Margery Freeman interviews

Meet Margery: radical activist to anti-racist

“My name is Margery Freeman and I'm an activist. I've been part of the People’s Institute work since the early 1980s. One of the stories I like to tell is…”

  • The fact I came into the work as an anti-racist activist having a long history – I had already spent 30 years calling myself a radical activist, doing socialist work, working for different causes – the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement the women's movement – and so I thought I had all of the bonafides, all of the credentials for being able to call myself a radical activist.

    But when I went to my first Undoing Racism Workshop in 1983, I was very angry because I realized that what had happened to me was that I had not really understood what I was doing. I hadn't had any kind of framework. I was just doing good work, which is such a common thing for those of us who are white and educated women to do–we love to help people and so we go to work. And as Jim Dunn once said, you know, he loves to help people who are sick, but it doesn't give him the right to go and work on them. And that's what I was doing. I was working on them. I was doing good work but it was not work that was very effective.

    I had the good fortune of being mentored by both Jim Dunn and Ron Chisom as well as by my husband David Billings and others whom I had known – Jim Hayes and others in the New Orleans area where I was living at the time. Having them be part of my learning was just essential. And one of the things that happened in our life is that soon after I had been introduced to the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, David and I moved to New York for a couple of years and we were living one year in Englewood, New Jersey, and it was the very year that Jim Dunn, one of the co-founders of the People's Institute, had been diagnosed with cancer. And he was very sick and he was in New York and couldn't live by himself, so he came to live with us at our house in New Jersey with his new baby and his wife, for the spring of 1985. It was like an intensive tutorial. Here is a man that people think is not going to be around long for this world, but everything he did and everything he said was always about helping people to find themselves, to get clear about who they were, and to become more effective in the work they wanted to do. So his impact on my family was profound. Our teenage son, 15-years-old, our 12-year-old son, both were deeply impacted by having this experience, and I learned so much from just watching his interactions with people.

    When the People's Institute teaches something like, in order to be effective organizers you have to build relationships, I was living that very lesson in my house with my children, watching the way in which this profound and deeply humane person was able to always be listening to other people, always being able to take time with other people. It was a wonderful experience for me and I learned so much from that.

“The actual sustaining of [inter-racial organizing efforts] means that we have to acknowledge the brokenness that we all bring into the room. What the People's Institute often calls the Internalized Racial Oppression.”

Margery Freeman Interviews
Women’ Movement Missing Women of Color
Women’ Movement Missing Women of Color

I did not see who was not in my presence, and I think that's very true of the white women's movement. We were so dedicated to making it right for women that we didn't really see beyond our own vision and our vision was very truncated.

Transcript: As a person who spent the first half of my life–I'm 70 this year so I spent 35 years, almost 40 years, being very very clear about having a place in this radical work that I was doing and not seeing what was not there. That's one of the things that white people do: We don't see people of color in our society. We think we do, but we really don't. So when we get involved with something — whether it's a women's movement or working as I did for many years as a teacher or working in a community — we don't necessarily see what's not there. And this country doesn't want us to see it.

So I did not see who was not in my presence, and I think that's very true of the white women's movement. We were so dedicated to making it right for women that we didn't really see beyond our own vision and our vision was very truncated. Because this society makes sure even people like myself who so-called majored in history and was teaching history, I did not know who was not there until it became clearer to me as a person who's now an anti-racist. So, as organizers in the anti-racist movement, if we're going to be effective as women in this movement, we have to constantly be looking around the room, reading the room as we say, to see who's there and who is not there. Whose voices are being heard and whose voices are not being heard? It's a struggle every day for me. I still don't necessarily see who's not there or whose voice is not being heard.

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Internalized Racial Oppression
Internalized Racial Oppression

The actual sustaining of that work means that we have to acknowledge the brokenness that we all bring into the room. What the People's Institute often calls the internalized racial oppression. We have generations of feelings and attitudes and beliefs that are so deep within us.

Transcript: It's a very hard thing for us to bring together people of color and white people and continue that relationship. It's very very difficult. I wish it weren't. Sometimes we speak about having a honeymoon where we are all together and we're all saying how wonderful it is, and we look colorful and it's terrific, but the actual sustaining of that work means that we have to acknowledge the brokenness that we all bring into the room. What the People's Institute often calls the internalized racial oppression. We have generations of feelings and attitudes and beliefs that are so deep within us. I often speak of them as being within our bones because they are so deep and most of them are unexamined. So what happens is that when I come into a group I have all the best intentions of being a really good anti-racist. Being sure I listen to everybody, making sure that people's voices are heard, but it often comes down to my getting deeply involved with something and then forgetting: You should be doing the leading! I'm not the one. We should be doing the decision-making. It has to be a collective effort. 

People of color, when they see me acting white, or you know just going off and doing things, fortunately there's some people who will check me on that. But not many because it's very tiring. You know, people check us all the time and that gets exhausting, so we have to learn to internalize those checks. And it's difficult, so in those interracial efforts — whatever they may be, around housing or homelessness or health, they may be around criminal justice, workers, education — when white people find ourselves being the main leaders, stopping in the midst of that and going, “oh my gosh, here I am being out there in the front again.” We are seen very clearly by those of color who are with us, but how do you have those honest conversations? It's a very, very difficult thing to do, and we have to continually renew our relationships and take risks in order to keep those relationships fresh.

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Conspiracy of courtesy and right relationships
Conspiracy of courtesy and right relationships

I have often been grateful to my friend Donna Davis. Years and years ago, just soon after I had discovered racism — and I was very much like Columbus, I was going to shove it down everybody's throat — I was helping to organize a training in New Orleans.

Transcript: I have often been grateful to my friend Donna Davis. Years and years ago, just soon after I had discovered racism — and I was very much like Columbus, I was going to shove it down everybody's throat — I was helping to organize a training in New Orleans. It was going to be for some churches that were Black and white churches coming together to do this Undoing Racism Workshop. And one day, an African-American colleague of mine said to me, “Margery, are you sure you want to do this?” and I said, “Absolutely! This is the work. We must get together, we must do this.” And she said to me, she said, “You know Margery, when it comes to race we have a conspiracy of courtesy. We're very polite, we are very careful, but we don't have an honest relationship. And the People's Institute's work is trying to help us develop honest relationships, and I'm not sure we're ready for that.” I've worked on that ever since — this conspiracy of courtesy — which is the way we usually have relationships across racial lines.

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Margery Freeman Interviews
Changing one school at a time: a story from Brooklyn Friend School, NY
Undoing Racism in Education
Changing one school at a time: a story from Brooklyn Friend School, NY
Undoing Racism in Education

Organizing and education has been something that I've been working on for many many years, and one of the things that I think is happening is that people who are starting to internalize the principles of anti-racism are really starting to bring it back to their schools. I'll use one example in New York, Brooklyn Friend School.

Transcript: Organizing and education has been something that I've been working on for many many years, and one of the things that I think is happening is that people who are starting to internalize the principles of anti-racism are really starting to bring it back to their schools. I'll use one example in New York, Brooklyn Friend School. There was a person hired there — an African-American man — as a diversity officer. When he started to bring an anti-racist analysis to the school, they said, “We don't need that; we're not racist.” Which is always the first line that people give. And he said, “Well, let's talk about it.” And he was very discouraged. He thought, “I can't stay here because they don't get it.” And he and I talked for a long time about how he needed to build a base. And that's the work that he did over the next four years. First one, then two, then give, then ten, then 20, then 50, now 75 or 80 members of their school have been through our process. They have now set up an Undoing Racism Committee in the school and most of the policies are being shaped by what's going on in that group. That group is bringing a racial equity analysis to all the decision making. 


Last summer the new head of school was hired in part because of his belief that it's important to deal with racism in the school. The first thing this man did when he came to the school is come to one of our Workshops. The second thing he did was to go to the opening all school session with the parents, board, staff and students all there, and he said, “This is the way this school is going. This is the direction we're headed.” And it gave permission to those like Jeffrey Cox, who had been working in that school for years, to expand the work they were doing. To start experimenting. They have new curricula they're developing for the young children, they're developing new programs in the middle and upper schools and they are really making a difference. They're embedding an anti-racist analysis in the school.

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Undoing Racism in Education
Changing education: a story from Greensboro, NC
Undoing Racism in Education
Changing education: a story from Greensboro, NC
Undoing Racism in Education

One of the things that we often are asked is, “How are things changing as a result of our work?” In the education world, the change is coming very slowly. Sometimes it can be discouraging. We see very good examples of change that's happening, but it's pockets of change. 

Transcript: One of the things that we often are asked is, “How are things changing as a result of our work?” In the education world, the change is coming very slowly. Sometimes it can be discouraging. We see very good examples of change that's happening, but it's pockets of change. 


I'll lift up Greensboro, NC as one of the places where there's actual shifts in the way in which policies are being made. Decisions are being made not just for the students in the classrooms and the curriculum, but for things such as purchasing, and building buildings, and the things that make a lot of money. So the people in North Carolina who are our friends and allies there are working both within the system and outside of the system. Building a base outside of the system, in the community, and then really continuously building a core group of people inside the schools who are really working together. This outside and inside effort is really making a difference in that area. Not only has the school board been through the Undoing Racism Workshop, but they meet monthly as people of color caucuses, they meet as white caucuses, to continue to deepen their understanding of what [the Undoing Racism analysis] is meaning for the schools and what is this meaning for the school district.


You have to be able to get a cadre of people inside the school working together with the people in the community who are the parents and the advisors and the leaders in the community so that when they work together they can speak with a voice that's going to be heard by the powers that be and start the changes that are going to be made.

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Undoing Racism in Education
Working within public education
Undoing Racism in Education
Working within public education
Undoing Racism in Education

Those of us who are teachers in classrooms, we're finding that the best way we can start to do that organizing is to get a core group of people inside of a school building, and from that school building, start having informal conversations over lunch. Building those relationships inside the school building and starting very local.

Transcript: We've had a lot of teachers coming into our Undoing Racism Workshops in the last few years, and one of the things that I have found, as a person who also is a former teacher, is that when teachers realize there's this larger construct within which they're working, we get very angry. We get very distressed because we realize that we've been — as Malcolm X would say — we've been bamboozled. We've been taught to teach a certain way without any framework, without any understanding of the framework within which we're working. And it angers us so much that we don't know what to do because the system does not allow us any room for change. 

Ironically, in the New York region there's been more flexibility within the independent private school realm than there has been in the public school realm because the public schools are so hamstrung and hampered by the terrible philosophies that are guiding us to teach to the test and to privatize education. So it's a very difficult challenge. Those of us who are teachers in classrooms, we're finding that the best way we can start to do that organizing is to get a core group of people inside of a school building, and from that school building start having informal conversations over lunch. Building those relationships inside the school building and starting very local. Because if we don't start local, if we try to start at the systemic level, teachers get too discouraged and administrators are too busy, and they just can't do it.

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Undoing Racism in Education
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Anti-Racism Can Be Fun & Feeds Our Soul!

“As Joe Barnes once said, “If white people see anti-racist work as sacrificial, we're not going to do it.” It's got to be something that feeds our souls. It's got to be something that we enjoy. It's got to be something that builds our humanity and our relationships with a very wide group of people…”

  • So when David and I moved to New York almost seven years ago, the group here understood that, and they said, “We want to have a welcome party!” So they had a welcome party for us. It was a potluck, and we had a really good time. There wasn't an agenda, it wasn't a meeting. It was just an enjoyable time and we had good food and we had good things to drink and I said to the group that was assembled at that first meeting in November of 2004: “You know, maybe we should do this every month.” And the people in the room said “Nah, we don't do that in New York; we're too busy. We can't possibly just take time to enjoy one another.” And I said, “Well, let's try it.” Because that's really one of the things that we have to learn how to do, is how to be together and just enjoy one another's company. 


    So we started having anti-racist potlucks every single month, and we've had them every single month for the last six and a half years. Hundreds of people have come to them over those years and they've had a good time, and they've got to know one another. And one of the things that's been fascinating is, occasionally it'll be largely a white group, for example, and a person of color who’s new will be visiting, and the person of color will sit there wondering why he or she is there. And then they'll hear this informal conversation about anti-racist work. And they will be so encouraged because they'll say, “I have never heard a group of white people sitting together over food and having a good time and talking as anti-racists.” It's never happened. It's informal, it's good, it's fun, it's enjoyable. But what we also have done in New York is we have meetings and discussion groups all the time so that people can come in and out to deepen their understanding, to start to build relationships. We have some romances that have grown, we've had marriages that have happened, we've had a lot of wonderful relationships develop over those years. 


    About a year and a half ago when David and I realized we were going to be moving back South, we started to develop a larger group of people who we call the leadership development group. And it was the same people who were using anti-racist principles to do whatever they were doing, whether they were working in hospitals or schools or in the prisons or in healthcare, wherever they were working, they came together because they were practicing anti-racist principles. We brought this group together and said, “Look, we've got to be able to sustain this work over time. We have got to sustain the work and the only way we can sustain the work is if every person in the room”–there were maybe 40 or 50 people in the room–”takes this as your way of doing your work.” And so for the last year and a half we've been having conversations building that relationship among these different people. By the time David and I moved back down to Mississippi, we realized there was a strong group of people from all walks of life–old people and young people, Black, Latino, Asian American and white–all working together. Now some would say that's just Kumbaya–”Margery, you're putting on a false front.” I don't think so. I watch these relationships, I watch the informal connecting with people over the telephone, through emails, getting together for coffee. That's what takes this work to a different level. That's what makes it a way of life.


    I had the good fortune of being mentored by both Jim Dunn and Ron Chisolm as well as by my husband David Billings and others whom I had known–Jim Hayes and others in the New Orleans area where I was living at the time. Having them be part of my learning was just essential. And one of the things that happened in our life is that soon after I had been introduced to the People's Institute, David and I moved to New York for a couple of years and we were living one year in Anglewood, New Jersey, and it was the very year that Jim Dunn, 

    one of the co-founders of the People's Institute, had been diagnosed with cancer. And he was very sick and he was in New York and couldn't live by himself, so he came to live with us at our house in New Jersey with his new baby and his wife, for the spring of 1985. It was like an intensive tutorial. Here is a man that people think is not going to be around long for this world, but everything he did and everything he said was always about helping people to find themselves, to get clear about who they were, and to become more effective in the work they wanted to do. So his impact on my family was profound. Our teenage son, 15-years-old, our 12-year-old son, both were deeply impacted by having this experience, and I learned so much from just watching his interactions with people. When the People's Institute teaches something like, in order to be effective organizers you have to build relationships, I was living that very lesson in my house with my children, watching the way in which this profound and deeply humane person was able to always be listening to other people, always being able to take time with other people. It was a wonderful experience for me and I learned so much from that.