Black Female Architects of the Alternative Black Curriculum in Social Studies

• In Event: Counternarratives: Voices From New Scholars of Color

Abstract

Objectives - Dagbovie (2004) and Brown (2010) have argued for increased attention to the construction of an alternative historical narrative in the field of social studies. These scholars posited that from 1890-1940, African-American scholars created divergent discourses in social studies, with Carter G. Woodson’s promotion of black history receiving the most attention. In this paper, I document how African American women also contributed to this curriculum. I argue that Black women educational reformers served in a co-equal relationship with males in the development of a new social studies narrative. Furthermore, this paper will analyze how African-American women built “dialogical spaces” which allowed them to actively participate. The basic principles of the alternative black curriculum was supplemented and even furthered by an ongoing dialogue with the pedagogical work of African-American women school founders, administrators, librarians, and teachers (Rief, 2002; Des Jardins, 2000; Smith, 2004).
Collins (1990), hooks (1992), White (2008) and Dill & Zambrana (2009) have argued that the voices of Black women in K-12 education and the academy have often been marginalized. As a required discipline in K-12 education, the field of social studies has had a profound effect on how U.S. children view their country’s history and peoples. Acknowledging the multiple founders of these curricula contributes to our understanding of how social studies has been shaped and reshaped over the decades as contested territory by class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender (Epstein, 2009).
Theoretical Framework
Critical Race Theory complements this analysis of an alternative Black curriculum. Ladson-Billings (2004) believes that a critical race perspective addresses silences about race and racism in the curriculum. Further, I utilize a gendered perspective in my approach to the history of social studies (Nakano Glenn, 2002). As architects of the social studies curricula and in their representation in the curricula, women, particularly of color, have only recently achieved significant recognition.
Methods & Data
Historical narrative based upon primary sources is the form of methodology and data sources. Most, but not all, of the research women conducted was in curriculum materials. They included lesson plans, historical pageants, and assessments. Archival materials from Nannie Helen Burroughs found in the Library of Congress, Anna Julia Cooper, the International Council of Women of the Darker Races and Jessie Redmond Fauset’s co-editorship with W.E.B. Du Bois of The Brownie Book (Capshaw Smith, 2004) will document ways in which women created an alternative distinct from the “founding fathers” of Black history.
Results and scholarly significance
Unlike other works on Burroughs which have focused on her role as a school leader (Higginbotham, 1993; Taylor, 2002; Bair, 2008), this research examines her creative approach through non-textual forms such as historical pageants. Conducted outside of the controlled and conservative space of her school’s classrooms, the pageants from the 1920s and other lessons illuminate how Black women’s innovative talents worked in an era of strict Jim Crow society that oppressed both women and African Americans.

Author

• Alana D. Murray, University of Maryland