In 1964, some of the greatest minds of the Civil Rights Movement, including activist-educators Septima Clark and Ella Baker, gathered to write the most progressive curriculum in U.S history. For too long, Black women’s labor in the movement went unacknowledged. Whether they were obstructed by the patriarchal hierarchy enshrining male leaders or a staunch refusal to recognize their vital work, Black women like Clark and Baker refused to let this hold them back in their pursuit of civil rights. Septima Clark pioneered Citizenship Schools across the South, where she taught adults basic civics, teaching in “people’s kitchens, in beauty parlors, and under trees.” Ella Baker spent the 1940s traveling from small town to small town, listening to Black folk’s experiences and encouraging them to join together and insist on equal rights. Her words “strong people don’t need strong leaders,” called for all people to become active agents in their own liberation and were the foundational ethos of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools.
Mississippi Freedom Schools were radical educational spaces established to supplement the poor opportunities provided to Black students in the state’s public schools. The curriculum was designed to help students understand their personal experiences, encourage civic engagement, and examine U.S power structures through various units. This curriculum included the unit “material things vs soul things,” where students discussed Black culture in relation to capitalism. Although the Freedom Schools emerged from the work of various civil rights leaders, college students, and teachers, they blossomed from the strength, power, and care of Black women.
Their legacies have lived on through other women like Marian Wright Edelman. In 1995, she founded two new Freedom Schools through her organization, the Children’s Defense Fund. Today, the CDF serves over 11,000 children across the country. Black women’s foundational work with Freedom Schools inspires our being: just as Clark, Baker, and Edelman dedicated themselves to liberatory futures, we too endeavor to create futures that are rid of antiblackness. Dr. Jessica Lee Stovall, the pioneer of the forthcoming SoulFolk Saturday School, has enabled us as university students to radically imagine what a liberatory educational space could look like. Dr. Stovall embodies the spirits of Ella Baker and Septima Clark with her unwavering commitment to fostering Black students’ love for education. In a world overrun with antiblackness, she is a beacon of fugitivity. Dr. Stovall’s ethics of care help us structure how the SoulFolk Saturday School will prioritize education, rapport, free food, health, and organizing within the Madison community, something we thought was previously unattainable.
Our research collective honors these women and preserves fully accurate histories: we return to the past, present, and future to consider what it means to build and remain invested in the community. Dr. Stovall’s radical care, imagination, and teachings will not be overlooked. Ella Baker and Septima Clark are honored. As a collective, and alongside our community, we stand in the path paved by Black women before us: in the truth that education is rooted in resistance.
Hope Kelham is the photographer and editor for The SoulFolk Collective.
The historical information about the Mississippi Freedom Schools comes from an article written by Dr. William Sturkey in a special issue of the Mississippi History Now Collection, Mississippi Historical Society. We pull stories of Ella Baker and Septima Clark from the following multi-media sources: “Black History, Women’s History: Septima Clark” and “Ella Baker: My Civil Rights Generation’s Fundi” from the Children’s Defense Fund, in addition to “Meet Ella Baker, Mother of Civil Rights Movement” from TIME magazine.
