Freedom Zines

Freedom Zines is a public writing project that asks participants to investigate their relationships with writing and, by extension, explore their social and political identities. In my academic research, I explore how the writing workshop can function as a communal, mobile literacy site—and how it embodies the historically ambulatory nature of Black literacies in the mid-20th century American South. Because Black southerners had to pass a literacy test to exercise their right to vote, they found they were ineligible to participate in one of the core aspects of citizenship in the U.S. Educators like Septima Clark and Bernice Robinson and civil rights organizations like SNCC operated freedom/citizenship schools in the South so that Black southerners could learn to read and write—not only to participate in the franchise, but to become fully engaged political actors in all aspects of their lives. Because the existence of these schools was continuously threatened by local governments and other policing bodies, they were often conducted in homes, churches, and even outdoors. This project frames the writing workshop as a byproduct of these historically significant mobile writing spaces. In the face of ChatGPT and other services that purport to write for us, I propose that now, more than ever, we should center the act of writing as a way to engage our social and political identities. I look to the histories of Black literacy movements in the U.S. South as a guidepost for this project because they remind us that writing can be a responsive, community-oriented action.