Ron DeSantis banned lessons on racism in Florida public schools. ‘Freedom schools’ fill the gaps

“When I say, ‘because’, you say: ‘Black people invented it,’” Renee Scott Best told a class of predominantly Black students one Monday last month. The call and response from the kids grew louder as they read a fictional story about a dystopian world without African Americans and their inventions. A folding bed, tricycle, clock, toilet, heating furnace, thermostat and air conditioner were among the innovations that no longer existed because, “Black people invented it,” the students shouted.

“Because we were brought here as slaves, they try to make us think we’re not very smart,” Best said toward the end of the lesson. She stood beside a poster that displayed the cover of her poetry book about 50 Black inventors, Black Inventors Poetry in Motion, which inspired the day’s lesson plan. She said: “We know that’s not true, because without all of the Black inventions in and around your home, you’d be in a cabin!”

The class Best teaches is part of an educational initiative launched in 2023 by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), a Black heritage academic club founded in 1915 by historian Carter G Woodson. Known as a “freedom school”, the class was formed in response to what critics call an assault on Black history in Florida public schools launched by Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor’s Stop Woke Act prohibits schools from teaching about structural racism or using educational material from The 1619 Project, and he’s also banned advanced-placement African American history courses.

While state statute still requires the teaching of African American history in Florida’s public schools, only 11 out of more than 60 districts have a Black history teaching plan advertised in curriculum guides, according to the state board African American History Taskforce. And since last year, the state’s social studies standards have included instruction that enslaved people learned skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit”. Some students and instructors say that the governor’s policies have sowed a culture of fear.

“We have some great standards in the state of Florida, but when you add the element of fear of teaching something that is true history in our country, [people wonder] if I say this, am I in trouble?” said Edna Sherrell, lead instructor at ASALH’s Sarasota freedom school. “Will I have a problem with my parents of the wonderful students I’m teaching, because I’m saying something that’s truthful, even if it’s in a textbook?”

The freedom school was in session over the course of two months this summer and held at St Petersburg’s Woodson African American Museum of Florida. Though the class sizes vary, 17 students between the ages of 11 and 17 were in class in early July. Each of the kids opts into the extracurricular class to supplement their school learning. According to its vision statement, the main focus of the educational initiative is to draw “from the Black activist-intellectual tradition, to build the institutional infrastructure for a progressive, redemptive program of study around the majesty and value of Black History”.

Best, one of eight freedom school instructors with ASALH, said that she aspires to instill Black pride in her students, “to educate since they’re not doing it in the public schools … and give them the curriculum we think is important for them as African American children”.

Freedom schools, which originally started in Mississippi in 1964, have seen a resurgence as a result of DeSantis’s policies, with schools being spread throughout the nation. Six ASALH branches and affiliated groups have launched schools in Florida, with additional schools in Dallas, Indianapolis and Urbana-Champaign.

The curriculum varies nationwide, but largely relies on the multimedia textbook Black History 365, with some schools teaching youths and others focused on adults. Volunteer instructors including public school teachers, attorneys and Black history scholars also use primary source documents, newspaper clippings and their own books in classes. St Petersburg’s curriculum includes teachings on the origins of Africa, the enslavement of Africans, the Reconstruction period in the US following the civil war, Jim Crow policies and the resistance to white supremacy throughout history. The St Petersburg school has held a summer, winter and spring session and is in talks about developing another one in the winter of 2025.

Freedom schools play a pivotal role in supplementing education during DeSantis’s tenure, according to Jacqueline Hubbard, president of St Petersburg ASALH branch. “Given the situation that we find ourselves in as African Americans and Black people, now is the time for us to step forward and open up schools that will teach our kids the information that they need to be successful in America,” Hubbard said.

Florida’s policies are particularly dangerous because they serve as model legislation for other conservative states, according to Trey Walk, a democracy researcher and advocate with Human Rights Watch. “If Florida’s laws are upheld in court appeals, it can create a more conservative precedent for neighboring states,” Walk said during a seminar on Florida’s censorship policies. In June, Human Rights Watch released a report on the state of Florida’s education called Why Do They Hate Us So Much?, which found that censorship laws like the Stop Woke Act harmed underrepresented communities in Florida’s public schools. Based on more than 60 interviews with educators, students and parents in Florida, the report’s authors found that teachers were taught inaccurate information about slavery during training for a mandatory civics exam.

W Marvin Dulaney, ASALH’s president, sees it as ironic that “we’ve come full circle where … 22 states have passed 40-plus pieces of legislation to restrict the teaching of Black history in terms of its content and ban certain books that they’re afraid of.” He added: “So we decided with ASALH that we weren’t going to sit quietly and let them continue to miseducate our children.”

Sara King, a 16-year-old ASALH student, said the summer classes complement what her dad, who has a master’s degree in Africana studies, teaches her in the home. Some of her favorite topics she’s learned so far include details on the reality of the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the promise of 40 acres and a mule that was ultimately cancelled. “There’s so much that just isn’t included in textbooks,” King said. When teachers discuss the transatlantic slave trade in class, they sometimes don’t use the word “slavery”, she said: “They won’t blatantly say ‘the brutal history of slavery’. They’ll go over ‘our country participated in this’, and then they’ll skip over to the next part.”

Akil King, Sara’s father, said that he had also benefited from the class, finding out that land along the southern coast that was supposed to be redistributed to formerly enslaved Black people after the civil war was referred to as “Sherman’s reserves”. “No matter how much African American history I know – having a degree in it and being a person who reads and studies – there is so much that has been withheld from us,” he said. “I always learn things that I didn’t know before.”

The freedom school model has helped ASALH fulfill its founder’s 1915 dream of creating Black history courses throughout the nation, said Dulaney: “It’s almost like the state legislators across the country actually did us a favor. By being so racist, draconian, it gave us a vision and helped us to develop our mission a little more.” The organization is currently working on grant funding to expand their program.

During the time of DeSantis, the freedom schools could serve as a “wake-up call” that history can be taken away, said Akil King: “Governors come and go. This could be a catalyst for African American history to always be taught.”