Spell freedom The underground schools that built the civil rights movement

The final decision in the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, the challenge that struck down the concept of "separate but equal" and ended legal segregation in public schools, was handed down in 1954. Some education and civil rights activists considered this a clear step forward, but many others, both Black and white, had grave misgivings about its chances for success. How could local schools and communities possibly provide needed infrastructure and funding levels? Who would stand up to the systemic discrimination inherent in all aspects of life in the Jim Crow South? This account celebrates the dauntless individuals who forced change by establishing more than 900 citizenship and literacy schools for adults in 11 southern states, organizing voter registration drives, and creating agency for primarily poor--often rural--populations. Septima Clark was a schoolteacher, Esau Jenkins a local self-made businessman. Their efforts unfold as testimony to grassroots activism and endless determination. An inspiring story of dedicated crusaders who put their lives on hold to demand justice for their communities.

In this revealing study, historian Weiss (The Woman's Hour) argues that a 1950s network of educators who prepped Black Southerners to pass restrictive voting literacy tests established the framework for the civil rights movement's later flourishing. Her narrative focuses on three Black activists from Charleston, S.C.--schoolteacher Septima Clark, hairdresser Bernice Robinson, and businessman Esau Jenkins--who founded "citizenship schools" where students studied for the tests while also absorbing civil rights lessons and freedom songs. The initial efforts were fruitful, and Clark and Robinson further developed the model at Tennessee's Highlander School, run by the white activist couple Myles and Zilphia Horton; Clark then replicated the schools throughout the South via the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Weiss portrays the schools as under-the-radar affairs that had an outsized impact as they readied Black Americans to claim political agency, with stakes just as heroic for organizers as more confrontational direct actions (Clark was blacklisted from teaching; other citizenship teachers were jailed and beaten). The book is in part a vivid exploration of how liberation begins in the mind; the trio, Weiss writes, were first jolted into a new liberatory mindset by their experiences of radical equality at Highlander School workshops in the early '50s, where things as simple as food being passed down a table from white to Black hands felt like a revelation. The result is an invigorating examination of the intellectual battles that precede radical change. (Mar.)