School bells are ringing across the country, and once again African American educators are showing how they’ve always understood the assignment. It’s one that’s been passed down for generations: to liberate young, Black minds so they can be participants in their own freedom.
Examples of this can be witnessed in classrooms and churches. Sundjata Sekou, a New Jersey teacher who renamed himself after the first king of the Mali Empire and the Mandika word for wisdom, uses hip hop and banned books as tools to disassemble a system wishing to colonize classrooms. Akiea Gross, a Maryland abolitionist, radicalizes early childhood education through their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten.
These efforts are Sekou and Gross’ contributions to an endowment of Black empowerment established by the Black educators who came before them. Making space for joy and history to run the classroom mimics the same playbook as Freedom Schools, the education program established by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as part of the 1964 civil rights campaign Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. Dr. Hilary Green, an Africana studies professor at Davidson College who researched the foundations of Black, southern schooling for her book “Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South”, talked about how Black youth and their families were inspired to be foot soldiers of change while attending Freedom Schools. The estimated 3,000 students who attended the 41 Freedom Schools held at churches and homes across Mississippi encountered an education model which honored Black history, celebrated creativity, embraced community care and encouraged independent thought. While the target demographic was school-aged youth, people as old as 80 were sitting in on lessons far more fulfilling – and life-changing – than the subpar education Black Mississippians were receiving at the time.
“These community-based schools were designed to empower the youngest members of…
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