(Ruthie Foster sings “Woke Up This Morning”)

As Ruthie Foster sings, you see Children playing, a Freedom Summer volunteer reading with a black child and a black child reading a book.

Marvin Gatch: The idea of a freedom school was to let kids experience some things that we knew they weren't experiencing in segregated Mississippi public schools.

Marcia Moore: The idea wasn't to get across a lot of academic work. It, again, was getting kids used to the idea that they might have something to say and the idea of maybe teaching creativity and then teaching getting used to being in a school where they were with whites and didn't have to be intimidated or afraid.

Patti Miller: We would sometimes read to the children or we would do projects with them. It was more just a fun place for kids, for the younger kids.

Lenray Gandy: What I remember about Patti is that she used to tell great stories. We would listen to Patti, she'll go and open up a book in a freedom school and we kids would sit on the floor and she'd read a story to us and the story would come to life. We could actually, she would put us there as she read the story. And Patti also made great sandwiches for us kids. She might have made peanut butter or lunch meat but she was great with us kids.

(“Woke Up This Morning”)

four boys and a girl sitting on porch steps smiling at the camera.

Richard Beymer: This was a fluid thing all the time, how to get the kids there to school that lived like eight miles away because more kids wanted to come. How are we going to get them there? Someone has got a truck. Okay, we'll put a bunch of boards across the truck, that way we can make it like a school bus, they can all sit there. Every day was an improvisation.

(“Woke Up This Morning”)

kids riding on boards across the back of a pickup truck singing and talking as they ride to a freedom school.

Freedom Summer volunteers and kids that attended the freedom school work together to get the sugar cane crop in from the field.

Beymer: “And we hear that today they've got to be off because they've got to work in the cane fields. So I follow them down to the cane fields and we all pitch in and play. Yeah, you chop, you've got a machete and the process is people would come, keep coming, you keep doing this, you hand it to the next and then they walk around and throw it in the truck and then everyone, we're a machine.”

(“Woke Up This Morning”)

kids and freedom volunteers working in the sugar cane fields.

A black child sits on the lap of a Freedom Summer volunteer. The volunteer breaks a sugar cane stalk in half and they share the sweet treat.

Gatch: I don't know what I thought freedom schools would do other than maybe open the lid to a possible way of life that kids hadn't thought about.

(“Woke Up This Morning”)

a sign that says “Welcome to Meridian Freedom School” with volunteers holding hands above their heads under the sign.

Three little black girls singing “Woke Up This Morning”.