Slavery Narrative: #School — The Metaphorical Plantation

• In Event: 47.083 - Performing Dissertation Research and Liberating Academic Writing

Abstract

The researcher will sing spiritual songs interwoven with slave narrative throughout her performance/demonstration. Drawing upon Critical Race Theory (Bell, 1993; Delgado, 2013; Delgado & Stefancic, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 2013; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Crenshaw, 1995; Wing, 2003) as the theoretical framework, the researcher explored the life of a former slave and lives of five African American female educators who worked in public elementary, middle, and high schools in Georgia. Methodologically, the researcher utilized slave narrative (Gates, 2002; Hurmence, 2009; Northup, 2012; Yetman, 2000; Yetman, 2002; Mellon, 1988; McLaurin, 1991; Douglass & Davis, 2010) and rememory (Morrison, 2004; Wallace, 2015; Rhodes, 1990; Rushdy, 1990) to depict obstacles they encountered and methods they employed to resist hegemony and oppression. In order to ensure the protection and safety of participants, some aspects of the narrative, such as places, characters, events, and settings, were fictionalized.

Seven findings have emerged from her inquiry. Public schools are sites of systemic oppression that perpetuate hegemony and suppress the professional knowledge of African American female teachers. Common tools of oppression are public humiliation, acts of terror, reassignment, scare tactics, shame, and scapegoating. Counterstory telling provides African American females the opportunity to combat the master narrative and identify the sources of disproportionality, disparity, and discrimination within schools and societies. There are methods to resist oppression: (a) self-awareness; (b) self-confidence; (c) creative insubordination; (d) positive working relationships/rapport; (e) confrontation; and (h) education. The researcher calls for educators to become critically conscious and make a concerted effort to care for students, to be willing to engage in culturally responsive pedagogy to positively educate and challenge all students, and to create awareness of hegemony through dialogue and action in order to help all students to reach their highest potential and become changing agents that positively affect the world.

The researcher collects slave narratives as counternarratives (Bell, 1990; He & Ross, 2013, 2015; Rousseau, & Dixson, 2006; Solorzano & Yosso, 2009) that contest official narratives or traditional cannon to empower her research participants, other African Americans, and teachers by creating spaces for them to voice their opinions and share their knowledge and expertise about their current situations albeit slavery/education.

Just as the drinking gourd provided direction for slaves in their quest for the North, the structure of dissertation provides a compass as to the direction of this research inquiry. Each chapter is aligned to a particular motif that relates to the peculiar institution of slavery and the African American experience. Old Negro spirituals are used as titles for chapters and headings in order to pay homage and to acknowledge the tactics African Americans employed to survive during systematic oppression. Various sections within each chapter are emotive to evoke feelings of awareness, empathy, and enlightenment towards people who are omitted from histories. In Epilogue, the researcher has composed her songs to her ancestors and her fellow teachers with the intent to invent hopes to teach to liberate.

Author

• Cabrala Reddick, Bulloch County Board of Education