Remembering Forward: What Can We Learn from Civil Rights Era Citizenship Schools for Food and Democracy Today?

The struggle to secure voting rights during the Civil Rights Movement was deeply intertwined with the Black American struggle against systemic injustice, physical violence and the urgency to attend to needs, including the most basic need of all: food.

During this event, Remembering Forward, hosted at The New School on October 15th, 2025 as part of the “Food and Democracy” event series, we recalled the organizing history of the Civil Rights Movement, particularly focusing on Citizenship Schools and their ability to build revolutionary capacity through popular education. Citizenship Schools gave people the tools to imagine and build the communities they would like to live in, empowering Black Southerners to vote and create the change they wanted to see in their communities.  Food studies scholar Dr. Bobby J. Smith II, author of “Food, Power, Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement” (2023, University of North Carolina Press), walked us through the Mississippi food story, explaining the connections between Citizenship Schools and key moments in the Civil Rights Movement like the creation of the nation-wide Food for Freedom mutual aid network (1962) and the establishment of the Freedom Food Co-op founded by Fannie Lou Hamer (1967). The conversation was moderated by Kyndal Coleman and Tamarra Thomas, both FJAR members.

Together, we filled in the gaps of the prevailing Civil Rights Movement narrative reflecting on the often overlooked tradition of antifascist organizing in the South that helped secure voting rights and demanded more of our democracy, with food playing an ever-present role in that history.  

By Kyndal Coleman

The “Food and Democracy” event series – curated by the Food Studies Program and the Food & Social Justice Lab at The New School in 2025-26 – creates a space for reflection about democracy and liberation in, and through, the food system. The series has featured scholars, artists, students, faculty, and staff from across and beyond the university. Collectively, the events in the series expand the boundaries of collective learning and action through food, agriculture, popular education, art and civic engagement. The Food and Democracy series in 2025-26 is supported in part by The New School’s university-wide strategic initiative on Democracy and Culture.