“Building Up Our Own Institutions”: A History of Student Agency in Mississippi, 1941-1965

• In Event: Spaces of Protests: Student Activism in the Post-World War II Era

Abstract

The research presented in this paper examines the history of education during the Mississippi Freedom Movement by analyzing how, first, students experienced education and acts of resistance during the 1940s and 1950s and, second, how these experiences influenced the next generation of students who attended Freedom Schools and integrated all white public schools between 1964 and 1971. Therefore, this paper examines the roots of resistance in education that led to alternative educational endeavors like the Freedom Schools and the first wave of African Americans to integrate schools beginning in 1964. To illustrate the trajectory of student engagement in the Freedom Movement, this paper examines the history of involvement and agency of students in Clarksdale, MS, Jackson, MS, and Holly Springs, MS.

Author

• Jon Hale