By Rebecca Cadenhead

JA Guest Writer

This story was originally published by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Subscribe to their newsletter at https://mlk50.com/about/subscribe/.

Inside a small, mural-covered building just outside Indianola, Mississippi, 14-year-old Tamorris Carter made the rounds, bouncing lightly on his heels. 

He stopped frequently to explain objects of interest; pictures of class field trips to civil rights monuments, or a poster he made on “social dominance orientation,” a term that describes one’s tolerance for social inequality. Even in moments of pause, Tamorris found a way to remain in motion. He would smooth down the cap on his head, lean forward to pinch the bubbles of a rainbow-printed fidget toy, and trace the words of his poster. 

Tamorris was giving a tour of the Sunflower County Freedom Project, an after-school and summertime educational program where he’d been a student for a little over two years. The Sunflower County Freedom Project is one location of the Freedom Project Network, an organization that gives Mississippi students “holistic and liberatory education experiences.”

At the Freedom Projects, students – called “Freedom Fellows” – learn about Black and Indigenous history, math, reading, and public speaking. The program also prepares students for college. Freedom Fellows range in age from third to 12th grade. 

Most Freedom Fellows at the Sunflower County location are from Indianola, the county seat. Around 9,000 people live there; 84% of them are Black. Almost a third live in poverty. The town center is ringed by cotton fields, which in July, are low to the ground and bright green. In certain places, neat rows of small plants extend to the horizon. The Mississippi State Penitentiary, a place once described by historian David Oshinksy as “the closest thing to slavery that survived the Civil War,” is a short drive from Indianola. Last year, the town made national news when an Indianola police officer shot an unarmed, Black 11-year-old in the chest. 

Other educational programs might prepare students to leave towns like Indianola. But the Freedom Project Network is “not an organization just trying to get kids into college,” emphasized LaToysha Brown, the organization’s executive director. “We are not trying to bring kids in to separate them from the community.” 

Instead, she hopes Freedom Fellows will use their education to change their communities for the better.

AN EDUCATION THAT EMPOWERS

By early July, the Sunflower County Freedom Project was wrapping up its summer program. Tamorris and other Freedom Fellows moved from class to class in different parts of the building.

“This is our library,” Tamorris announced, cutting through a small room filled with books on Black history, social critique, philosophy, and young adult fiction. From there, he reached a large open area with mats on the ground. “This room is kind of like a gym,” he said. “This is where we do taekwondo.” He paused briefly to demonstrate a move, a decisive punch to the air. 

Tamorris walked through a door at the back of the gym, which connected to a classroom with blue walls. A third-grade math class was in session, so he dropped the volume of his voice to a whisper. The classroom’s walls were covered in homemade posters left behind from student presentations. Among others, there were posters with information about historically Black colleges, “The Myth of Racial Progress,” and the signs of ADHD.

The Freedom Project Network takes its name from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Schools of 1964, whose alums are celebrating the schools’ 60th anniversary this year. The original Freedom Schools opened to educate young Black Mississippians on Black history and political activism. Charlie Cobb, the SNCC member who proposed the idea, wrote that segregated schools in Mississippi were “geared to squash intellectual curiosity and different thinking.” By contrast, Cobb hoped the Freedom Schools would provide Black kids with an education that empowered them. Eventually, these students would use their education to advocate for racial justice in Mississippi. 

In 1998, three decades after the last Freedom Schools closed, a group of community members and Teach for America fellows established the Sunflower County Freedom Project.

LaToysha Brown, 28, grew up in Indianola and is a Freedom Fellow at the Sunflower County Freedom Project. From her perspective, the need for the Freedom Project Network was obvious. 

“In Indianola schools, students do not receive a quality education,” she said. “When I was a student, we didn’t receive new textbooks, and we weren’t challenged to read many books. Our teachers were amazing with the resources they had. But our schools were under-resourced.”

In Indianola schools, “you’re never going to have an in-depth conversation about enslavement,” Brown said. Instead, the history of racial injustice is limited to “a paragraph or two” in a textbook. 

The Freedom Project gave Brown an education she would not have received at school. Now, Brown works with students who attend that same school system – kids like Tamorris. 

FILLING IN GAPS

Tamorris became a Freedom Fellow in eighth grade. By that point, he’d already gained an awareness of injustice, even if he couldn’t label it as such. He remembers looking around his middle school one day and noticing something strange – “I thought, ‘all I see is Black people.’” 

He suddenly realized all his classmates were Black, as were the teachers and administrators at his school. This didn’t bother him, exactly, but it did make him wonder: Where are the white kids? 

After he joined the Freedom Project, a guest speaker gave him the answer he was looking for: Most white students in Indianola still attend the private Indianola Academy, established to maintain segregation in 1965. Each year, around 400 students attend Indianola Academy. In 2012, then-headmaster Sammy Henderson admitted to The Atlantic magazine that the school only enrolled nine Black students, but added that “we also have Hispanic, Indian, and Oriental students.”

For Tamorris, learning about Indianola Academy was a revelation. He had suspected his education was shaped by racism, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice those thoughts. “I didn’t want to be one of those guys that makes everything a conspiracy,” he said. But the guest speaker “gave me reassurance.” He felt – or, allowed himself to feel – that the reality of his life had been kept secret. 

He began to see racism throughout his education. At school, teachers had barely mentioned Fannie Lou Hamer, who was born and raised in Sunflower County. They had not taught Tamorris about Juneteenth, either. 

Indeed, it started to feel as though his entire life had been shaped by oppression. Tamorris’ mother sometimes struggles to afford food; before, this was an unfortunate fact of life. Now, Tamorris understands it as a symptom of a larger system of racial capitalism. “Screw capitalism,” he said with a grin. “Capitalism is what keeps me broke.” 

This kind of thought process is a part of the Freedom Schools’ “liberatory pedagogy,” a teaching style that takes for granted that, according to Brown, “People already know what’s happening to them. They just need the language.”

Brown acknowledges that Tamorris is an extraordinary student. Still, she said, “a lot of our students walk into our space feeling like something just isn’t right in their lives. We fill in the gaps. We give them language. We allow them to share their experiences with each other about what’s happening in their community.”

On July 12, Tamorris and a few other freedom fellows gathered to present a project of their choosing to their family members and supporters. Tamorris gave a presentation on social dominance orientation, which he argues plays a role in the continuation of oppressive systems. 

These presentations are a major aspect of the Freedom Project’s teaching style; they are intended to get Freedom Fellows comfortable educating their community members. From Brown’s perspective, a student like Tamorris is perfectly capable of analyzing society by himself, without the assistance of the Freedom Project. But to Brown, analysis is only part of the process. 

“I said, ‘Great, you have this great big analysis of the world,” said Brown of Tamorris. “‘Now, I want you to apply that. How can you use that analysis to organize with the people around you?’”

Rebecca Cadenhead is the youth and juvenile justice reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. She is also a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email her  rebecca.cadenhead@mlk50.com.