Education comes in many forms. From community altar building toolkits to political education events, these stories feature Black people teaching skills, lessons, recipes, and ways of being.
Education
In June 1963, the Massachusetts Freedom Movement held a boycott that included junior high school students and high school students attending one of the local Freedom Schools. 8200 children stayed out and nearly 3000 students attended the Freedom Schools for the day.
Black students at Cornell University occupied the student center Williard Straight Hall following the burning of a cross in front of Wari House, a dormitory for African-American women, and disciplinary action taken against an African-American student who protested against racism they experienced. The students nonviolently occupied the hall with rifles and shotguns for 36 hours, advocating against Cornell’s institutional racism, its biased judicial system, and its slow progress in establishing a Black Studies program.
Oasis: Oldways Africana Soups in Stories is a collection of stories from experts in agriculture, the culinary arts, nutrition, and more compiled alongside recipes and personal vignettes that explore diasporic identity and health using soup as a vessel. The anthology communicates the wide breadth of diasporic recipes and traditions and varied experiences concerning geography, health and wellness, and self-care.
Founded in 1991 by ethnomusicologist Dr. Portia Maultsby, the Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) is a features collections related to African-American music traditions from the time period after WWII, as well as an extensive amount of materials documenting black radio. The AAAMC provides access to oral histories, photographs, AV recordings, and much more to scholars and the general public to increase awareness and support scholarship on the history of African-American music in the US. Collecting and maintaining materials in this way is a mode of caring for Black music and cultural processes.
Adah Belle Thoms cofounded the National Association for Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908. She hosted their first meeting in New York City. She campaigned for the enrollment of black nurses in the American Red Cross and was a driving force in increasing the number of black nurses in public health.
Mary Francis Hill Coley was a black midwife operating in rural Georgia starting in the 1930s. Coley was known for her willingness to help mothers of all backgrounds, not discriminating between black and white in the segregated South. Coley would also continue to help the family in the days following the birth, helping with cooking and cleaning as well as organizing the forms needed for the county health offices. Mary Coley helped deliver thousands of healthy babies over the course of her work and is remembered as a role model in health and her community.
Building Audacity hosts a variety of mutual aid and political education events and initiatives through their "Change Projects", which aim to support children and families in need within Boston and the Greater Boston areas. As part of their COVID-19 Response, Building Audacity offered a vaccine education program titled the "GOTVAc Campaign'' and a social justice education program titled "Say Their Name". The GOTVAc Campaign involved community outreach by Building Audacity educators--referred to as "accomplices''--to help middle school and high school youth create vaccination plans. The Say Their Name Project grouped college student accomplices with high school youth over weekly virtual seminars to receive Building Audacity curriculum, research names of those lost to police brutality and other violence, and create permanent art installations.
A report from the non-profit, Cal-Matters, found that three out of four black boys are not reading at the same level as their peers. The Freedom Schools Program established at Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, CA is working to close that gap. The program curates its materials to appeal more to black boys by depicting black leaders and using books that represent black children. They’ve also added a music component to the summer program to encourage learning.
New Communities Land Trust was founded in 1969 as a safe haven for Black farmers during the civil rights movements. Charles and Shirley Sherrod created this farm collective in Lee County, Georgia which eventually grew to 1,800 acres of farmed land in addition to a greenhouse and farmer's market. Although the farm was lost in 1985 due to drought and discriminatory lending practices, the organization remains strong, now operating a farm called Resora.
James P. Breeden organized the Stay-Out rally as part of the larger Freedom Day school boycott on February 26, 1964. The rally took place at the Donnelly Auditorium in Boston, MA with over 3000 community members, both African-American/Black and white, attending the event in support of the end of de facto segregation.