56.028 - Our Bodies, Our Diction: Educational Equality Articulated Through the Activism of Youth After Brown

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Throughout American history, education has been stratified along racial, gender, and class lines. This stratification inevitably influenced how different groups conceptualize educational equality and how the definition governs their lived experiences. The purpose of this panel is to elevate empirical studies that illustrate how contentious definitions of educational equality profoundly shaped our understanding of access and opportunity.. Using the historical gaze of youth of color, this panel will depict how they sought to crystallize the definition of educational equality with their bodies through activism after Brown. We argue by looking at the educational activism of youth, a more democratic and less racialized, gendered, and classed definition will arise which provides a pathway to achieving educational equality.

Sub Unit

• Division F - Historical Inquiry in Education

Chair

• Vincent DeWayne Willis, University of Alabama

Papers

• The Black High School Youth Movement and the Southern Freedom Struggle, 1960–1965 - Jon Hale, College of Charleston

• "I Called the Police": Principals Respond to Student Unrest in the Rural South During Desegregation - Natalie G. Adams, The University of Alabama; Jim Adams, Mississippi State University

• De la Isla a Chicago: Historicizing Puerto Rican Education - Mirelsie Velazquez, University of Oklahoma

• "We Were Trying to Just Be": Black Youth Participation in the Americus Movement - Vincent DeWayne Willis, University of Alabama

Discussant

• Scott Baker, Wake Forest University