On a Sunday in March 1965, Hawthorne Konrad “H.K.” Matthews joined a march for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He was among the demonstrators who were beaten and gassed by state troopers in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” one of the pivotal confrontations of the Civil Rights Movement.
It was just one chapter in a life of confrontation, faith, and persistence. Rev. H.K. Matthews - pastor, activist, and later an elder statesman for educational freedom - was jailed dozens of times for leading sit-ins and demonstrations in Alabama and Florida. He was part of the cadre of foot soldiers who carried Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protests into segregated Southern towns, often at great personal risk.
Rev. H.K. passed away last month at 97, having lived long enough to see streets and parks named in his honor in Pensacola, FL, and Brewton, AL, where he ministered for years. He lived long enough, too, to see a new generation of activists carry on the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement to fight for another cause he embraced with passion: school choice.
Long before school choice or education freedom became a household cause, African American communities championed their own solutions for educational access. In the early 20th century, Rosenwald schools, nearly 5,000 built across the segregated South, provided Black children with their first real education. Funded by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and educator Booker T. Washington, these institutions embodied collaborative investment, requiring Black communities to contribute money, labor, and property alongside matching funds from white school boards. These schools became beacons of educational equity and community pride.
Decades later, Matthews would carry forward the Rosenwald legacy of grassroots schooling through his own version of Freedom Schools, which he organized in Pensacola’s black churches when school systems turned hostile. These were not just classrooms, but also civic laboratories, spaces where students learned history, self-worth, and leadership alongside reading and math. By building these schools, Matthews connected Rosenwald’s legacy to the living struggle of his generation, rooted in community‑led empowerment.
I remember the first time I met H.K. - or at least, I thought it was the first. It was a national education conference, and H.K. walked up to me with a picture in his hand. It was of us together at that the Florida Capitol at a bill signing.
“Hello, beautiful young lady,” he said with his trademark warmth. “I carry this picture for inspiration.”
I was stunned - not only that I had forgotten our first meeting, but that he treasured the moment so deeply. That was the essence of H.K.: uplifting, affirming, and always reminding others of their worth.
You see, the first time we met was actually in 2010 during a march in Tallahassee, FL - the largest school choice rally in the nation, where 6,000 parents gathered as the teachers’ union tried to end the scholarship program. And subsequently back at Florida’s Capitol, when then-Governor Charlie Crist signed an expansion of the state’s scholarship program into law.
The arc of his life traced nearly every major struggle of the modern Black freedom movement: lunch counter sit-ins, voter registration drives, school desegregation, and eventually, the expansion of educational opportunities for poor and minority families. In each, Matthews showed the same fearlessness that carried him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
While at the University of South Florida for graduate school, I had no idea how deeply his activism shaped nearby cities like Pensacola and Mobile. My professors, many of whom knew him personally, often spoke of the extraordinary impact he made.
When I traveled to celebrate his birthday at his church, I walked down the street named after him and listened to stories from his family and congregants. They spoke of a man who never retired from fighting for justice, who in his later years, boarded planes and buses to tell audiences why he believed school choice was “the civil rights movement of our time.” Coming from someone who had bled for civil rights, those words resonated with a moral authority that could not be ignored. At his own birthday celebration, H.K. was insistent on honoring Mr. John Kirtley, the founder and Chairman of Step up for Students, the largest scholarship granting organization in the country. He’d had a banner with his name erected on the outside of the church on a day that was celebrating himself. He remained focused on the cause no matter what.
It warms me to think of his faith in this cause even into his final years, and that he got to see the movement for equal rights for Black people come so far. My hope is that his legacy is honored not just with memorials, but with vigilance. Universal school choice programs must also keep their original purpose: to serve the children most in need: the poor, the vulnerable, the voiceless.
Rev. H.K. Matthews fought for them on the bridge at Selma, in the jails of the Deep South, and in legislative chambers decades later. He gave his life to ensuring that the marginalized would be seen, heard, and lifted up.
I salute him. May his name forever be linked to both the Civil Rights Movement and the fight for educational freedom. And may we live in a way that keeps his passion alive.
Denisha Allen is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, founder of Black Minds Matter, and a Florida school choice beneficiary