by Jeroslyn JoVonn
May 7, 2024
The Freedom To Learn Coalition launched a day of rallies to advocate for education, racial justice, and democratic principles.
The Freedom To Learn Coalition launched a day of rallies to advocate for education, racial justice, and democratic principles.
Held on Friday, May 3, activist groups within civil rights, LGBTQ+, education, and social justice joined with scholars and students to hold marches across the country ensuring the safeguarding of the freedom to learn. The rallies took place in New York City and Washington D.C. as declarations for multiracial democracy and combatting assaults on antiracist ideology and racial justice.
As part of the rallies, Freedom Summer 2024 was launched in honor of the first Freedom Summer in 1964 which served as a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. At the time, nationwide attention was brought to the injustices Black people in Mississippi faced in education and community engagement.
Freedom Summer 2024 also commemorates 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education. The campaign supporters joined with Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, Co-Founder and President of the African American Policy Forum, in rejecting ongoing efforts to suppress Black and diverse history and stifle inclusive democracy for all.
“The freedom to learn is the freedom to live. We cannot survive our current political moment or unlock the promise of our future without the tools to understand and make sense of our past,” Crenshaw said.
“And that’s precisely why those opposing democracy and equality are trying to take away our books, our concepts, and our knowledge. Ignorance about our past is the Achilles heel of democracy. And we can’t save this democracy without confronting its weakest link. That’s why we have to fight for the freedom to learn.”
Speakers at the rallies called out the existing dangers to our democracy, such as targets on books written by Black and LGBTQ+ authors, curriculum limitations in schools, voter suppression efforts, and other regressive policies promoted by The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
“Less than a century ago, the NAACP won the battle to desegregate our nation’s schools. 70 years later, we are battling for Black history to be taught in the same classrooms,” Wisdom Cole, National Director of Youth and College Division, NAACP said.
“Make no mistake – the war on wokeness is a war on Black America. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are the future. We refuse to live in the past.”
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