Developing Democratic Citizens: The Mississippi Freedom Schools as a Model for Social Studies Instruction

Abstract

In late 1963, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights group comprised mostly of young black college students and graduates, designed several projects to involve white volunteers in assisting African American communities in Mississippi, one of which was the creation of freedom schools to ameliorate the inadequacies of the Mississippi public schools and to engage African American students in collective community, social, and political participation by linking education to their personal experiences. An innovative instructional program was developed to enable student activity, expression, and critical thinking. In this article, the authors describe the goals, curricular, instructional techniques, evaluation methods, and classroom management strategies used in these freedom schools, and explore how teachers in five schools implemented the curricula in their classrooms and viewed the results of their teaching. Suggestions as to how this project proves useful as a model for social studies instruction are also presented.