“Educate a Woman and You Education a Nation”: Black Women’s Community Othermothering and Supplementary Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 52
  In Roundtable Session: Alternatives to Traditional Public Schools for Black Students: What Works?

Abstract

This paper is of a yearlong qualitative ethnographic study of women of African descent in the U.S. and UK who provide supplementary education programs in their communities. Data was collected through interviews, primary and secondary sources and social media. The cultural work of these women is interpreted through the lens of maternal activism articulated in Hill-Collins community and othermothering in which Black women’s epistemologies are privileged. The women presented have created sustainable community education spaces that simultaneously enhance academic performance, wage resistance, perpetuate traditions and rituals and preserve cultural knowledge. The goal of this work is to share their experiences as models for community-based literacy programs, educational advocacy and individual and community empowerment with activists, practitioners, scholars, funders and policymakers.

Author

• Amira Millicent Davis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign