“Two Cities—One White, the Other Black”

This chapter looks at Black struggles for equal rights during the 1960s and 1970s, first assessing the impact of the Vietnam War on Blacks, with Muhammad Ali drawing the link between the war and the denial of civil rights to Blacks. The chapter looks closely at the sit-in movement that started in the 1940s and spread across the country, followed by convoys of buses in Freedom Rides marked by White mob violence, beatings, and hundreds of arrests. Activists from the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee launched a “Freedom Summer” campaign in 1964 to register Black voters in Deep South states; the fierce White resistance included the murders of more than twenty Black and White volunteers. The chapter then shifts focus to Detroit, as the city became progressively more Black with the flight of several hundred thousand Whites from city to suburbs. The racial segregation of Black children in Detroit schools, while the suburban schools were virtually all-White, led to an NAACP lawsuit that resulted in a judicial order for large-scale busing between Detroit and its suburbs. This case, Milliken v. Bradley, ended in 1974 with a 5–4 Supreme Court decision that banned busing across school district lines, with a passionate dissent by Justice Thurgood Marshall; that year also saw violent White resistance to a busing order in Boston.

“Wearing Only Our Skin”: the multimodal literacies classroom as a living arrangement

Purpose Literacy research exploring multimodal composition and justice-oriented children’s literature each have rich landscapes and histories. This paper aims to add to both of these bodies of scholarship through the emerging assemblage of Studio F, a fifth-grade classroom. The authors share poststructural analytic encounters with attention to the unexpected multimodal relationships and the justice-oriented talk and texts that emerged, as well as the classroom conditions that produce them. Design/methodology/approach The authors think with assemblage theory to examine the newness that emerged as one small group of students wrestled with the emerging instances of racism present in Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles. Findings Together, the living arrangement of bodies, materials and discourses created openings for students’ explorations of race and racism. Originality/value This paper offers teachers and researchers space to rethink what is possible in the literacy classroom when the authors re-envision classrooms as vibrant assemblages, support emergent multimodal composing processes and follow students’ critical encounters toward justice-oriented literacies.

Internet Reviews

1964 Freedom Summer ProjectData & SocietyEnslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade

“A well conceived scheme to maintain racial segregation”

Chapter 1 situates Jackson State College in the racial history of Mississippi, emphasizing the struggle it faced against white supremacy and the balancing act its leadership performed. Determined to preserve the school, its presidents, both white and black, were forced to accept elements of racial containment. When protests emerged in Jackson in the 1960s, the Board of Trustees ensured that Jackson State’s president, Jacob Reddix, controlled student activism. When students joined Jacksonians to protest segregation in the city, he expelled them. When students voiced their political opinions, he dissolved the Student Government Association. During Freedom Summer, the Board of Trustees tightened restrictions on students. The smallest protest or rumor prompted white Jacksonians to condemn the campus as a breeding ground of criminals. In 1967 a new president, John A. Peoples, relaxed some restrictions on student life, even as the increasing influence of Black Power began to be felt on campus.