Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [82]
Arriving in Mississippi on June 28, teachers had spent a week arranging classrooms, shelving books, and spreading word about their schools. But with the term “Freedom School” seeming like an oxymoron, would anyone come to classes taught by strangers in the middle of summer? The answer depended less on curiosity than on terror.
Three schools were planned in Canton, half an hour north of Jackson. But a man threatened to bomb students’ homes, and others broke into the new library and urinated on the books. On registration day, no one showed up at one school, just a handful at others. Then teachers went door to door and hosted their own Fourth of July picnic. Enrollment soon topped seventy-five. In Ruleville, fifty packed into the old shack that carpenter Fred Winn and others had brought back to life. Because Ruleville’s public schools were still in session, morning classes were for adults, often with toddlers. While cotton baked in surrounding fields, the house swarmed with activity. Children raced in and out. Adults studied citizenship, health, and the three R’s, while teachers sat on the sagging porch near the tall sunflowers, discussing Huckleberry Finn or the truth about Reconstruction. Following a midday break from the heat, high school students took over the school, exploring literature, African culture, art, and biology. Girls especially liked dance classes, where they taught their ungainly teachers how to flap their arms and do “the Monkey.” Above the clamor, students could hear a loud clacking coming from the porch. Typing class.
In Meridian, where Rita and Mickey Schwerner had paved the way, 50 students were expected, but 120 showed up. Teachers facing classes of 30 or more struggled to draw answers from shy students. “What do we mean when we say things are bad in Mississippi?” “What do white people have that we want? ” Despite the overcrowding, one Meridian teacher noticed what SNCC had said about “a knowledge far beyond their years.” “If reading levels are not always the highest,” he wrote home, “the philosophical understanding is almost alarming: some of the things that our 11 and 12 year olds will come out with would never be expected from someone of that age in the North.”
Other schools opened that week in Greenwood and Vicksburg, Greenville and Moss Point. But the most successful schools were down south in Hattiesburg. Blacks there were still talking about “Freedom Day” the previous January, when two hundred had picketed the courthouse in the rain. Since then, more than a thousand had tried to register, some trying six, seven, eight times. Much of Hattiesburg’s fervor stemmed from a single name—Clyde Kennard. The sturdy army veteran had tried to integrate Mississippi Southern College, only to be framed on a charge of stealing chicken feed. Sent to Parchman Farm, Kennard developed terminal cancer but was kept behind bars until just before his death. United in outrage, black Hattiesburg had welcomed SNCC and strengthened its NAACP. As Freedom Summer approached, plans were made for seven Freedom Schools. On registration day, 150 students were expected; 575 showed up. The first to register was an eighty-two-year-old man who had taught himself to read but needed help with the registration form. When classes opened, all seven schools were full. Directors had to promise a second session in August.
Planning and publicity had filled Freedom Schools, but could classes foster any meaningful sense of freedom? Could white college students who had first read The Souls of Black Folk en route to Ohio teach black history? Could they help students see “the link between a rotting shack and a rotting America”? Pamela Parker, from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, sent the answers home in a letter.
Dear Mom and Dad,
The atmosphere in class is unbelievable. It is what every teacher dreams about—real, honest enthusiasm and desire to learn anything and everything. The girls come to class of their own free will. They respond to everything that is said. They are excited about learning. They drain me of everything that