“An important thing about this iteration of the school is we are grounding the word in contemplative practice,” Brown told The Gazette, noting the July training will teach skills in sustainability, meditation, and capacity-building necessary when engaging in civil rights work.

“Part of the point is to cut through the polarization we see going on around us right now,” she said. “To find common ground to land on and approach the work from.”

Original freedom schools – developed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1964 “Freedom Summer” in Mississippi – aimed to empower African-Americans with reading, writing, math, history and civics education in an effort to get them politically engaged.

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