Oh,

this is in response to the Supreme Court decision.

So she loses her job.

She refuses to renounce her membership.

So she goes to work at Highlander.

And she developed...

Bernice Robinson, being a novice teacher, walks in that first day, evening.

It's not as potent.

So when your book crossed our desks, we thought, "Well, we really have to have this conversation and find out more." So, tell us a little bit more about how citizenship schools came to be formed.

Well, it's this really beautiful story of four really ordinary people, and it starts on a remote sea island off the coast of Charleston.

And the idea begins with a man named Esau Jenkins, who has a fourth grade formal education, though he's gone back to night school.

He's very clever, very entrepreneurial, very much a civic leader on his island.

And he realizes his neighbors, his island is impoverished, is neglected, is under the thumb of white domination in the courts, in the police, in who gets electricity, who gets a road paved, and he, he knows that they will remain isolated and poor unless they can muster some political muscle.

And so he wants to get his neighbors to vote, but most of them are illiterate.

So, most of his neighbors can't vote, but they also can't read and write.

But what was taught there? Who attended? And it, it had, like, I wanna say, an outsized influence on organizing writ large in the United States.

I'm rick Wilson, and this is The Enemies List. Hey, folks, and welcome back to The Enemies List podcast. My guest today is Elaine Weiss. She is a terrific author and has a new book out that I think is really important. Uh, and it- it's- it's a little off-axis from what you might expect on our show normally because it's not the immediate politics of right now, but it is something that- that struck me really hard because the book has spelled freedom. It's called The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement. And Elaine talks in this book about a movement that occurred back in the 1950s, uh, as the civil rights movement was beginning to blossom of underground schools. And I wanna talk to her about that today because I think that the citizenship that was taught in these schools by these mostly women, um, was- was something that- that catalyzed a movement, and I think we may be lacking a degree of education in citizenship today, and it may be time for something else like it. Um, so with that, I wanna just welcome Elaine Weiss to the show. Elaine, thank you so much for coming on today. Talk to me about the history of the citizenship schools, and secondly, how you came to write this book.

Sure. Thanks so much, Rick. Uh, really a privilege to be with you today. The idea of the citizenship schools of, uh, training, these were for adults, actually begins on a bus on Sea Islands off Charleston. And it's, uh, the idea of a, um, a man on, uh, Johns Island and he realizes he lives there, it's a mostly Black population, rural, very poor, totally neglected by, um, by the government, and, um, also subject to, um, terrible injustice in the- in- in the court system and every system. Uh, they're totally neglected and he realizes he has to organize his neighbors in order to have any sort of power. And so he, uh, begins a, uh, political action group as you might call, you know, $0.10 a month and you can, um, well, have a legal defense fund, so if someone is wrongly accused. And then he realizes that, um, on- you can't serve on a jury unless you are a registered voter, and that means you're being judged by white judges and white, uh, juries. And he says, "We need to have more voters." And so he begins on his little ji- jitney bus that he, uh, drives back and forth to teach the Constitution of South Carolina, which was part of the literacy test. It was a ridiculous test where not just reading and writing, it was to give your legal interpretation of, uh, the statutes of South Carolina. It was totally ridiculous and people who were even college-educated Black people were denied registration. Anyway, um, he starts to teach from the steering wheel of the bus. He- he passes out, uh, typed, his wife's typed the Constitution. They study it on the bus going back and forth before dawn pretty much, uh, on this bus. And he- he- they mostly memorize it, those who can't read, and then he goes with them to the registration, uh, clerk to try to register. Um, he- he succeeds, you know, one, two, three a month, and then he realizes that they need to read. They really need to do more than register. And so he, um, is invited and- and that's part of the book. He's invited to a, um, training center, uh, it's kind of social action training center in Tennessee. He brings this idea. He partners with a woman who had been his teacher on Johns Island years and years ago. He only got up to fourth grade 'cause that's how the schooling worked, and he- they together, uh, Septima Clark and Esau Jenkins, um, y- have this idea of training, uh, adults to pass the literacy test. And then it moves to a grocery store, uh, on the- behind the back shelves on this tiny rural island, um, where they are secretly taught to read and write, and then to register. But they're taught much more and that's something you- you touch on in your introduction. That, to me, is... It's, like, obviously, like, reading was the empowering technology. Mm-hmm. But- but the realization that chaining... Uh, uh, you go up that chain of citizenship basically where, um, you have to be registered to vote. You have to be literate at that period if you're Black to be able to vote. You have to be knowledgeable enough of that Constitution to be able to pass that literacy test to be able to vote and be on a jury. In all of this, did he see himself, did they see themselves as part of the broader civil rights movement or- or does this feel much more local to them? I- 'cause it starts in 1954 which is pretty much, you know, very early in the civil rights phase from- th- that I think of as, like, from post-war through '68. Actually, these were... Uh, it- it was not... Just like Rosa Parks, didn't come out of nowhere. Um, these were NAACP, um, activists. Uh, Septima Clark joined the NAACP which was considered a- a radical, um, a radical movement and there were repercussions, uh, serious repercussions for membership. But, uh, both Esau and- and, uh, Septima Clark are a part of, uh, an ongoing movement before we recognize in- in '54 that things are starting to move, um, they'd been working, uh, in their own communities for years and years and years. So they are- they are part of a- a sort of established movement which is moving very slowly and they're- they're both very frustrated by this. And when the Brown decision comes down from the Supreme Court, it kind of opens up and- and serves as a catalyst for these activists to say, "Okay. We've gotta move. We've gotta get these- we've gotta get petitions to desegregate the schools. Um, we've gotta get voting rights, uh, front and center." And so, uh, yes, they were working locally, but they were thinking nationally. Okay. A- and South Carolina was a hard target. South Carolina was a- was- was... I mean, uh, I would probably put Mississippi and South Carolina as two of the toughest states on the desegregation challenge scale in a lot of ways. What was the institutional opposition to this movement?

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Absolutely, Rick. Um, World War II and Korea, remember, um, many, um, American soldiers and black soldiers were, were serving in Korea, uh, in the early '50s. So, um, those wars really made a difference. Um, I write in the book about after World War II when black soldiers came back to the South, uh, and things were not rosy for them in the military. It wasn't, it wasn't yet desegregated. But they came back in their uniforms, and they felt they had served their country. Many of them had died, but those (laughs) who came back, um, there's, there's this, uh, incredible story, uh, that comes out of South Carolina of Isaac Woodard, um, who's a, a young soldier, comes back, is on the bus the day he's, he's been demobilized, um, going home to his rural home in South Carolina, and he is, uh, the bus driver doesn't like his attitude because he's soldierly, and he's wearing the American uniform, and he doesn't think black men should have that stature. And he, um, bus driver radios ahead to the, uh, sheriff in the next town, and Isaac Woodard is beaten and blinded, um, in a, in a, in a just... And there were these kind of, there were lynchings after, um, the black soldiers came home because, um, uh, the white, uh, establishments in their towns couldn't bear the idea that they were, they were veterans just like anyone else, and they had, they were wearing the uniform. So, there was a huge backlash in America, in the South, against those who had served their country. And this catalyzes, um, these men come home, and they s- they see what their life is like. It's still, you know, like, the antebellum, uh, time. And it's not slavery, but it is a version of sla- slavery. And so, it's those young men who now, in early 1950s, were in their 30s, have families, they say, "I don't want my children to grow up like this." And they're the ones who are s- are initiating, uh, the desegregation suits. They're the ones, uh, if you, if you look at the Brown decision, it's five, five, um, different cases coming from different states, and they're y- for the most part, I can't say all of them, uh, but several are young veterans, young black veterans who say, "I'm gonna get, have my children live in a better world here, a better country."