper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a newspaper staffer. I think you were too,
Speaker 1: probably right, were you just starting your own papers? But
Speaker 1: I was a newspaper staffer in high school. And there's
Speaker 1: something about like putting together a publication that even I
Speaker 1: see little kids, uh doing for fun, and I remember
Speaker 1: doing for fun. So it's it doesn't surprise me that
Speaker 1: like that the newspaper was every school had their own,
Speaker 1: and it seems like they were really really into it.
Speaker 1: I could see your your little family news, the extra
Speaker 1: extra mom puts too much hot sauce and eggs this morning.
Speaker 1: Well it's it's on my mind because I just got
Speaker 1: back from vacation and uh we went with one to
Speaker 1: three four older girls plus my younger daughter, and they
Speaker 1: did a the Beach Blotter. They put together their own
Speaker 1: little magazine for the week, and I just remembered, I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: kids are just drawn to putting together newspapers and magazines.
Speaker 1: And these kids in the Freedom schools leapt at the chance,
Speaker 1: uh to interview people and to you know, be little
Speaker 1: cub reporters. And type this stuff up. They were really
Speaker 1: big on taking typing classes because that would lead to
Speaker 1: work obviously later on as well. Um, I just thought
Speaker 1: it was really kind of a cool part of this
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, I know, it's super cool. As was
Speaker 1: the theater. There was a traveling group called the Free
Speaker 1: Southern Theater that would form a play called in White America.
Speaker 1: Then they would go around to freedom schools and perform
Speaker 1: this play. And there were music groups. Uh, the great
Speaker 1: great folk singer and activist Pete Seeger went down there,
Speaker 1: of course, and toward the Freedom schools it was like,
Speaker 1: here's how you play a G chord and sing about
Speaker 1: like things that matter? Right, pretty great. Why don't you
Speaker 1: go on over to the fridge give me the frozen
Speaker 1: snicker ball. No, no, I don't even like frozen snickers
Speaker 1: that's the big reveal at the end of the song.
Speaker 1: But you know, lu Reid does or did um alright,
Speaker 1: so should we take another break? Yeah, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a break, everybody, so sit tight and we'll be
Speaker 1: right back and h So, like I said, Chuck, this
Speaker 1: experiment in pushing Mississippi into the civil rights era was
Speaker 1: not well received by the white power establishment, and I
Speaker 1: think it kind of varied from one community to another,
Speaker 1: and but none none of them were happy from what
Speaker 1: I understand, and the ones that were unhappiest with the
Speaker 1: Freedom Schools were very, very violent UM in retaliation for
Speaker 1: these things. This one summer, this Freedom Summer, lasted ten weeks.
Speaker 1: I think the Freedom Schools lasted six weeks, but the
Speaker 1: Freedom Summer itself lasted ten weeks. And in that ten
Speaker 1: week period, thirty homes of of black residents, thirty seven
Speaker 1: black churches were fire bombed. In one summer in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: UM demonstrators were shot at thirty five different times by
Speaker 1: the police. Okay, UM eight volunteers were attacked or beaten
Speaker 1: by white mobs or police officers. There were six known
Speaker 1: murders that summer related to the Freedom Summer, and UM
Speaker 1: female volunteers were UM sexually assaulted. It was a really violent,
Speaker 1: dangerous place to be doing what they were doing at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, that was. There was one town, Macomb, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: There were more than a dozen bombings in two months,
Speaker 1: more than twelve bombings in a two month period, twelve
Speaker 1: and a half and there were they were called the
Speaker 1: bombing capital of the world at the time. Again, local
Speaker 1: police turning a blind eye. I get the impression that,
Speaker 1: like they actually qualified as the bombing capital of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a thing written in a freedom school paper, right,
Speaker 1: It wasn't like an offhanded comment like they may have
Speaker 1: qualified as the bombing capital of the world. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: And even if there wasn't like direct violence, there was
Speaker 1: indirect violence, intimidation, intimidation. People would probably drive by and
Speaker 1: uh say the worst things, right exactly. So, Um, it
Speaker 1: was not a it was a struggle to just make
Speaker 1: it through this summer UM, but they did as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact. And one of the goals of this
Speaker 1: um Freedom Schools was to create or help get the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party, the antidote to the Dixiecrats in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: UM seated at the Democratic National Convention. And um, they
Speaker 1: they attempted to do that and actually got a meeting
Speaker 1: at the Credentials Committee of the d n C, but
Speaker 1: we're ultimately turned down. Yeah, they had delegates. This is
Speaker 1: just amazing. They had delegates from all forty one of
Speaker 1: these schools and they met at a statewide convention in Meridian, Mississippi. Um,
Speaker 1: a place I have been through on a greyhound bus. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a country song and emotion right there. For sure.
Speaker 1: That was a place where they stopped us and the
Speaker 1: drug dogs got on. Oh got you in Meridian? Huh yeah?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, interesting, I never thought about
Speaker 1: gray buses. Is probably a great way to transport drugs,
Speaker 1: but probably not. Hey, uh, speaking of country music, have
Speaker 1: you seen that Ken Burns documentary? Not yet. I've heard
Speaker 1: it's great. Good. I'm into country music. Now. Well, I
Speaker 1: saw your Dixie Chicks tattoo on your next so I
Speaker 1: wonder what that was it just pen right now, I
Speaker 1: haven't I haven't pulled the trigger all the way. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing that. So uh, they wrote
Speaker 1: these these kids, these delegates went down there, they wrote
Speaker 1: their own political platform for the m f d P.
Speaker 1: And it was it's amazing, like, these are kids that
Speaker 1: in six weeks time went from just uh, basically having
Speaker 1: no hope whatsoever to fully forming a delegation and and
Speaker 1: writing their own political platform and presenting it in public, right.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't it wasn't like, hey, let's get these
Speaker 1: kids citied at the d N c like the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Democratic Freedom Party was made up of adult activists, but
Speaker 1: the the kids from the Freedom Schools helped write their platform. UM.
Speaker 1: They also formed from this delegation that met at the
Speaker 1: end of the summer, the Mississippi Student Union, and this
Speaker 1: actually brought to fruition one of the other stated goals
Speaker 1: of Freedom Schools, which was creating the next generation of activists.
Speaker 1: Because when Freedom School was over and UM Share Propper
Speaker 1: School started back again or even integrated schools around the state,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there were kids wearing like one Man,
Speaker 1: One Vote buttons, which could get you expelled and actually
Speaker 1: did get some kids expelled. But they were like little
Speaker 1: civil rights activists showing up to school, aware now of
Speaker 1: the situation they were dealing with and ready to take
Speaker 1: it on. Yeah, twenty five of them volunteered to be
Speaker 1: the first to desegregate their local high schools. So that
Speaker 1: call comes out like we have to desegregate, Um, who's
Speaker 1: going to be the one? I know, just the people
Speaker 1: to walk in there, and twenty five of these graduates
Speaker 1: of the Freedom Schools did so. Yep, UM, So it
Speaker 1: was it was a big deal. I mean, they managed
Speaker 1: to create UM the next generation of activist leaders. But
Speaker 1: one of the other kind of the through lines of
Speaker 1: the civil rights struggle during this time and of the
Speaker 1: Freedom Schools themselves, was the idea that if you had
Speaker 1: I think the quote was, um, if you have strong
Speaker 1: people or no, strong people, don't need strong leaders. And
Speaker 1: a civil rights activist named Ella Baker said that, and
Speaker 1: the point was, like, if you teach everybody how to
Speaker 1: how to how to struggle for themselves, how to fight
Speaker 1: for themselves, to stand up for themselves, you don't have
Speaker 1: to wait around for Martin once in a you know,
Speaker 1: handful of generations person like Martin Luther King Junior to
Speaker 1: come along and lead the way. The people can lead
Speaker 1: the way themselves. And that was one of the things
Speaker 1: that they were doing with the Freedom Schools, not just
Speaker 1: trying to come up with like the next leaders they
Speaker 1: needed leaders, sure, but also to make everybody who came
Speaker 1: through the Freedom school like aware and ready for action.
Speaker 1: So one of the sad um sad legacies was, you know,
Speaker 1: we said at the beginning that what they wanted to
Speaker 1: do was one of their big goals was to seat
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at that sixty four convention
Speaker 1: in August, and they won a public hearing which was
Speaker 1: a big win in and of itself with the d
Speaker 1: n C Committee that was broadcast on live TV. Uh
Speaker 1: the widow of Michael Scharner showed up to talk. Uh
Speaker 1: Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Showed up to talk. And
Speaker 1: the last one and this is just very sad and shameful.
Speaker 1: The last speaker and they said, uh, Dave describes her
Speaker 1: as the most dangerous to that democratic establishment was a
Speaker 1: former sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer. Did you see her testimony? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was brave as they come. She was as brave
Speaker 1: as they come. But yeah, but her testimony was interrupted
Speaker 1: on national TV by President Lyndon Johnson. He called an
Speaker 1: impromptu press conference in the middle of her testimony. So
Speaker 1: all the TV breaks away, of course, because the president
Speaker 1: as a press conference they need to get to. And
Speaker 1: everyone was thinking, all right, this is big news. He's
Speaker 1: gonna announce his VP pick for the six four election
Speaker 1: or something like that, and he basically got on TV
Speaker 1: and sort of ad libbed had today as the nine
Speaker 1: month anniversary of the assassination of JFK and uh, Black
Speaker 1: people all around the country and white liberal progressives are going,
Speaker 1: what's a nine month anniversary? Right, like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: Not just liberals in in um civil rights activists, but
Speaker 1: the news too, sall right through and it actually backfired
Speaker 1: because Johnson interrupting Fannie Lew Hamer became news itself, and
Speaker 1: so Fannie lu Hamer's testimony stayed on the news for
Speaker 1: days afterward, got way more exposure because of Johnson's clumsy,
Speaker 1: ham fisted attempt. And the reason why her testimony and
Speaker 1: the idea of a Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party was a um.
Speaker 1: It was a threat to the to the Democrats was
Speaker 1: because if you got rid of the Dixiecrats, if you
Speaker 1: forced integration on the South, you're going to lose the
Speaker 1: solid South. The South had always voted Democrats because they
Speaker 1: hated the Republicans, because the Republicans were the party of
Speaker 1: Lincoln who forced reconstruction on them. So Reconstruction comes along
Speaker 1: and all of the Southerners went Democrat and they formed
Speaker 1: the Dixiecrats right well. When Johnson signed the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Amendment in nine he said to an aid, we just
Speaker 1: handed the South to the Republicans for a very long time.
Speaker 1: And it's still the case still today, you're hard pressed
Speaker 1: to find a county in the South that's blue. They're
Speaker 1: all red. Yeah, well that's not quite true, but no,
Speaker 1: it's but but I mean, okay, let me put it
Speaker 1: this with Atlantas. But how many Atlantas are there in
Speaker 1: the South that I'm saying it? You know, like anywhere else,
Speaker 1: the urban centers are where the blues are. But I mean,
Speaker 1: like the north, the northern and southern suburbs, they're all read.
Speaker 1: I mean, Atlanta's a little island of blue and a
Speaker 1: thing of red. Yeah. This is weird to think that
Speaker 1: that's the legacy of of this this time still yeah. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: some of these students ended up to go on and
Speaker 1: do great, great things, I think, dare I say many
Speaker 1: of them went on to do great things on a
Speaker 1: smaller scale. But some we're sort of known nationally, uh,
Speaker 1: and we're pioneers in the black community. One man Eddie
Speaker 1: James Carthon, He was the first black mayor uh in
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Delta. UM, very very big deal. He was
Speaker 1: elected mayor at the age of eight, which I mean
Speaker 1: back then though, was like fifty today. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: agings really regress since since then. And we talked earlier
Speaker 1: about the fact that these these schools continue. Um, they
Speaker 1: only operated in but a few of them were transformed
Speaker 1: into Freedom centers and they were meeting places, uh for
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Student Union. They were community meeting places, educational resources. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kindergartens would go there during the day, they would have
Speaker 1: adult classes at night. And in the nineteen eighties is
Speaker 1: when the Children's Defense Fund created its own version of
Speaker 1: the Freedom Schools. All those years later and they now
Speaker 1: operate in eighty seven cities across twenty eight states, with
Speaker 1: their main focus being literacy. Yeah, it's pretty great, but
Speaker 1: they still honor their African heritage because the school day
Speaker 1: begins with a Harambie traditional African welcoming celebration with songs
Speaker 1: and chants that goes a little something like go on
Speaker 1: over to the free. Have you noticed like it's kind
Speaker 1: of transformed into singing. It was talking before You're ditching
Speaker 1: your lou read this and guess so about growing him? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Freedom schools, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of it archived out there on the internet,
Speaker 1: and you could do a lot worse than starting out
Speaker 1: at the Student Non Violent Coordinating committees digital archives. They've
Speaker 1: got a lot of cool stuff on there. Um just
Speaker 1: really really well done, nice short, punchy articles that linked
Speaker 1: to the next thing and the thing and just make
Speaker 1: you want to keep reading. Um. Well, since I said
Speaker 1: Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, it's time for a listener, mate.
Speaker 1: So this was the This is the gentleman who wrote in.
Speaker 1: We had a few people that wrote in trying to
Speaker 1: explain our confusion on due process. Oh is this the
Speaker 1: guy's like? Which which one was that in? That was in?
Speaker 1: It was in paraphilias. Paraphilias because we're talking about like
Speaker 1: people going to prison for gay sex in their own
Speaker 1: home right consenting in Texas in the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: And this is from Keith from Philadelphia. Not a Colm
Speaker 1: law professor, guys, just a law student. But I thought
Speaker 1: I could help clear this up. And the lawrence of
Speaker 1: e Texas due process point due process is essentially broken
Speaker 1: up into two prongs procedural procedural. That's a bill three
Speaker 1: year old procedural and substant of did I say that right?
Speaker 1: Procedural due process is exactly what Josh was talking about.
Speaker 1: Provides you, notice, um, an opportunity to be heard before
Speaker 1: rights are taken away from you. Substantive due process is
Speaker 1: what the court was referring to, and lawrence concept is
Speaker 1: somewhat complicated, but simply stated, substantive due process just means
Speaker 1: certain rights that are so fundamental that no amount of
Speaker 1: process or procedure could ever legitimately deprive you of them.
Speaker 1: In other words, consenting adults have such a fundamental right
Speaker 1: to privacy behind closed doors that to punish them for
Speaker 1: having consensual sex will violate their due process rights, no
Speaker 1: matter how much procedure they are afforded it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is as clear as bell as bell future law professor.
Speaker 1: I'm losing it here. Thank you Keith from Philly. Thank
Speaker 1: you Keith. That was a I mean, I emailed them
Speaker 1: a media and he's like a lot of people have
Speaker 1: written and thanks to everybody wrote in and get a
Speaker 1: at um. But I emailed them back and I was like, Keith,
Speaker 1: because is the first one I've fully gotten. Yeah, Keith,
Speaker 1: And I think if you stroll on over to your refrigerator,
Speaker 1: you will find a frozen sticker bar waiting on you
Speaker 1: because we snuck into your home in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. Whereas Chuck would say, a flozen one. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch this like Keith did,
Speaker 1: you can go on the stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com and check out our social links. Or you can
Speaker 1: send us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up,
Speaker 1: spank it on the bottom, maybe send it along with
Speaker 1: a frozen snicker bar to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
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