CBH Talk | Elaine Weiss and Rashawn Davis Discuss “Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil RIghts Movement”
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, join us for a look at an under-recognized program that laid the foundation for the voting activism of the mid-1960s. In the summer of 1954, just weeks after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Ed decision, four courageous citizen-activists launched the Citizenship Schools project designed to prepare Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests, whose main aim was disenfranchisement. Over the next decade this secretive undertaking established more than 900 citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read, write, and join the movement demanding the right to vote.
Author Elaine Weiss relays the story of the Citizenship Schools, and the vision and actions of its initiators Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins, Bernice Robinson, and Myles Horton, in her new book Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement. Join her to hear this important history in a conversation led by Rashawn Davis, Executive Director of the Andrew Goodman Foundation.
Participants
Elaine Weiss is a journalist and author, recognized with prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and as a MacDowell Colony Fellow and Pushcart Prize “Editor’s Choice” honoree. She is the author of the highly-acclaimed narrative history The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, hailed as a “riveting, nail-biting political thriller” with powerful parallels to today’s political environment. Steven Speilberg’s Amblin production company is adapting The Woman’s Hour for the screen, with Hillary Rodham Clinton serving as Executive Producer.
Weiss’ previous book, Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army in the Great War was excerpted in Smithsonian Magazine and featured on C-Span and public radio stations nationwide. She holds a graduate degree from the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University. She is a frequent media commentator on the themes of women’s political organization and modern voting rights, with recent op-eds published in The New York Times and interviews on NPR’s All Things Considered, CBS Sunday Morning, and PBS American Experience.
Rashawn Davis is the Executive Director at The Andrew Goodman Foundation. As the former Director of the Racial Justice Labs at Change.org, Rashawn spearheaded the investment of millions of dollars into Black and Brown leaders driving impactful racial justice work. He has served in both the public and private sectors, playing pivotal roles in designing and implementing transformative impact initiatives, including Newark’s historic Police Review Board, where he was appointed by Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka in 2018 to serve a term as commissioner. In 2014, Rashawn became one of the youngest people in the history of Newark to be certified and appear on a municipal election ballot at the age of 21. He led an insurgent campaign for a City Council seat representing the city’s west ward.
Rashawn is a proud member of the Board of Directors for the W.E.B. DuBois Scholars Institute at Princeton University. Rashawn graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor's degree in Government and earned a master’s degree from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School.
