The Boston Freedom Schools as Places of Possibility for Reciprocal Integrated Education

Abstract In 1963 and 1964, organizers in Boston held Freedom Stay-Outs—one-day school boycotts—to protest the neglect of predominantly Black schools from the Boston School Committee, the governing body of the Boston Public Schools. Boycotting students attended Freedom Schools, where they learned about Black history and discussed issues facing Black youth. This article examines the 1964 Stay-Out and Freedom Schools as spaces where Black educators, organizers, parents, and students developed and enacted a vision of integrated education distinct from the dominant models of integration proposed in Boston and across the nation post-Brown v. Board (1954). The 1964 Freedom Schools modeled reciprocal integration, a vision for integrated education that promotes bidirectional physical and cultural movement, rather than the dominant model of integration that moved Black children into white schools to be taught white history and culture. Reciprocal integration was developed through Black parents’ and students’ educational testimony, the Stay-Out organizers’ own educational analysis, and the practical necessity of interracial organizing.