Our Mission:
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.
Who we are:
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.
Our Partners
Our History:
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 woul like to join our adventure in organizing and education.
• SFFS Calendar (Next Steps, Past Activities and Events)
• Read and contribute to our BLOG (which was an attempt to start a discussion but is currently a place where we post our newsletters)
• See our SFFS Brochure: inside (pdf) and outside (pdf)
Our Program:
Saturday mornings: chronology of the Southern Freedom Movement
Saturday afternoons: discussion and activities of the morning's history around SFFS themes--the importance to the creation of social movements of: historical conditions; nonviolence; analsysis of power structures; the arts; community building; coalition building; and individual relationships.
NEW for 2008: Weekday evening (Tuesday or Wednesday, tbd) to discuss relevant and immediate applications of the history of the previous Saturday to today.
Films: We watch documentaries and docudramas to learn the historical
context and understand the issues.
Guest Speakers: Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement talk to us about
their experience and what their participation in the Freedom Struggle meant
to them. Or we hear others with experience on the topic of the day.
Discussion: We provide time for participants to interact with the guest speakers as well as use "open space technology" and a "parking lot" to create small group discussions during and outside of the Saturday session.
Pot Luck Lunch: This allows the Saturday group to grow as a community.
Media Resource Library: We have a significant collection of films and books that we lend out for free.
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