A network of grassroots classrooms helped shape the modern civil rights movement, training ordinary people to register voters, challenge segregation and claim basic rights in hostile conditions.
The effort grew out of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, whose model inspired the first Citizenship School founded by Gullah community members on South Carolina’s Sea Islands.
From that modest start, hundreds of Citizenship Schools spread across 11 Southern states, equipping Black Americans with literacy, leadership skills and the confidence to assert their rights despite threats from officials, media institutions, business leaders and vigilantes.
Participants and organizers — Black Americans alongside white allies — faced intimidation and violence, and some paid with their lives. Yet the movement’s lessons carried forward across generations, influencing ongoing struggles for racial justice.
Journalist and author laine Weiss explores this history in her book "Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement." The account highlights lesser-known figures whose organizing helped propel leaders such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Diane Nash and Ella Baker.
Weiss also traces the roots of the anthem “We Shall Overcome,” linking its spread to Highlander and the Citizenship School network that sustained the movement.
Guest
- Elaine Weiss, journalist and author
