B-REAL Academy Launches: A Radical Space for Black Study and Abolitionist Education

Langston Milsap, 19, participates in a discussion at the very first meeting of the Black Radical Education for Abolition & Liberation Academy. (Vaughan William Harrison/Kansas City Defender) During the first session of The Defender’s Abolitionist Freedom School, students were asked why they joined the cohort. Their answers varied — some longed for connection, yearning to find community in a world that constantly isolates and divides. Others came to learn from younger generations, to see through eyes unclouded by the disillusionment of time. Some had never been given the chance to learn their own history, robbed of the knowledge that could have freed them. They came to reclaim what was stolen, to unearth the truths buried beneath white lies. They came to study liberation in a space that wasn’t bound by the cold walls of institutions built to uphold white supremacy. They came to explore a freedom too radical, too revolutionary, to ever be taught in the ivory towers of academia. They came to learn the language of resistance, to name their oppressors and to gain tools for community building, for survival, and for freedom. They came to remember who they were before the world told them who to be. On...