Through film, text, and eyewitness testimony, the Freedom School offers hope in a time of despair, and authenticity in an era of distortion and deception. We provide activists, educators, students and adults with an opportunity to analyze how social movements happen. This is done through studying the Civil Rights move-ment as a case study of how ordinary people, not just famous leaders, contri-buted to ending segregation in the South. This allows participants in the Freedom School to renew their commitment to, rekindle their passion for, and find greater clarity in how to promote social justice in the Bay Area today.

A group of people of different color, class and age who want to understand what it means today, to – as the 1964 Freedom School curriculum put it – be “active agents of social change.” We believe that fundamental change can happen when regular people act collectively at the right historical moment. Our Summer Program is inspired by the 1964 Freedom School Curriculum. The 1964 Freedom Schools were part of “Freedom Summer,” a project of the Southern Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in 1964.

Sherri, Sandra and Kathy met while working with the SF Organizing Project around small school reform from 2000-2004. In February, 2005, the four of us came to the conclusion that there was a need for a freedom school in San Francisco. We came to this conclusion from different places. Sylvia and Kathy had been working together on a book on the 1964 Freedom Schools. Sherri was working with at-risk youth in the southeast part of SF and with parents concerned about the lack of educational opportunity for their children. Sandra saw that African American children were not learning black history in school and needed a place to learn it (ideally from black teachers). Sylvia belongs to St. Francis Lutheran Church and offered to find out if they would house us for that summer. They agreed to do so and we proceeded to lauch our program. Every summer, 2 or 3 of our summer school participants join our planning committee and that is how we are growing. Ever since 2005, we have been learning by doing. We welcome anyone who would like to join our adventure in organizing and education.

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