One of the purposes of the Freedom Schools is to train people to be active agents in bringing about social change. We have attempted to design a developmental curriculum that begins on the level of the students’ everyday lives and those things in their environment that they have either already experienced or can readily perceive, and builds up to a more realistic perception of American society, themselves, the conditions of their oppression, and alternatives offered by the Freedom Movement.
It is not our purpose to impose a particularly set of conclusions. Our purpose is to encourage the asking of questions, and hope that society can be improved.
The curriculum is divided into seven units:
Comparison of student’s reality with others (the way the students live and the way others live)
North to Freedom? (the Negro in the North)
Examining the apparent reality (the “better lives†that whites live)
Introducing the power structure
The poor Negro and the poor white
Material things versus soul things
The movement
Each unit develops concepts that are needed for those that follow. . . .
There are two additional sets of questions THAT ARE TO BE REINTRODUCED PERIODICALLY, both permit an on-going evaluation of the effectiveness of the curriculum, and to provide students with recurring opportunities for perceiving their own growth in sophistication.
The BASIC SET OF QUESTIONS is:
Why are we (students and teachers) in Freedom Schools?
What is the freedom movement?
What alternatives does the freedom movement offer us?
The SECONDARY SET OF QUESTIONS is:
1. What does the majority culture have that we want?
2. What does the majority culture have that we don't want?
3. What do we have that we want to keep?
. . . In our work, we have several concerns oriented around Mississippi Negro students:
I would like to propose summer Freedom Schools during the months of July and August, for tenth and eleventh-grade high school students, in order to:
[Curriculum:]
I. Leadership development
a. to give students the perspective of being in a long line of protest and pressure for social and economic justice (i.e. to teach Negro history and the history of the movement.)
b. to educate students in the general goals of the movement, give them wider perspectives (enlarged social objectives, nonviolence, etc.)
c. to train students in the specific organizational skills that they need to develop Southern Negro communities:
d. to plan with each other further action of the student movement.
II. Remedial Academic Program
a. to improve comprehension in reading, fluency and expressiveness in writing.
b. to improve mathematical skill (general arithmetic and basic algebra and geometry.)
c. to fill the gaps in knowledge of basic history and sociology, especially American.
d. to give a general picture of the American economic and political system.
e. to introduce students to art, music and literature of various classical periods, emphasizing distinctive features of each style.
f. to generate knowledge of and ability to use the scientific method.
III. Contemporary Issues
a. to give students more sophisticated views of some current issues.
b. to introduce students to thinking of local difficulties in a context of national problems.
c. to acquaint students with procedures of investigating a problem—rudimentary research.
IV. Non-academic Curriculum
a. to allow students to meet each other as completely as possible, in order to form a network of student leaders who know each other.
b. to give students experience in organization and leadership
c. to improve their ability to express themselves formally (through creative writing, drama, talent shows, semi-spontaneous discussions, etc.)
WATKINS: Well, it was very plain and simple because we when we got there, we said, "We were told that Dr. King and other big folks are out here holding meetings," so we wanted to know if we were at the right place and where Dr. King was and whether that was the case. And he said that he didn't know anything about Dr. King, that he and other students were out here. He said, "Me and some other young folks are out here working with people on voter registration, trying to get them to become registered voters, where they can become first-class citizens while participating in the political process." He asked if we knew the process by which people became registered voters, and we told him we wasn't sure, you know, of the entire process. We knew a couple of folks that were registered and maybe a couple of folks that maybe had tried, but we wasn't sure about the entire process. So he asked if we were interested in learning. So we said, "Yes." So he gave us the form and asked us to fill it out. Then, after completing the form, he gave us a section of the Constitution of Mississippi to interpret. After doing that, he looked at the form and said, "Well, if you had been old enough and had gone to the courthouse and did exactly what you have done here, then you would be qualified to be a registered voter." So he said, "Now that you know how it's done and can do it, will you be willing to work with us and assist us in getting other people to register?" He says, "Part of the way we do it is we go out and we pass out flyers and we talk to people in the community, encourage them to come by the office. And every so often we have meetings, mass meetings, and we invite them to come to the mass meetings where we sing and talk and explain things to people. So, are you interested and willing to help?" So, I told him that I was.
In most cases, you would attempt to do it with someone, but if you didn't have someone, you went alone. Now in Holmes County, one of the most interesting things took place, you know, for me in that I remember very specifically in the town of Durant, where the local police there was attempting to arrest me—and this is the time I'm doing it by myself—was attempting to arrest me without the community people seeing him arrest me. So, I'm canvassing, going door-to-door, and the police is trying to wait, to hang out to catch me when nobody was on the porch looking, because at this particular time people were sitting out on the porch and everything. So he would drive his car up and as I would come out of people’s homes and before I could get to the next place, he would attempt to catch me. And once I caught on to what he was doing, I just told people, I says, "Well, the police is attempting to arrest me for talking to you all about registering to vote. It just goes to show you," here again we are educating, "It just goes to show you how much they value it and don't want you to be registered voters because they know that you could then have some impact on their jobs," and et cetera." But—then after a while, they really decided not to attempt to catch me and arrest me but [to] use that as an intimidating factor. They would go up and down the street—
RACHAL: Sort of following you?
WATKINS: Sometimes kind of following me; other times just doing the siren and then just sitting on the street as an effort to intimidate the community.