From Freedom Schools to Freedom University: Liberatory Education, Interracial and Intergenerational Dialogue, and the Undocumented Student Movement in the U.S. South

Abstract

Freedom University is a modern freedom school that provides liberatory education and leadership development to undocumented students banned from Georgia’s top public universities following the passage of Policy 4.1.6 in 2010. The author discusses how Freedom University draws from both the Southern Freedom School tradition and Latin American popular education methods to provide education for social action. The article also presents a first-hand account of interracial and intergenerational dialogues between undocumented youth and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) veterans, and features photographs that illuminate how undocumented youth recombine SNCC’s tactics of non-violent civil disobedience with new symbols and meanings. In doing so, the article demonstrates how the legacy of freedom schools and student activism in the Black Freedom Movement are shaping the new freedom dreams of undocumented youth today.

Keywords::

• Freedom University
• Freedom School
• undocumented youth
• human rights
• immigration
• Georgia
• South
• SNCC
• Freedom Summer
• critical pedagogy
• social movements
• student activism
• civil disobedience
• photography
• interracial
• intergenerational
• non-violence

About the Author

Laura Emiko Soltis serves as Professor of Human Rights and Documentary Photography at Freedom University, a modern freedom school for undocumented students banned from public higher education in Georgia. She is a recent Ph.D. graduate of Emory University, and wrote her dissertation on the transnational cultural repertoires and human rights advocacy strategies of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an interracial farmworker movement in South Florida. As a movement photographer, she has documented many historic social movement actions in the South over the past decade, from the grassroots mobilizations of migrant farmworkers, immigrants, and students, to protests seeking justice for Troy Davis and Trayvon Martin.

Notes

See National Immigration Law Center, http://nilc.org/immreform.html and Educators for Fair Consideration, http://www.e4fc.org/images/Fact_Sheet.pdf (accessed August 20, 2014).

Michael Hoefer, Nancy Rytina, and Bryan Baker, “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2011,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_ill_pe_2011.pdf (accessed August 20, 2014).

Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994), 20.

Ibid.

See Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); Patrick H. Mooney and Theo J. Majka, Farmers’ and Farm Workers’ Movements (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995); Carlos Muñoz Jr., Youth, Identity Power: The Chicano Movement (New York: Verso, 1989); James Miller, Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).

Sixteen states have passed legislation allowing undocumented youth to qualify for in-state tuition rates: Texas, California, Utah, New York, Washington, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Maryland, Connecticut, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Florida. Five states offer in-state tuition rates through their state boards of higher education or their state attorney general: Hawaii, Michigan, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Virginia.

These five institutions include the University of Georgia, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, Georgia Regents University (formerly the Medical College of Georgia), and Georgia College and State University.

Laura Diamond, “Regents Ban Illegal Immigrants from Some Ga. Colleges,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 13, 2010, http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/regents-ban-illegal-immigrants-from-some-ga-colleg/nQk4z/ (accessed July 23, 2014).

“Regents Adopt New Policies on Undocumented Students,” University System of Georgia Press Release, October 13, 2010, http://www.usg.edu/news/release/regents_adopt_new_policies_on_undocumented_students (accessed July 27, 2014).

Ibid.

Laura Diamond, “Ga. College Applications Question Citizenship Status,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 14, 2010, http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/ga-college-applications-question-citizen-status/nQf5P/ (accessed July 27, 2014).

Azadeh Shahshahani and Chaka Washington, “Shattered Dreams: An Analysis of the Georgia Board of Regents’ Admissions Ban from a Constitutional and International Human Rights Perspective,” Hastings Poverty and Law Journal 10 (2013): 7.

“Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, et al v. Deal,” American Civil Liberties Union, https://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/georgia-latino-alliance-human-rights-et-al-v-deal (accessed July 27, 2014).

Bruce Watson. Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (New York: Penguin), 137.

See Lorgia García Peña, “New Freedom Fights: The Creation of Freedom University Georgia,” Latino Studies 10 (2012): 246–250 and Susana Muñoz et al., “Creating Counter-Spaces of Resistance and Sanctuaries of Learning and Teaching: An Analysis of Freedom University,” Teachers College Record 116 (2014): 1–32.

Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2010), 48.

Jane Thompson, quoted in Peter Mayo, Gramsci, Freire, and Adult Education: Possibilities for Transformative Action (New York: Zed Books, 1999), 5.

Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 77–81.

Ibid., 77.

Ibid., 72.

Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 51. Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 3–4.

See Universal Declaration of Human Rights, articles 22–27.

Edit Lederer, “U.N. Investigator: Migrants Suffer Worst Racism,” Associated Press, November 1, 2010.

The author transcribed the discussion in detailed notes at the time of the dialogue.

“An Appeal for Human Rights,” Atlanta Student Movement, http://www.atlantastudentmovement.org/An_Appeal_for_Human_Rights.html (accessed August 15, 2014).

Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 44.

Transcribed by author from video recording made by Emory University Center for Creativity and Arts on January 23, 2014. Video available online, published on April 30, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL13yaElNZU (accessed on August 10, 2014).

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Jonathan Zuniga, e-mail message to author, July 3, 2014.

Arizbeth Sanchez, e-mail message to author, July 3, 2014.

Photographs published with permission by author and photographer, Laura Emiko Soltis, who retains copyrights to published images.

Anne Braden, “Finding the Other America,” Fellowship 72 (2006): 1–2.