Freedom Schools, Folk Schools, and Communiversities: Southern Resistance Schools
Many names, but the concept is the same at its roots. It's the everyday folks learning what they need to know - together - with or without school walls.
Communiversities were defined as "non-hierarchical, inclusive, public centers of education for the enrichment and advancement of community life" in a 2024 article. Spaces for adults to deepen their understanding of the world around them is so necessary. A group of Black southern labor organizers in North Carolina built the Communiversity South - a space for everyday working folks to learn their history and be able to shift who we think about our world (aka community consciousness) through storytelling and popular education. Other dope political organizations are building communiversities to develop political education such as Interrupting Criminalization and The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond.
One article about communiversities opens with a photograph of the Highlander Center, which was originally founded as the "Highlander Folk School" 94 years ago. Highlander is one of the older folk schools in the U.S., model in part from the Danish folk high schools. These folks across the world were/are focused on the collective learning of poor folks in the region, most of whom historically were farmers and agrarians. Many folk schools developed during shifts in political systems, such as nation sovereignty or the end to oppressive rule. Today's folk schools after focus on the necessary skills for living and surviving in today's political/environment/economic conditions. As folk school scholar Dr. Devon Lee puts it: folk schools are "slow schools for fast times".
And then there are freedom schools. Nothing brings to mind more clearly an image of learning as resistance. The Freedom Summer of 1964 was powerful weeks-long campaign to get Black folks in the South to win back their rights. Organized by the Council of Federated Organizations, which included SNCC and CORE, 41 freedom schools were launched. "In addition to math, reading, and other traditional courses, students were also taught black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement, and leadership skills that provided them with the intellectual and practical tools to carry on the struggle after the summer volunteers departed." Freedom schools are well known - they're also the only schools that focused primarily on children.
Olamina Folk School for Land, Memory, and Craft is in the tradition of all these models, although we clearly take our name from the Danish folk high schools. Focused on our people - the global majority. The necessity of political education and raising collective consciousness is why we exist.
