Article 5: Learning for Liberation: The Citizenship Education Program and the Freedom Struggle

In the early 1960s, Victoria Gray was a self-confident businesswoman, a respected local figure with a strong network of family and friends in the little town of Palmers Crossing, Mississippi. Yet she vividly remembers her lack of confidence on the night she convened her first Citizenship School class. Two or three of her older adult students were just at the stage of learning their ABCs, and the other three were not much beyond that. She recalls: “At the end of the first session we were singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ . . . and I looked around the circle and I thought, ‘now you gotta be kidding, what in heaven’s name are you going to overcome with this group of people?’” The class focused on students learning to read and write their own names, addresses, and social security numbers and becoming stronger readers. Students were delighted when Gray could help them compose letters to relatives. She also explained to them a section of the state constitution, preparing them to register to vote. According to Gray, the nucleus of the civil rights movement in Palmers Crossing emerged from this and subsequent Citizenship School classes, “These are the people who became your catalysts, who became your inspiration, who were willing to go out on that line, who were willing to go to jail” (Adams 1998).