SF Freedom Summer School

August 4, 2007
Mississippi Freedom Schools
with Wazir Peacock and Allean Richter
Supplemental Readings
Chapters 8-10, in People Make Movements: Lessons from Freedom Summer
Contents of this packet:
Highlander Folk School, by Oliver W. Jervis
Organizing and Education: Saul Alinsky, Paulo Freire & Myles Horton, by Mike Miller
Popular Education and the Public School System, by Kathy Emery and Eric Mar

Recommended Links:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/A_02_Introduction.htm
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/A_03_Index.htm
http://www.dsausa.org/antiracism/editorials/editorials4.html
http://www.safero.org/articles/septima.html
http://www3.nl.edu/academics/cas/ace/resources/bernicerobinson.cfm

Recommended from SFFS media library:

DVD’s BOOKS
With All Deliberate Speed The Long Haul, autobiography of Miles Horton
Awakenings (V.1 of Eyes on Freedom Summer, Sally Belfrage
the Prize) Legacy of a Freedom School, Sandra Adickes
Freedom on my Mind Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights, Moses and
Howard Zinn—You Can’t Cobb
Be Neutral on a Moving Democracy and the Arts of Schooling, Donald Arnstine
Train Rethinking Schools: An Agenda for Change, Levine et al, eds
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s Critical Teaching and Everyday Life, Ira Shor
War on Journalism No Contest: The Case against Competition - Why we loose in our
Manufacturing Consent Race to Win, Alfie Kohn
Hoop Dreams The Night is Dark and I Am far from Home: A Political Indictment
of the US Public Schools, Jonathan Kozol
"Shut those Thick Lips" A Study of Slum School Failure, Gerry
Rosenfeld
Taking it Personally: Racism in the Classroom from Kindergarten
to College, Berlack and Moyenda
Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New
Social Movement, Jean Anyon
Highlander Folk School
by: Oliver W. Jervis
Speech Delivered February 25 & 26, 2006
Monteagle, Tennessee

May 17, 1954, Black Monday to most white southerners, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Brown
vs Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. I was a student at The University of the South. I remember the day
well. Most of my fellow students and the community as a whole felt that a dagger had been thrust into the
social order and southern way of life. Many vowed to fight judicial intrusion into the rights of the states and the
political leaders developed plans for "massive resistance".

On that day Myles Horton was in the Supreme Court building. He was ecstatic. He had been flouting the
Tennessee segregation laws at Highlander Folk School since its inception in 1932. He even had invited a test
case with the State - which the State carefully refused to accept, thinking the case might be lost. Highlander was
a private school and the decision only affected public schools, but Myles Horton pointed out: "With the State
University now accepting Negroes, the state law regarding private schools is untenable."

The core doctrine Of Highlander throughout its history was social justice and racial equality. It often was at
odds with its labor union partners over this issue. The unions did not embrace racial equality and integration in
organizational efforts. Myles Horton had come to the realization by 1932 that assembling information on an
issue without taking student experiences into account separated education from the actual needs of the people
of southern Appalachia. He wanted Southern Appalachian people to organize and use their own intellectual and
material resources to build better communities on a sound economic foundation. His school sought in his words
to awaken: "the best that I believe all posses." He pursued the use of education as an instrument of social
change.

At age 78, in 1983, he reflected:

"People have to have hope. And they have to feel that somebody believes in them. And they've got to learn
to believe in them. And they've got to learn to believe in themselves and their peers - other people like them-
selves. And they've got to be mad enough at the injustices of a situation to do something about it. At that
point, we say they've got to decide what to do about it, but we've got to get them to that point. We try to
make them feel the system is unjust and help them analyze their own experiences and their own beliefs.
Although Highlander isn't a religious school, it's in a religious part of the country and all our staff have
religious backgrounds. And we think in terms of values - right and wrong, good and bad - and that's implied in
the kind of programs we put on. But don't try to tell people what to do. We try to tell them what the situation
is, help them understand how they themselves are affected by that by using their own experience - not from
telling them.

And then when they want to do something about it they say, "How can we go about it?" And we help them to
find out. We help them to understand how to do research, how to get information, how to learn from each
other, how to go back and build up an organization and do something about it.

Its not just a lot of facts. We think facts that are unrelated to people's experiences just can't be absorbed

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They're just thrown off like poison is thrown out of your body. So we don't waste time on that. We try to help
them develop from within themselves and use their heads. Regular school people just deal with facts, not
values.

Sometimes we've been considered noneducational, but by an increasing number of people we're thought to
have a very sound educational program that is being adopted and used around the country.

This teaching method tied to a philosophy of social change is what Highlander Folk School was about. In 1979
a Ford Foundation report on adult illiteracy singled out Highlander as: "the most notable American experiment
in adult education for social change."

A year or two before 1954 Highlander had turned its emphasis to programs designed to end racial
discrimination. By 1953 its teachers had made local and regional leaders aware that there was a school in the
South where blacks and whites could meet to explore their common interests. Black journalist, Carl T. Rowan,
asserted in 1952 that only a few southerners like Horton were willing to "go further than the Southern liberals,
the 'freedom - for you - sometime soon - gradualists' and to say that racial segregation was the root and
perpetrator of all evils facing the modern South."

Change on the civil rights front was in the wind and Highlander, always on the cutting edge of social progress,
was prepared to assume a leading role. Before examining this role, it may be of interest to observe Highlander's
relationship with some of its Summerfield neighbors. Neighborhood children came to the school where they
were welcomed by Myles Horton and entertained by his wife, Zelphia Mae Horton, who led them in songs with
her accordion. Some of the children, including, Bobby Wiggins, learned to square dance there. At Summerfield
Grammar School they were sometimes taught by May Justus, an author who was on the Highlander Board and
who lived near the school. She read the children selections from her books. Bobby Wiggins favorite was Cabin
in No-End Hollow. He also enjoyed cookies Miss Justus baked for the children.

The school ran a Citizenship Education Program throughout the South Carolina Sea Islands that was designed
to teach black people the fundamentals of American Government. Martin Luther King's Southern Leadership
Program later absorbed this program. Highlander also held annual workshops dealing with desegregation. Rosa
Parks of Montgomery attended one in 1955. David Halbersham observes in his book The Fifties: "At
Highlander she not only studied the techniques of passive resistance employed by Gandhi against the British,
she also met whites who treated her with respect." When she returned to Montgomery, she wrote Virginia
Durr, who had helped finance her stay at Highlander: "The discrimination got worse and worse to bear after
having, for the first time in my life, been free at Highlander."

One of the people Rosa Parks met at Highlander was Septima Clark, a black civil rights leader from Charleston,
South Carolina who had a Masters degree from Hampton Institute. Ms. Clark had spent nearly forty years
teaching in the Charleston and Columbia school systems. Myles Horton hired her in 1956 to direct integration
workshops.

On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks, tired from working all day as a tailor's assistant in a Montgomery
Department Store, refused to move to the back of the bus and set off the historic Montgomery bus boycott. As a
result, she lost her job as a seamstress and her rent was raised. Virginia Durr and other friends helped but
finally Mrs. Parks moved to Detroit where she was employed by Congressman Conyers.

Always in the eye of U.S. and state government agencies, Highlander Folk School was notified

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February 1957 by the Internal Revenue Service that its tax exempt status was being revoked because it had
engaged in "organized action programs". Later that year, the Georgia Education Commission planted a spy at
Highlander's 25th anniversary celebration held on Labor Day. His report gave the Civil Rights movement a
black eye. Edward Friend, posing as a reporter, but actually acting on orders from Georgia Governor, Marvin
Griffin, was freely admitted. He took pictures of blacks and whites eating, dancing and talking together. The
most famous of his photographs featured Martin Luther King, Jr. seated near a known Communist party
member, Abner Berry. When Berry arrived at Highlander, he did not tell Horton that he was a correspondent
for the Communist Party's Daily Worker. Instead, he identified himself as a free lance writer who was
interested in writing an article on Highlander. Horton accepted Berry's story at face value. An enlarged version
of Friend's picture was soon posted on billboards across the South. The State of Georgia financed the the
publication of glossy brochures containing Friend's report. One reason, Governor Griffin was so focused on
Highlander was that he wanted to discredit the Atlanta based Southern Regional Council, whose director,
George Mitchell, sat on the Highlander Board of Directors. To large numbers of white Southerners
"integrationists" and "Communists" were two sides of the same coin.

Myles Horton suffered another blow in 1956 when his 46 year old wife, Zilphia, died. While working at the
school one day, she accidentally "picked up a glass which she thought was water" and drank a small amount of
carbon tetrachloride, used to clean typewriters. Immediately realizing her mistake, she forced herself to vomit
and called her physician who told her that her situation was not serious. After still having an upset stomach and
continuing to vomit for a couple of days, Zilphia told Myles what she had done and asked him to drive her to
Emerald Hodson Hospital in Sewanee. A few days later the Sewanee doctors advised Zilphia to go to
Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. She died at Vanderbilt of uremia poisoning. Myles was distraught. He sent
their children, Thorsten and Charis, to live with his sister, Elsie Pearl, in Murfreesboro, and threw himself into
his continuing fight against the entrenched power structure. It would be more difficult, however, without
Zilphia's support.

Songsters Guy Carawan and Candie Anderson, a white exchange student attending Fisk University, joined
Highlander Folk School in 1959. A year or so later, they married. Guy Carawan and Zilphia Horton introduced
the black students at Highlander to songs they had collected from union members and South Carolina sea
islanders. The songs included "We Shall Not Be Moved", "This Little Light of Mine", and "We Shall
Overcome". The latter song would become the anthem of the civil rights movement.

The State of Tennessee moved against Highlander in January 1959 when Shelby Rhinehart, whose House of
Representatives District included Grundy County, and Harry Lee Senter of Sullivan County introduced a
resolution authorizing Governor Buford Ellington to appoint a committee to investigate the school. Both houses
of the legislature easily passed the resolution. Ellington signed it but wondered if doing so would accomplish
anything. Myles Horton's response was that the real issue was Highlander's interracial policies. He invited the
legislators to visit the school and examine its records. Carl Kilby, a minister, gospel singer and Secretary of
Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company, urged the legislature to enact a bill "with teeth in it" and to revoke the
school's charter. Press reaction to the planned investigation was mixed. The Nashville Tennessean condemned
it as a witch hunt. Conversely, the Nashville Banner and the Chattanooga News-Free Press depicted the probe
as an effort to alert citizens to what the News-Free Press called "this festering sore atop the mountains in the
heart of Tennessee".

The legislative committee convened on February 21, 1959 at Tracy City to conduct a closed hearing. County
Judge Malcolm Fultz, County Superintendent E.J. Cunningham and Grundy County Herald editor Herman

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Baggenstoss testified that an estimated 95% of the people in Grundy County wanted to see Highlander leave.
Most people thought, they said, that the faculty had communist connections. The three men, none of whom had
visited Highlander, denied that the folk school's connection with the civil rights movement had anything to do
with feelings in the county. Because there were no blacks in Grundy County other than at Highlander, they did
not see integration as a problem. Two other witnesses, Carl Kilby and Carrington Scruggs railed against the
school's immoral, communistic practices. Kilby had never been to the school. Scruggs had not been there since
he was a teenager, twenty years earlier. The most damaging evidence was that Highlander's charter was to build
a folk school in Fentress County. Horton explained that they filed the charter in Fentress County when they did
not know whether Lilian Johnson was going to give them her property in Grundy County. He said he simply
forgot to refile the charter in Grundy County but would willingly do so.

The site of Highlander was an agricultural cooperative experiment by Dr. Lilian Johnson of Memphis who was
drawn to Summerfield through her family's connection with Monteagle Sunday School Assembly. She started
the cooperative in 1915, brought May Justus and Vera McCampbell to Summerfield as teachers in 1925 and in
1932 turned her property over to Myles Horton and Don West on a trial basis as a location for Highlander Folk
School.

After a brief visit to the school, the legislative committee held an open hearing in Tracy City on February 26.
Thirteen Grundy County citizens testified against the school. One, Henry Dyer, a laborer, claimed he saw
whites and blacks swimming together in the Highlander pond. Ford Cox and Roy Layne accused Highlander of
flying the Russian flag, and its staff of carrying Young Communist League membership cards. Two University
of the South professors testified for Highlander. They described the school as "an inspiring example of
democracy at work." They admitted that they, like Highlander staff members, supported racial integration, a
very unpopular position in Tennessee. Representative Senter interpreted this to mean that they favored the
"amalgamation of the races".

Violet Crutchfield, Grundy County Registrar of Deeds, confirmed that the Highlander charter had not been
recorded in Grundy County. She also informed the committee that the school had given Myles Horton a home
and 70 acres of property in August 1957. May Justus, by then retired from teaching, but a director and
Treasurer of Highlander, responded for the school. She said that the Board of Directors was concerned about
Horton's financial security and made the gift in appreciation for his more than 25 years of service to the school.
The board members knew that from 1932 through 1953, Horton received no salary, and that Zilphia received no
salary until 1954. More than that, Zilphia had used her $11,000 inheritance to renovate the house, and it had
been Lilian Johnson's dying wish that the land around Horton's house be given to him. This justification did not
satisfy the committee members. They realized that they had a hook that might justify revoking Highlander's
charter. May Justus matched wits with them for an hour and one half, often winning applause from the two
hundred spectators. When a photograph arranged by the Georgia Commission on Education was shown of a
white woman and a black man at Highlander embracing, Justus explained that they were square dancing.
Special Counsel J. H. McCartt reminded Miss Justice that Tennessee law prohibited interracial marriages. May
Justus retorted that she did not realize that square dancing was part of the marriage ceremony. On another
occasion when square dancing was brought up, Myles Horton jumped up and demonstrated a square dance step.

The final legislative hearing took place in Nashville on March 4 and 5. Myles Horton was the principal witness.
He was assisted by Highlander's attorneys, Jordon Stokes, III and Cecil Branstetter, both of Nashville. The
discussions focused on the charter, the transfer of property to Horton, and on the school's supposedly
subversive activities and immoral acts. Edwin Friend and Bruce Bennett, star witnesses for the state, testified
that Highlander was a "communist-dominated institution". After he finished, Bennett shook hands with the

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committee members and said: "Run them out boys, run them out, that's the main thing." The legislators heard
more witnesses charge the folk school with various offensives and interrogated Horton once more on school
finances and where the school's support came from. Following the hearing, the committee recommended to the
legislature that the school's charter be revoked "for legal and financial transgressions". In response, both houses
of the Tennessee General Assembly adopted Senate Resolution 47 on March 3, 1959, directing Albert F."Ab"
Sloan, the District Attorney of the 18 Judicial Circuit to "bring suit for the forfeiture of the charter".

On July 31, 1959, state and county agents raided Highlander and confiscated the school's files. Finding no
liquor, they went to Horton's home where they discovered a small quantity of beer and liquor. The raiding party
arrested Septima Clark, a teetotaler for "possessing whiskey". They did not arrest Horton who was in Germany.
Defense Attorney Stokes called the raid "a Gestapo type act with trumped up charges".
The hearing on the petition to close Highlander began on September 14, 1959 in what was described as "a near-
carnival atmosphere" in the Grundy County Courthouse in Altamont. I was one in attendance. Assisting
Attorney Bransetter in defending Highlander was George Barrett, a young Nashville attorney.

Of the witnesses testifying to the immorality, drunkenness, and promiscuousness that allegedly went on at
Highlander, two had been in reform school, one had served time in prison, and one had been jailed more than
thirty times for drunkenness. Some of the same people who testified in the legislative hearings did so again.
The most impressive testimony for the defense came from seven University of the South professors. Four local
residents of Summerfield testified for Highlander, including the night watchman, Jim Clark. He said he never
discovered any whiskey and that Highlander's relations with the community were poor because people "don't
like colored folks". Judge Chester C. Chattin, who did not think the state made its case at all on the immorality
charge, said the key issue clearly was the sale of beer at the school. After closing arguments, the jury
deliberated for forty five minutes before returning a unanimous verdict that Horton was guilty of profiting from
Highlander.

On February 16, 1960 Judge Chattin found Highlander guilty of violating the 1901 segregation statute, found
the school guilty of transferring property to Myles Horton, and found that Horton's personal gain was "a misuse
and abuse" of Highlander's charter. He also found that Highlander violated its charter and state criminal and
nuisance laws by the unlicensed sale of beer. Judge Chattin ruled that he would appoint a receiver to "wind up
Highlander affairs and liquidate its holdings". A week later the judge declared the deed transferring land to
Horton void and revoked the School's charter.

After two years of fruitless appeals, the entire property of Highlander, its furnishings, beds, equipment, library,
nine residences, fourteen school buildings and 175 acres were auctioned off by the state for a net of $43,700.
The little house given to Horton was burned before new tenants could move in. No compensation was given
either Horton or Highlander. The most controversial school in modern Tennessee history was closed and its
charter revoked.

Before the final court decision, Highlander officers applied for and received a charter from the Secretary of
State of Tennessee for a new school named Highlander Research and Education Center. First based in
Knoxville, the school moved to New Market, Tennessee in 1972 where it continues to pursue the folk school's
original purpose to educate rural and industrial leaders. Highlander still receives royalties from the use of the
song "We Shall Overcome".

As Myles Horton proclaimed when the school was padlocked by the Grundy County Sheriff: "Highlander is an
idea and you can't padlock an idea"

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Myles Horton died of cancer in 1990 at age 84. Some of his ashes were buried next to the grave of his wife
Zilphia Mae, and near his parents graves in the Summerfield Cemetery within a short distance of the site of the
Highlander Folk School. His remaining ashes are buried at the Highlander Research and Education Center in
New Market, Tennessee.

In the February 2005 issue of National Geographic, Charles E. Cobb, Jr. an African-American author and
journalist who took part in the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi in 1960, listed seven sites crucial to the
civil rights cause. One was Highlander. Cobb wrote: "Since 1932 the center has trained activists to find the
courage and ability to confront reality and change."

ORGANIZING AND EDUCATION: Saul Alinsky, Paulo Freire & Myles Horton.
by Mike Miller
Originally published in Social Policy Magazine; Fall, 1993

The pot continues to boil: organizers, activists and citizenship educators arguing about their respective roles
and contributions to the struggle for social justice. There is an ongoing critique of organizing that comes from
people like Myles Horton, the founder of Highlander Center (the internationally known citizenship education
center located in Tennessee) and Paulo Freire, the Brazilian whose similar work with illiterate peasants and
rural workers became internationally known through his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. For Horton, the
dialog about organizing and education took place with his a long-time associate and friend Saul Alinsky, the
best known community organizer in America, who died in 1972. The discussion revolved around, from
Horton's point of view, a debate that went on between them. In We Make The Road by Walking, Horton puts it
this way: "Saul Alinsky and I went on a circuit...At that time Saul was a staunch supporter of Highlander, and I
was a staunch supporter of him, but we differed and we recognized the difference...Saul says that organizing
educates. I said that education makes possible organization, but there's a different interest, different emphasis.
That's still unclarified."

The point is made in Horton's autobiography, The Long Haul, as well. After imagining an urban area with run-
down buildings, he says the organizer's goal would be to get the building torn down or fixed up. So the
organizer would use whatever means accomplished that goal, even if it meant people would learn nothing about
"using people power." But that's not the educator's goal. "If I had to make a choice, I'd let the building go and
develop the people." Later, "...you may have to make a decision as to whether you want to achieve an
organizational goal or develop people's thinking." There is a sub-theme as well. Horton and Freire worry a
great deal about cooptation--the absorption of social justice movements into the status quo against which they
once struggled. The issue deserves the attention it receives from radicals.

Horton isn't entirely consistent regarding Alinsky, though he is about the more general critique of organizing.
Horton versus Horton appeared when Alinsky was discussed at the "Alinsky in retrospect" seminar at Chicago's
Columbia College in 1978: "(Saul) believed that people in struggling expanded their perception of self-interest
to encompass self-respect, dignity and solidarity with their neighbors. He thought of this as self-education. He
thought this was a high quality of education...He did more than talk about education. He consciously (emphasis
added) used organizational activities for educational purposes....Alinsky was aware that the experiential
learning of the people, particularly the professional organizers, was important...He was very proud of the fact
that...people learned." Horton thought most organizers didn't share Alinsky's concern.

Horton's version of the difference between education and organizing is a straw man because of his limited

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definition of "organizing." "Organizing implies that there's a specific, limited goal that needs to be achieved,
and the purpose is to achieve that goal. But if education is to be part of the process, then you may not actually
get that problem solved, but you've educated a lot of people." And, "Organizers are committed to achieving a
limited, specific goal whether or not it leads to structural change, or reinforces the system, or plays in the hands
of capitalists." Undoubtedly there are organizers who view their role in this way, but not Alinsky or, for that
matter, many of the organizers against whom these criticisms are often directed. Alinsky and his tradition no
more resemble this definition of organizing than do Horton, Freire and Highlander resemble what goes on in a
sterile classroom where a bored teacher pours ideas into the heads of uninterested students.

In the living experience of people in slums, ghettos, barrios or "hollers" the lessons of democratic power, of
people power, cannot be taught without an organization in which they exercise such power. Both the uses and
abuses of power are learned by experience. To be able to condemn injustice, talk about structural change,
define values, name the power structure and spin out visions of what a new society would look like are all
admirable and, indeed, necessary. But neither alone nor in combination will any of them begin to shift great
numbers of people from silent resentment of or acquiescence in their oppression to the struggle for liberation.

The organizer's side of the story is told in a classic essay, "Making An Offer We Can't Refuse," written by
Richard Harmon, who directed Alinsky's organizing project in Buffalo, NY in the mid-1960s, and now works
for the Industrial Areas Foundation in Portland, OR.

Organizing is teaching. Obviously, not academic-type teaching, which is confined for the most part to stuffing
data into people's ears. Organizing is teaching which rests on people's life experiences, drawing them out,
developing trust, going into action, disrupting old perceptions of reality, developing group solidarity, watching
the growth of confidence to continue to act, then sharing in the emotional foundation for continual questioning
of the then current status quo...This means that education is primarily in the action, but becomes really
liberating education only if the person develops the discipline to rigorously reflect on that action...We have to
own the questions in this educational process. It must be our curiosity that is the engine...pulling us into action,
then reflection, then more action, more reflection.

Organizers should take note of Harmon's emphasis on teaching. Many organizers, in fact, don't do much
meaningful teaching--which is why we need the insistent reminders of people like Horton and Freire about
education. But good organizers do teach. Harmon, working in an organization that is in action, has an
advantage. The action creates the teachable moments when people find that the world is not the way it is taught
in the civics text books. In these situations of cognitive dissonance there are real opportunities for education.

God (or the Devil) is in the details: we see the differences between the educator and organizer if we carefully
compare Harmon's series of questions with those asked by educator Nina Wallerstein in her essay "Problem-
Posing Education: Freire's Method for Transformation" in Freire and Ira Shor's Freire for the Classroom.
Wallerstein's questions have the student describe or name a problem, define it along with associated feelings,
relate the problem to their own experience, generalize to develop an understanding of why the problem exists--
asking who benefits and who loses from the existence of this problem and, last, discuss strategies for solutions
and what can be done to implement them. Good questions. But not enough for people to gain the experience of
building and using democratic power.

Harmon's questions are different: "What is the problem?" "How many other people feel the same way?"
"What precisely do we want?" "Who do we see to get things changed?" "How many of us should go to see
him?" "Who will be the spokespersons?" "Are we willing to caucus?" "What is the timetable for the
response?" "Where and when is the evaluation session?" It should be right after the meeting--Never let people
go home alone after an action!" Clearly these questions can be posed most meaningfully in the course of

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developing a actual campaign--something that is done within an organization. Organizing has often been
criticized for focusing on winning rather than on educating. But the dichotomy is a false one. When large
numbers of people win it is educating. To teach an ever-widening number of people who are oppressed or
discriminated against that they can, by democratically developed collective action, fight and win is the central
liberating lesson--and it comes through organizing. Lost struggles, especially when experienced by people who
have just been persuaded to leave the TV and join with their neighbors, fellow church members or co-workers
to do something, only reinforce the pervasive belief that "you can't fight the powers that be." Wallerstein's
questions alone don't get at this.

Two dangers exist. The first lies in the fact that the lessons of organizing, central as they may be, don't
inherently lead to an understanding of the larger social structure or the necessity to fundamentally change it.
Such an understanding necessarily emerges out of more reflection, analysis and discussion. It is extraordinarily
important that this kind of education go on--precisely that advocated by Horton and Freire--if organizing is to
do more than give one more group a slightly larger piece of a shrinking economic or public services pie or
substitute one set of oppressors for another. To avoid these pitfalls, people need to be challenged to:
• Discuss values--those of our adversaries and ours. They are often fundamentally different: "me-first," I
want to be on top, the status race versus sharing, caring, love, justice, equality and freedom.
• Examine alternative visions of how cities, regions, countries and economies could be organized.
• Learn the workings of the political, economic and social power structure within which we live and how
it came to be that way.
• Study those who sought to bring the country closer to its democratic promise in social movements of the past.
• Build the new society within the old--that is, structure their own organizations to embody democratic
principles. The organizing tendency is to avoid these larger discussions. That's why it needs Freire and Horton
around.

The second danger is that people learn too well the nature of power in America today and either withdraw in
the face of what appear to be such insurmountable obstacles or become part of politically correct groups--right
on this or that question--and powerless to do anything about any of the questions. The educator tendency is to
view the facts of power - building as cooptation. Horton succumbs. "We concluded," he says, "that
reform within the (schooling) system reinforced the system, or was coopted by the system. Reformers didn't
change the system, they made it more palatable and justified it..." Freire, however, modifies and amends. "We
have more space outside the system, but we also can create the space inside of the subsystem...Trying to coopt
is a kind of struggle on behalf of those who have power to do so. It's a tactic; it's a moment of the struggle...(I)n
order for you not to be co-opted, at least for you to be out of the possibility of some power wanting to co-opt
you, it's necessary that you do nothing." Purity is for the yogi or monk--and the adult educator, a step removed
from the action, needs to be careful of it as well.

All significant organizing efforts and social movements face the problem of how to win immediate victories
while at the same time expanding their power so they can address more recalcitrant problems in society. The
reform versus revolution distinction doesn't provide guidance in formally democratic societies where the rights
of free speech, assembly and petition to the government exist along with competitive elections. Another
category is needed--perhaps reforlution (or revoform), concepts that imply both fundamental change and
something other than the immediate violent overthrow of a government. The strategy for achieving
fundamental change in the United States is to build autonomous, deeply rooted, broadly based, people power
organizations that can act locally and work together in larger political and economic arenas. Alinsky's early
work, the Southern civil rights movement and the labor movement, all in the last 70 years, are examples. At
their best, each included efforts to change major institutions, mutual aid and self-help, creating and enhancing
autonomous culture, and education and training as dimensions of their organizational life. All these movements
have lessons to offer us today.

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In the best organizer's work, people act and talk. They talk about what they are doing, and that is one of the
best ways to learn. In the best work of religious or labor education, at a slightly more leisurely pace, a time-out
for more reflective education takes place. The various organizing networks now have anywhere from three to
ten day "training sessions" which are mostly focused on how people think about values, democracy and power,
though they include skills training as well. But these sessions are very different in form from the open-ended
circle that characterizes the Highlander method. Would the organizers open their work to critical discussion led
by a Myles Horton? It is not clear whether the organizers would. Would the educators ground their teaching in
the concrete difficulties faced by any organization dealing with the staggering problems of poor and working
people in America today as well as the strength of the entrenched power they must confront? It is not clear that
the educators do. If the two do no more than polemicize against each other, it is not likely that either will make
the contribution that is needed. But the work needed to go beyond polemics isn't easy. In the old labor
movement, there was a healthy tension between the labor educators and the organization's top leaders and best
organizers. As far as I know, no one has tried to institutionalize two sets of people performing the two roles in
current organizing practice. There is a certain luxury the educator has that is not available to the organizer
since the latter's emphasis is building democratic power and the former's is to understand what it means.

Democratic organizers and educators are both central to building the kinds of people power organizations we
need to move our nation toward a truly democratic society. We can measure the success of their efforts in two ways.

First, the leaders of powerful organizations can obtain meetings with the leaders of powerful social
institutions--like government and corporations. We measure the power of "our side" by the kind of recognition
given us by the decision makers with whom we can obtain meetings. There is, indeed, a predictable pattern of
development. New movements are initially ignored. If that doesn't work, there may be efforts, on the one
hand, to placate or appease them and, on the other, to infiltrate and destroy them. We have seen each of these
in the evolution of the major American movements since the 1930s. The president of a Chicago community
organization in the 1960s was an undercover "red squad" cop! Only when none of these work do those in
power decide to recognize their adversaries. The fact of recognition acknowledges a change in the relations of
power. Unless those who hold institutional power think they can eliminate a strong opposition, they are
forced to recognize and deal with it. Negotiations then take place. Are the negotiated agreements cooptation?
Since such agreements are, by definition, "collaboration" (one makes agreements with those who already have
the institutional power) one could argue that they are inherently coopting. An easy answer but a wrong-headed
one. The question is whether or not the agreements are used to enhance people power so that the next time
around democratic prerogatives challenge the status quo even further.

On the other side of the negotiating table, the holders of institutional power will try a new approach--to absorb
the opposition into the status quo. Not many movements or organizations ever reach this point. The American
political landscape is littered with "radical" organizations which can't obtain a meeting with the local dog
catcher--which means they aren't worth the effort of cooptation. Their rhetoric is inversely related to their
effectiveness.

Second, we measure successful institutional change by the nature of the proposals presented to, and the results
obtained from, those in power. This is only possible when you are at the negotiating table. Two kinds of
proposals are typically made. "More" is one of them--more money, housing, jobs, vacation, time off, schools,
hospitals, etc. These are essential, but they don't get at the more fundamental structural changes that need to be
made. What does? We do well to look at the history of the labor movement to find examples of these. The
second kind of proposal challenges existing decision-making structures and prerogatives. The hiring hall, with
rotational dispatch of workers based on how long they had been out of work, took control of employment away
from owners and managers and put it in the hands of democratic unions. Collective bargaining forced
employers to negotiate with unions over matters they once had decided unilaterally. The contractually
negotiated right of workers to stop work when they considered a situation to be unsafe gave new authority to
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those on the shop floor. Worker ownership and control extends democratic prerogatives even further.

Parallel changes in decision-making prerogatives take place when community organizations win the right to
veto plans for their communities, become partners in the decision-making processes or gain full authority over
making certain kinds of decisions. Another involves the extension of democratic rights--as, for example,
when the franchise was extended to white propertyless males, freed slaves, women and eighteen year olds.

Understanding the difference between democratically constituted organizations and movements which come
"from below," on the one hand, and government designed mechanisms for "citizen participation," on the other,
is central to an understanding of co-optation. In this regard, great confusion exists both in action and in
theoretical discussion and debate. Two communities might have what appears to be a strong, participatory,
face-to-face, neighborhood organization for citizen involvement. But there may be a major difference between
them. In one, the form for "strong democracy" is government sponsored and paid for neighborhood structures.
In the other, the form for democratic participation is independent of government, raising its core budget from
member dues and grassroots fund-raisers. Both organizations might be vigorous in their defense of
neighborhood interests and, in both, participants might learn the skills of civic participation, gain self-
confidence, have greater access to decision-making and have an impact on the decisions made. But that's not
enough.

The former kind of organization is typically limited in the scope of its activities to what has been defined for it
by its funding agencies. If it goes outside the scope, either in program or tactics, it is likely to lose its funding
and staff and, experience with the poverty program and similar government sponsored citizen participation
efforts shows, go out of business. In the latter, leaders and organizers wants to aggregate political resources
because they understand that the solutions to the problems of the neighborhoods don't principally lie in City
Hall--they lie in the private corporate sector and with state, regional and national levels of government. They
develop relationships of mutual interest and confidence with people in other community organizations in other
places. Thus they go beyond the parochialism of local neighborhood--and they meet people of different racial
and ethnic backgrounds as well, breaking down stereotypes and "isms" that have historically divided the
country. They also work on whatever are the issues affecting the quality of life of their members. Thus, for
example, they enter workplace arenas and may cooperate with unions. They challenge corporations on the
issue of health care.

This contrasts dramatically with the acceptance by the government sponsored neighborhood associations of the
pie as it is. They fight over how it is divided--not over how big it is or even who shapes it. One writer gave
unintended witness to this dramatic difference: "One of the ironies of well-functioning citizen participation
structures," he wrote, "is that they give legitimacy to decisions that go against a neighborhood." In this case,
"participation" is about governance and policy, not about people power. "Participation" strengthens the
legitimacy of decisions even when they are not in the interests of the participants. Such participation goes
beyond that desired by "elite democrats" who want the role of the people confined to electing those who
govern, and who view them as consumers of the decisions made by the government. Independent organizations
may reach agreements that aren't what they want, but they do so with the idea that they will come back with
greater strength on a later day and get what they believe they deserve.

Formally democratic, autonomous and independent organizations are a necessary though not sufficient
condition for the democratization of our society. Too often these organizations come to replicate the values and
leadership forms and structures of the dominant culture and institutions. To build an alternative vision, one
more true to democratic faith, requires that we begin at the base of society--in the neighborhoods,
congregations and workplaces where most people live their lives.

In the best examples of contemporary faith-based organizing, such alternative visions are being built at the base
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of society. Participating churches are dynamic, living things. People sing, pray, laugh, struggle, plan, act,
reflect and learn together. They both support and challenge each other to act on their deepest concerns and
values. A community is built that seeks to embody in its internal life the values it struggles to achieve in the
wider world. It is out of deep, trusting, relationships, built by organizers with the leaders with whom they
directly work, that the opportunities to build this kind of community arise. But generating alternative visions
sufficiently believable for people to devote the time necessary to struggle for them is a very, very difficult task.

To grasp the kind of structural change needed, we need to be open to big picture thinking. Our reluctance to get
into the discussion of economic alternatives is in part a function of the discredited socialist vision. Capitalism
is triumphant. Command socialism of the Communist variety is deservedly dead in Europe and corruptly
hanging on in China. Social Democracy of the Western European variety seems mired in stifling bureaucracy
and, when push comes to shove, won't challenge basic corporate capital's power. Neither seems very related to
the kind of participatory democracy that is at the core of community organizing. Because of the democratic
suspicion of concentrated power, socialism doesn't seem to have much to offer today. A minor, thought at
times vocal and influential, voice of socialism is also democratic but its influence is no greater than a similar
democratic voice in capitalism. Debs classic democratic statement was, "Too long have the workers of the
world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not
lead you out if I could; for it you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up
your minds that there is nothing you cannot do for yourselves."

Reconnecting active, participatory, democracy to socialism makes it possible to look at what role a genuinely
democratic government might play in relation to our principal economic institutions. From a democratic
perspective, it seems to me we have to look at capitalist, cooperative and socialist ideas about how to bring the
economy under the democratic control of society. Markets are good mechanisms for the allocation of resources
and the setting of prices. But they are not the only mechanism. Consumer sovereignty is necessary but not
sufficient. Apart from the issue of public ownership (after all, 20% of our utilities are municipally or otherwise
publicly owned and operated--and they are often as lacking in accountability as any private corporate
bureaucracy can be), the question remains, "Who owns what is put on the market--an oligarchy of wealth or a
system of widespread worker, small and mid-size entrepreneur and community ownership?" Further, how are
economic institutions made subordinate to the society of which they are apart--as opposed to being treated as
"The Economy"--something which hovers autonomously above our political institutions. Are the people
competent to run the economy? How do we respond to the argument of colonialists and other elitists about the
"incompetence" of the people? Paraphrasing the author Hal Draper, we must turn the question around: How
does a people become fit to rule in their own name? Only by fighting to do so. Only by waging their struggle
against oppression--oppression by those who tell them they are unfit to govern. Only by fighting for
democratic power do they educate themselves and raise themselves up to the level of being able to wield that
power. Nowhere in history do we know of a dictatorship which trained the people to become 'mature'
democrats--except insofar as it 'trained' them to fight against it...There seems to be a contradiction: if there is
no way for people to become 'ready' for democracy except by fighting for democracy, then it follows they must
begin fighting for it before they are certified to be 'ready.' And, in historical fact, this is the only way in which
democracy has advanced in the world.

The broader vision we need is one that combines democratic control of the economy with a pluralist society--
one in which power is held by independent associations and not concentrated in the government. Organizers
need to begin concretely to think about how to make corporate power directly accountable to people in local
communities, to break up its great concentrations of wealth and power and to develop a decentralized,
sustainable and renewable way of economic life. In this enterprise, we will need the contribution of people like
Myles Horton and Paulo Freire who are not preoccupied by the daily pressures of organization building, but
who can challenge the organizers to fully reach the democratic potential that is in their work. It is difficult for
the community (and labor) organizers to generate the proposals for structural change that we need today. The
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organizers' and community organizations' job, it seems to me, is to create the public space where ideas can
seriously be discussed and where, when new directions are agreed upon, they can be powerfully acted upon.
The educators will contribute to creating alternative programs and structures; the organizers will strategize with
the people how to build the power to meaningfully struggle for these alternatives. Contemporary organizing, in
particular faith-based organizing that is rooted in a biblical vision of the shalom will make a major contribution
to our getting to where we want to go.
Fall, 1993; revised May, 2000; 4,325 words

Mike Miller is Executive Director of the San Francisco based ORGANIZE Training Center (OTC).

Popular Education and the Public School System

By Kathy Emery and Eric Mar

As longtime activist/educators, we have both struggled within and outside the school system to promote
popular education principles and methods. Our experiences (Eric as teacher and school board
commissioner; Kathy as teacher and co-founder of the SF Freedom School) have led us to conclude that
without a planned coordination between those inside and outside the system within the context of a social
movement, there can be no systemic pursuit of democratic ideals in public schools.

What is Popular Education?

While Paolo Freire (1970) is usually the first name to come to mind when popular education is
mentioned, United States students of democratic pedagogy have plenty of home grown examples to study
before seeking understanding and advice from abroad. John Dewey (1944) argued that teachers needed to
teach children not by force but by inducement, that growth had to be an end rather than having an end (p.
50). He wanted children to be taught so that they could “take a determining part in the making as well as
obeying laws” (p. 120). All of this needed to be done if American society was truly to become
democratic. Dewey saw the public school system as fundamentally authoritarian, reproducing a “superior
class . . . [whose] culture tends to be sterile [and their] actions tend to become . . . capricious, aimless, and
explosive . . .” (pp. 84-85).

Taking democratic education to an activist level, Miles Horton founded the Highlander School in
Tennessee (in 1932) on the principle that people had the means to solve their own problems without
relying on experts or institutions. Horton believed that a pedagogy that helped people analyze their own
experiences and then helped them to analyze other’s experiences would promote participatory democracy.
Many organizers of the labor movement in the 1930s gained valuable skills and dispositions at
Highlander. In the late 1950’s, Septima Clark took the Citizen Education Program from Highlander and
made it the foundation for the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) Citizenship Schools
(Horton, 1998). The sixty-four Freedom Summer Schools in Mississippi in 1964 used the SCLC
Citizenship Curriculum as a template.

The need for 1964 Freedom Summer Schools arose in response to the inadequacies of the existing public
school system, which were segregated and authoritarian. The Freedom School teachers were given a
written curriculum but advised “to shape your own curriculum in the light of the teachers’ skills, the
students’ interests, and the resources of the particular community” (FSC, 1964; Note to Teacher). The
emphasis on developing method and curriculum based on the students’ experiences arose out of the goal
“to encourage the asking of questions, and hope that society can be improved” (FSC, 1964, Introduction

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to Citizenship Curriculum).

Like the authors of the 1964 Freedom School Curriculum, Don Arnstine (1995) argues that public schools
have historically failed to produce active democratic citizens. Instead their aim is only to socialize
students, not educate them.
Socialization is characterized by imitation, participation, and obedience to instruction and
command. Its outcome is the acquisition of adaptive habits, skills, and attitudes. The processes of
education . . . are far more subtle, adding to the above processes two-way communication,
initiative, creativity, and criticism. The outcome of educational processes is the acquisition of
attitudes and dispositions, knowledge and skills, that are individualized and critically thoughtful (p.
10).

Popular Education and the Public School System

To change a system that merely socializes to one that also educates would require a social movement.
This is not only because “macroeconomic mandates continually trump urban educational policy and
school reform” (Anyon, 2005; p. 2) or that corporate-engineered high-stakes testing has eliminated
community participation in the creation of educational goals and policy (Emery, 2002; Emery and
Ohanian, 2004; Emery, 2007). A social movement is the only way fundamental change can occur in any
deeply entrenched bureaucracy. If the system can prevent a progressive school board in a progressive city
from implementing systemic progressive—as in Dewey or Horton—educational reforms, then it can’t
happen within the system. It must happen from without. The obstacles to introducing popular or
progressive methods and goals to school districts are many and growing more numerous within the recent
high-stakes testing paradigm. They range from the superintendent, the way school boards function as
democratically elected bodies, big business, entrenched political interests and to the proliferation of
foundational support of educational reform.

School boards rarely have their own staff. As a result, school board members are dependent upon the
superintendent’s office for most of their information and recommendations (Fantini, 1970; p. 68). The
seven San Francisco school board commissioners share one secretary. The San Francisco school
superintendents’ recommendations to their boards and district bureaucracies have been driven primarily
by the superintendent’s main task of managing 10,000 employees and 55,500 students (increasingly poor
and working class) with a dwindling school budget under increasingly complex and rigid rules imposed
by the state and federal government. In practice, this has led to the school board closing effective but
small schools for disproportionately large numbers of poor and working class students of color, and the
district bureaucracy stonewalling unions, disgruntled individuals and resourceful plaintiffs.
Superintendents are driven not by what schools can be, but by how to manage the system they inherit.

Yet even if the superintendent were to be driven by goals other than maintaining a system that essentially
sorts and socializes or was completely transparent with and responsive to the school board, progressive
goals or methods would not be implemented. Ziegler and Jennings’ (1974) research on district politics
“suggests in unequivocal terms the existence of an educational elite which is consciously self-
perpetuating” (p. 51). School board incumbents generally select their successors and most candidates
don’t campaign on issues that would distinguish themselves from others (Zerchykov, 1984). Even when
“delegate”-minded board candidates are elected, they are quickly socialized into a “trustee” mentality and
they begin to identify with entrenched interest groups. This culture is reinforced by national school board
meetings, superintendent sessions, as well as a plethora of handbooks (Lutz, 1975). In San Francisco,
since few voters are aware of educational issues, school board elections are popularity contests according
to who can raise the most money. When grassroots candidates do get elected, they are subtly socialized to

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“work with the superintendent,” “be pragmatic,” and heed meaningless buzz words such as “lazer-like
reform on academic achievement.” The combination of being bombarded with buzz words from
professional associations and wined-and-dined by big business vendors makes even the most progressive
school board candidate begin to believe that it would be political suicide to challenge a superintendent’s
‘lazer-like focus” on making the system leaner and meaner.

School board members who suggest, either in specific policy or in general conversation, that school
pedagogy and curricula need to be guided by progressive ideals are chastised by business leaders, the
media and fellow professionals as “unrealistic,” “a leftist ideologue” or “not about the kids.” If these
attempts fail to inhibit newly elected board members, big business can threaten to withdraw its deep
pockets and political will from desperately needed supplemental district funding (e.g., parcel taxes). But
most board members respond to the carrot and don’t need the stick to believe that whenever there is a
crisis (and there is always one around the next corner), the “business advisory board” is the group one
goes to for advice and support.

School board members are not the only ones effectively co-opted by the political system. Organized
ethnic or identity groups, representing very few constituents, sometimes act as gatekeepers. The leaders
of these groups punish school board members who make decisions based on progressive educational
principles rather than skin color, gender, or sexual orientation. Many a San Francisco school board
meeting has been rendered dysfunctional by the speeches of the leaders of unrepresentative but highly
organized identity groups. The largely white-middle class PTA plays into the hands of the historically
disenfranchised ethnic/racial/identity groups by insisting that school board members not be critical of the
status quo—the existing two-tier public school system—for fear of increasing middle-class and white
flight from the schools, thereby undermining their own political power within the system.

Most teacher and service employee unions are on the defensive. They often fight any attempt by school
boards to shake up the system, having only recently found a place within the system. Their focus on
wages and working conditions leaves little political capital left for social justice issues. The teachers’
expectations of leading a 1970’s middle class lifestyle makes them insensitive to, and hence alienates,
potential allies in school reform—parents who earn much less than teachers do. Even before teachers
enter their first classroom, they have been socialized to believe the myth of meritocracy, or at least to
believe in their powerless to change the system.

Big business has become adept at playing the entrenched interest groups against each other while
remaining apparently “above the fray.” Foundations and non-profits that work with the district and
educators compound this dynamic by cleaning the school bathorroms or community alleyways but not
empowering the poor and working class to challenge the inequality of the distribution of wealth and the
power relationships that enforce that inequality.

The public school system socializes people to respond to the dictates of a hierarchal and fundamentally
authoritarian system. Hence, the structures and purposes of both public and private schools are at cross
purposes with democratic aims and purposes. According to Arnstine (1995), the changes that would need
to occur for “education” to be implemented, as defined by Dewey, Horton and the 1964 Mississippi
Freedom Schools, are the following:
1. “. . . a change in the multiple-choice and standardized testing systems and in the college
admissions procedures that are closely related to them.”
2. Changes in the way “teachers are prepared and placed in their jobs, and how teachers are
organized for effective action.”
3. An end to all forms (not just race) of segregation within schools.
4. Opportunities for students to learn outside of school (pp. 192-3)
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Debbie Meier (2000) has offered “six alternative assumptions” to allow
schools to instruct by example in the qualities of mind that schools in a democracy should be
fostering in kids -- responsibility for one's own ideas, tolerance for the ideas of others, and a
capacity to negotiate differences. . . . [T]his alternative vision isn't utopian, even if it might be
messy -- as democracy is always messy (pp. 4-5).

For democratic education to take place, ideals have to replace standards, teachers must understand what
the purposes and interests of their students are, teachers must teach students how to pose their own
problems and then help them solve those problems democratically in groups (Arnstine, 1995). This can
only happen sporadically within the current public school system for reasons outlined above.

Building a Social Movement

Jean Anyon (2005) argues that there are Radical Possibilities in “the concentration of so many poor
people in relatively small urban schools. . . . It naturally offers a potential base for organizing a new social
movement” (p. 5). Yet, the vast majority of teachers are focusing on how to live with high-stakes testing,
believing that they have a moral obligation to prepare their students for the incessant testing. Pursuing
this “moral obligation” saps most of their energy, leaving very little left to organize a new social
movement. It remains for those on the outside of the school system to offer teachers hope of fundamental
change and support for the idea that they have a moral obligation to change the system. In the meantime,
progressive school board members need to see themselves as unapologetic activists, not “team players.”

In San Francisco, we believe we have begun to do this. Eric continues to cultivate a grassroots base that,
in turn, keeps him honest. Kathy has co-founded the San Francisco Freedom School, which uses a
people’s history of the Civil Rights Movement to show educators and other activists how to build the
infrastructure for the next social movement. Teachers 4 Social Justice nourishes progressive teachers and
parents through study groups and provides an outstanding local and national networking opportunity
during their annual conference. The San Francisco Organizing Project has begun teaching parents how to
organize in schools and establish alliances with teachers and connect educational reform to affordable
housing, health care, safety and immigrant rights. We believe that these are the building blocks of the
next fundamental social movement in this country.

References

Anyon, J. (2005). Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new social movement. New
York: Routledge.

Arnstine, D. (1995). Democracy and Arts of Schooling. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Emery, K. (2002). The Business Roundtable and Systemic Reform: How corporate-engineered high-
stakes testing has eliminated community participation in the development of educational goals and policy.
(Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Davis). Available at:
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/Emery_dissertation.html

Emery, K. & Ohanian, S. (2004). Why is Corporate America Bashing our Public Schools? Portsmouth
N.H.: Heinemann

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Emery, K. (2007). “Corporate Control of Public School Goals: High-Stakes Testing in its Historical
Perspective.” In Nelson, T., ed., The Growing Nexus between Education and the Private Sector:
Implications for Teacher Preparation and Development. Teacher Education Quarterly, Spring, Vol. 34.
No. 2. San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press.

Dewey, J. (1944). Democracy and Education; An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New
York,: The Macmillan Company.

Fantini, M. , M. Gittell, R. Magat (1970) Community Control and the Urban School. New York: Praeger.

Freedom School Curriculum. (1964). Note to Teacher. Iris Greenberg / Freedom Summer Collection,
1963-1964. New York: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.
Can be viewed at: http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_01_TOCAndNoteToTeacher.htm

Freedom School Curriculum. (1964). Introduction to Citizenship Curriculum from SNCC, The Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972 (Stanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of
America, 1982) Reel 67, File 340, Page 0830. The original papers are at the King Library and Archives,
The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, GA. Can be viewed at:
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC1_Units1to6.htm

Freire , P. (c1970, 1982). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. trans. by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York:
Continuum.

Horton, M., with J. Kohl and H. Kohl. (1998). The Long Haul: An Autobiography. New York: Teachers
College Press.

Lutz, F. W. (1975). “Local School Boards as Sociocultural Systems.” In P. J. Cistone (Ed.),

Understanding School Boards (pp. 63-76). Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books (D. C. Heath).

Meier, D. (2000). Will Standards Save Public Education? Boston: Beacon Press.

Zerchykov, R. (1984). School Boards and the Communities they Represent: An Inventory of the Research
(NIE Grant 80-0171). Boston: Institute for Responsive Education.

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