Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement

By Elaine Weiss

Categories: History, Politics & Social Sciences

Historian Elaine Weiss tells the story of the citizenship schools that prepared Black Southerners in the 1950s to pass literacy tests for voting. Her narrative centers on three Charleston-area activists: schoolteacher Septima Clark, hairdresser Bernice Robinson and businessman Esau Jenkins. Inspired by workshops at Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, run by Myles and Zilphia Horton, they opened schools where students studied for the tests while learning civil rights lessons and freedom songs. Clark carried the model across the South through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

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