A Modern Day Freedom Ride for Education Justice

Rose Mary Gilliam just wants to speak her peace and find enlightenment.

The 18-year-old New Orleans resident has been a volunteer in the public schools. She’s trained in non-violent protest. She talks with youngsters about making positive life choices. And this week, she’s joining a group of her peers in a reverse “freedom ride” to Washington, D.C., to join a national conversation and to protest inequities in education.  

“I’ve seen unjust things in the schools,” said Gilliam who has been an activist for four years. “There are things that must change. I want to exchange information and see progress in the future.”

The Freedom Riders, who in 1961 rode interstate buses and trains from Washington, D.C., through the South to protest segregated transportation, were mostly students. The youngest was 18.

Now, 50 years later, a modern crop of riders joins a national protest for justice in education, sponsored by the Save Our Schools March [2]. Starting today, these students will help lead workshops and trainings with the Girls and Boys Club of Washington and other youth organizations. On Saturday, they will march with education leaders, teachers, other students, parents and community organizers.

The Plessy and Ferguson Foundation [3] helped organize the New Orleans group of activists and scheduled stops along the way—including to the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery on Tuesday—to learn more about the civil rights movement and SPLC’s prison pipeline litigation work [4]. The youngest activist is 8. The oldest is 25. Their experience ranges from community organizer to school volunteer. Some contribute with music and dance. Others, like Briana O’Neal, 21, organize the community and offer childcare services to high school students at no charge so that they can graduate. Still others, like Qasim Davis, 25, will open his own public school in about a year in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward.

The foundation’s mission is to create new and innovative ways to teach the history of civil rights through understanding the historic Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 that upheld separate facilities enshrined in Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court reversed that decision, and launched the dismantling of segregation almost 60 years later, in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

There is still work to do.

New Orleans is ripe for school reform, said activists. The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina led to the loss of community schools and a further deterioration of public schools, they say. Violence has escalated. Choices for quality education don’t exist. The SPLC has filed lawsuits against the Louisiana Department of Education for failure to properly serve special needs students [5] in New Orleans. Ongoing SPLC litigation focuses on unreasonable discipline policies that push kids out of schools and on the brutal treatment of students.

Improving the schools is going to take a lot of input. But the conference this weekend will help ensure safe schools, qualified teachers and enrichment courses for future students, these activists say.   

“Youth must be involved in the conversation,” said Domonique Triggs, 17, who is joined on this trip by his 8-year-old brother and their mom. “I’ve always been interested in education. The prison pipeline must be addressed. That’s what got me interested.” 

And through all their work and study, service to community, most of these students say they are typical. They are willing to work for change.

“Activism is a place for expression and to speak up for what you believe in, said Rose Mary Gilliam. “I’m sure there are a lot more [students] like me who want to get involved.”

Williamson is associate editor of Teaching Tolerance.