“Where Did We Come From”: Black Women Consultants, Black History Workshops, and the Friends of Children of Mississippi

This paper studies the role of consultants who designed and led Black Consciousness and Awareness workshops for the Friends of Children of Mississippi (FCM), an early childhood education program in the Magnolia State. It centers on the work of three Black women, mother and daughter, Hilda Wilson and Geraldine Wilson, in addition to writer Alice Walker, who were enlisted by FCM to design and facilitate these Black history workshops in the late 1960s. Like its predecessor the Child Development Group of Mississippi, the nation’s largest and most controversial Head Start organization, FCM was strongly invested in the training and development of teachers, largely Black women from working-class backgrounds. It designed a curriculum rooted in Black history and culture. FCM organizers created a series of Black History Awareness and Consciousness Workshops directed to its teaching staff. The goal of such workshop was to first educate teachers and develop a sense of racial pride so that they develop such feelings in their students. Focusing on the archives of the consultants who designed and led the Black History Awareness and Consciousness Workshops, this paper reveals a history of FCM, an understudied early childhood education program, from the perspective of these Black women dedicated to teaching Black history to Head Start teachers in Mississippi.