CIVIL RIGHTS Activist school to fight racism

The Freedom School will encourage youths' community activism.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
FARRELL, Pa. -- It was 40 years ago that the civil rights movement launched the Mississippi Freedom Schools to fight racism, and a local community group is marking the anniversary with the creation of its own freedom school.
Southwest Gardens Economic Development Corp., a fixture on the local social service scene since the 1970s, will hold a three-week Family Freedom School at its facilities at 500 Darr Ave. beginning this week.
The program is free and predominantly targets black children between 6 and 17 in partnership with a parent or sibling over age 18, said Dr. Kimberly Richards, Southwest's executive director.
She expects about 12 families to participate in the school, which will meet from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for three weeks.
The cost of the program is being underwritten with assistance from the Mercer County Behavioral Health Commission and The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, a national anti-racist training organization based in New Orleans.
Other schools
The Family Freedom School is one of six operating this year in the United States. The others are in Duluth, Minn.; Minneapolis; Seattle; Oakland, Calif.; and New Orleans.
They go by different names, but Richards said Southwest's program adopted the Family Freedom School logo because part of the emphasis will be on getting families involved in some long-term community activism.
Families can work as a team, she said.
The aim is to have an ongoing effort by those who attend the school, she said, explaining that her plans call for the participants to meet in follow-up sessions every other week to help support their ongoing community activism organizing efforts.
Funding for that portion of the program hasn't been secured yet.
A lot of children fall prey to negativity when they don't have a positive image of self or community, Richards said.
What's learned
The freedom school will expose them to history, what has been done in the civil rights movement, what can be done and how they can participate to make social change and become leaders in their own communities, she said.
Richards attended the opening of the freedom schools in Seattle and Minneapolis and saw the positive effects they had.
She decided she wanted to provide that same experience for the people in her community.
Added to that is the 40th anniversary of the Mississippi Freedom Schools and the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education court ruling, making now an opportune time to launch the effort, she said.
The school will have three educators and a counselor, and a major focus will be explaining the connection between the literacy movement, the civil rights movement and the voter rights movement, Richards said.
Local history
There's local history to be covered as well, she said, noting that Mercer County has a rich underground-railroad history that most people know little or nothing about.
There's a connection between the civil rights efforts of the 1860s and the 1960s that continues today, and young people can become a part of that, she said.
Freedom schools opened, primarily in black churches, during that Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, directly through the efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Council of Federated Organizations. Those groups drew about 1,000 young activists, most of them white, to promote black equality and basic democratic rights among the disenfranchised minority.
Local attorneys
Atty. Staughton Lynd of Niles, long known for his work with labor and social issues, was the coordinator of the Mississippi Freedom Schools.
With recent renewed interest in the schools, Lynd put together an Internet version of frequently asked questions about the schools last year.
At best count, there were 41 of them with about 2,000 students, he said, adding that he doesn't know why he was asked to coordinate the effort. The request came from a coordinator with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The curriculum for the schools was drafted in his apartment at Spelman College in Atlanta, and he had the responsibility of assigning the volunteer teachers to the various schools.
The teachers lived with black families, who took in their guests at some personal risk, Lynd recalled.
The schools ran only one summer, he said, noting that organizers thought it was too big a project to continue based on available resources.
Good efforts
The schools held massive voter registration drives, created community education and entertainment centers, established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and ran a summer program to provide black teens with a better educational experience than was available in their schools.
The Freedom Family School will cover a wide variety of topics beyond civil rights, Richards said, noting that slavery, the Reconstruction period, cultural expressions, language, family case management, self-esteem issues and even dealing with growing from childhood to adulthood are part of the curriculum.