Darkening Femininity in School Desegregation: Black Cheerleaders and Homecoming Queens

• In Event: Black Womanhood in Education

Abstract

This paper presents fours strategies Black girls engaged to become some of the first Black cheerleaders and homecoming queens in formerly all-white high schools in Waco, Texas. The author employed Black feminism and critical race theory to examine how these young women redefined hegemonic femininity during southern school desegregation in the 1970s. Drawing on oral history interviews, high school yearbooks, and local newspapers, this study analyzed how Black girl students negotiated their racial, gender, and class identities to contest racist-sexism and transcend limitations of their new school environments. Providing evidence of Black students’ differentiated experiences in school desegregation, this paper contributes an analysis of how gender and class meaningfully distinguished Black students’ experiences in southern school desegregation.

Author

• ArCasia D. James-Gallaway, Texas A&M University - College Station