2006 SF FREEDOM SCHOOL
CURRICULUM
back to SFFS Program
JULY 8, Intersection of Education and Civil
Rights: Highlander and Organizing
Morning: Documentary Film: excerpts from You Got to Move (87 min,
1985, film by Lucy Massie Phenix & Veronica Selver. Myles Horton and the
Highlander Research and Education Center and their influence on different protest
movements.)
Guest Speaker: Civil Rights and Women's Movement veteran Chude Allen
(Freedom Summer, Mississippi)
Afternoon: Docudrama: Walkout (110 min, 2006, directed by Edward
James Olmos. A young chicana student organizes a school boycott in protest of
the discrimination of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, 1968.)
July 15, Setting the Stage: Segregation and
the Emergence of Civil Rights Organizations
Morning: Documentary Film: Take me to Chicago (first 60 min of
“The Promised Land” 1995; film by Anthony Geffen. Jim Crow laws
and sharecropping make the political and economic life unbearable for blacks
in the South.)
Guest Speakers: Civil Rights Movement veterans Jean Wiley (SNCC
1960-67 Maryland, Alabama) and Jimmy Rogers (SNCC, 1991-67, Alabama)
Afternoon: Docudrama: Freedom Song (110 min, 2000; directed by
Phil Alden Robinson. Growing up in Mississippi in the 50s and beginning organizing
with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee.)
JULY 22, Local Leadership: SNCC’s
concept of participatory leadership
Morning: Activity: Leadership Training with Mike Miller, ORGANIZE! Training
Center
Guest Speaker: Mike Miller, ORGANIZE! Training Center (SNCC,
Mississippi; Saul Alinsky, Kansas City, MO)
Afternoon: Documentary Film: Freedom on My Mind (110 min, 1994;
produced and directed by Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford. The story of the
Mississippi Freedom Movement in the early 1960s, from voter registration efforts
to Freedom Summer and the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.)
JULY 29, Power Structures: Institutionalized
inequality and socially-structured repression of dissent
Morning: Documentary Film: Excerpts from Eyes on the Prize - White Power Structures(60 min)
Guest Speaker: Commissioner Mark Sanchez (SFUSD
School Board)
Afternoon: Activity: San Francisco Power Structures: How
to analyze and understand them (Kathy Emery)
AUGUST 5, Nonviolence and Direct Action:
Its power and its limitations
Morning: Documentary Film: A Force More Powerful (30min, 2000;
produced and directed by Steve York. Disciplined and strictly nonviolent, black
college students in Nashville, Tennessee, successfully desegregated the downtown
lunch counters in five months, becoming a model for the entire civil rights
movement.)
Morning and Afternoon Guest Speaker: Civil Rights Movement veteran Bruce
Hartford (CORE, SCLC 1963-67, Alabama, Mississippi). Bruce will give his workshop
on the "Key Concepts of Nonviolent Direct Action."
AUGUST 12, Arts and Protest:
How does art foster protest?
Morning Performance: Interactive theater performance about the women
and teen activists in the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Awele (ah WAY lay) Makeba
(award winning and internationally known actor, emerging playwright, storyteller,
recording artist and educator)
Afternoon: Documentary Film (excerpts):excerpts from We Shall
Overcome (58 min, 1990; produced and directed by Jim Brown. By tracing
the sources of the song, this film uncovers the diverse strands of social history
which flowed together to form the Civil Rights Movement.)
Guest Speakers: Civil Rights Movement veteran and song leader Wazir Peacock
(SNCC, Mississippi & Alabama)
Thanks to the Agape Foundaion for their support of SFFS!