Supporting the Freedom Dreams of Incarcerated Learners and Volunteer Tutors
Access to high-quality educational programming and educational support for currently and formerly incarcerated learners are matters of justice. It can hardly be otherwise, because, as we have learned from the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners we serve, educational programming is one of the only services focused on their freedom dreams.
Education and Black Freedom Dreaming
The term freedom dreams was coined by historian Robin D. G. Kelly, who argued in his book Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination that “the desires, hopes, and intentions of the people who fought for change cannot be easily categorized, contained or explained.” Therefore, instead of relying on a singular, acceptable, and preferred explanation for how Black people have imagined and pursued freedoms, he offers freedom dreams. This framework posits that since the moment of capture Black people have always fought against unfreedoms produced by racism, patriarchy, and capitalism, by imagining and pursuing a different world, a world closer to freedom.
Of the various ways that Black people have imagined and pursued freedom, education has been a consistent tactic and aim. In the years that followed gradual emancipation in the urban north, formerly enslaved Black people established independent schools, to improve their employment opportunities and to create opportunities for their children. Even before emancipation and the establishment of schools, many Black people were self-taught, secretly learning how to read and write, mastering the language and scientific knowledge of the learned white elite. They pursued education as a political act, using literacy and numeracy skills as tools for resistance and liberation. From their learning came beautiful poetry, almanacs, manifestos questioning slavery and freedom, and new religious traditions.
“Access to high-quality educational programming and educational support for currently and formerly incarcerated learners are matters of justice.”
During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved Black people actively pursued education to ensure their freedom and expand their independence. Many primary and secondary schools, and HBCUs were established with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau, domestic missionary organizations, funders, and others sympathetic to Black freedom dreams. When Black men became eligible to vote in 1870, they were also able to hold public office, which gave them the opportunity to set policy in southern states. With this legislative power, they enacted free public education and established land grant colleges in the south. For most of the 20th century, Black people fought for equal and equitable education. Some wins of these efforts include the desegregation of public schools with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the desegregation of higher education, and the establishment of Black Studies programs. Since these wins, educational opportunity, equity, and justice became victims of defunding, deprioritization, and erasure; however, Black people continue to fight for educational access and high-quality educational programming in their freedom dreaming.
Educational Justice
Of course, we know that not all incarcerated people are Black. But we also know that Black people are disproportionately targeted by the carceral state and are too often denied access to the educational programming that helps us reach our freedom dreams. We also know that Black freedom dreaming has long inspired other people's freedom dreaming in the face of personal and group-differentiated injustice. In fact, the prison movements of the 1970s , which campaigned for better conditions of confinement, were inspired by Black people's desires for equal treatment under the law, political power, economic citizenship, self-determination, community control, and educational opportunity.
In the present moment, defined by activism calling for the abolition of systems that delegitimize Black lives, incarcerated people have been joined by allies to agitate for nutritious food, access to quality healthcare, less overcrowding, protection against physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, the end of solitary confinement, workforce and reentry programming, the end of predatory communication technologies, and access to high-quality educational programming. Incarcerated folks want conditions of confinement that don’t duplicate harm and that support their ability to live sustainable lives post-incarceration. As allies, we join them in pushing for humane conditions of confinement and imagining a world that does not produce social death.
“Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people tell us that educational access and high-quality educational programming are essential to humane confinement and the ability to live sustainably post-incarceration.”
Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people tell us that educational access and high-quality educational programming are essential to humane confinement and the ability to live sustainably post-incarceration. Too often, though, conversations about the necessity and benefits of educational programming focus on decreasing violence on the inside, reducing recidivism, and increasing employment opportunities. These are important, but we have learned that the desires of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners are more expansive. Access to high-quality education for some is about employment, for some, it's about legal advocacy, and for others, it might be about being able to help their children with math homework. For many, it’s also about the awakenings that come from asking questions and the sheer joy of intellectual pursuits.
Getting Closer to Freedom
At the Petey Greene Program, we support incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in their freedom dreams through education. We also support our volunteers by educating them about the systems that produce the educational circumstances of the students they tutor. Many of our volunteers join the PGP because they are inspired by the most recent movement for Black freedom. They want to join efforts to ensure that the lives of Black people and other marginalized folks matter.
As tutors, PGP volunteers focus on supporting the educational dreams of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners. However, many of them emerge from their tutoring experience and from the PGP’s justice-oriented leadership programming as advocates, committed to changing the systems that produce confinement in the first place, and to combatting the lasting impacts that make it difficult for people to live sustainable lives post-incarceration.
One Howard University volunteer, a participant in our HBCU Forward Initiative at Howard University, explains how tutoring has expanded her vision of how to help incarcerated and formerly incarcerated folks:
If you were to ask me about what I want to do to help those that are system-impacted, when I was in middle school and high school, I probably would’ve told you I wanted to be a warden because that was the only way I knew. I was going to be the best warden. I was going to bring the best programs into these facilities. I was going to take care of those within the facility. And that’s all I knew. But as [I tutored] I have taught myself about…the unjust factors that harm our communities. I have grown a lot, and so I went from wanting to be a warden…to fighting for abolition within a span of my undergraduate career.
This is partially why we expanded our mission statement in 2020. We not only support the freedom dreams of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners, but we also help our volunteers expand their own freedom dreams and join the students that they support in reimagining educational justice.
“We not only support the freedom dreams of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners, but we also help our volunteers expand their own freedom dreams and join the students that they support in reimagining educational justice.”
At the PGP, we imagine a world where formerly incarcerated people lead us in getting closer to freedom. We imagine a world where everybody has what they need to thrive and where we no longer have punitive systems and practices that exclude, deny, and confine. Providing high-quality tutoring for currently and formerly incarcerated people, and helping our volunteers become advocates for educational justice, are two ways that we approach the shared task of creating that world.