The Tweet that launched this diary.
These two women amaze me and inspire me every day. They do more than their share of the hard work needed to sustain human rights and civil rights in this country. Despite knowing our reality their words and actions are still a beacon of hope to me.
What is Haley Farm you might be wondering. Well, I’m here to answer that question. It’s an amazing place that the Children’s Defense Fund, (CDF), purchased from author, Alex Haley the author who wrote Roots, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with Malcolm X, and Queen among others.
Haley Farm first came to my attention a few weeks ago with the arrival of fundraising emails from CDF. CDF is one of my favorite charities, so I receive regular emails and fundraising requests from them. I had alot going on and knew I’d be donating to them later this year so I ignored the requests.
Then I saw the Tweet.
I try really hard to not “like” a Tweet or a comment that contains a link without first reading the link. So I clicked on the link and learned about this wonderful place.
The story begins about 25 years ago when,
The Children’s Defense Fund purchased the former Alex Haley Farm intending to create an ideal setting for spiritual renewal, leadership training, and character development. They host organizations that affirm they will play a role in the CDF mission, and that agree to keep CDF Haley Farm as a smoke-free, drug and alcohol-free, violence-free, hate-free, loving environment in doors and outdoors. The facility connects young leaders and activists with the glorious heritage of the struggle for freedom, and is where policy makers and community builders come to connect, recharge their spiritual and physical batteries, and brainstorm strategies.
alexhaley.com/...
The Farm is also where the CDF does training for their Freedom Schools that are operating around the country.
Freedom Schools are not the creation of CDF but have been active for decades under that name, and built on a very long tradition of informal schools created to provide education for enslaved children.
In the 1960s the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee, (SNCC), launched a modern version of Freedom Schools.
They were intended to counter the “sharecropper education” received by so many African Americans and poor whites. Through reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and civics, participants received a progressive curriculum during a six-week summer program that was designed to prepare disenfranchised African Americans to become active political actors on their own behalf (as voters, elected officials, organizers, etc.). Nearly 40 freedom schools were established serving close to 2,500 students, including parents and grandparents.
www.civilrightsteaching.org/...
Here’s how Ms. Wright Edelman explains the purpose of the CDF Freedom Schools,
Haley Farm harks back to the Highlander Folk School, where leaders of the civil rights movement trained in the 1950s.
Edelman says it's home to a new social justice movement — "a modern movement that goes beyond the civil rights movement that ends poverty."
"Can we be an inclusive country with all of our diverse people? There should not be any poor children in America," she says.
www.npr.org/...
At the time of the NPR interview Wright Edelman was sharing the goal of movement building by training 1300 young adults and teenagers to go back to their communities where they’ll run local Freedom Schools. The schools were created in the 1980s to provide learning opportunities in the summer, along with keeping kids safe.
One of the most important sites at Haley Farm is the library named after the author and playwright, Langston Hughes. Designed by Maya Lin, it is beautiful and central to the goals of Freedom Schools. The Schools distribute about 70,000 books each year to approximately 12,000 students.
"We expect this generation to pick up the torch because the struggle is not over," says Theresa Venable, the librarian at the Langston Hughes Library at Haley Farm.
"It's a unique special collection," Venable says. "Books written by African-American authors, children's books illustrated by African-American illustrators, any book that relates to the black experience."
www.npr.org/...
The work at Haley Farm and at Freedom Schools around the country are the Children’s Defense Fund’s most important work, according to Marian Wright Edelman,
We build hope and put meat on hope's bones.