Teachers in the Movement: Reconceptualizing the Role of Education Activism

• In Event: Disrupting the Discourse on "Bad" Teachers and "Failing" Schools: Why the History of Black Educators Is Critical for School Reform

Abstract

The first paper in the session examines the “Teachers in the Movement” project (TIM). The project utilizes oral historical research to highlight the involvement of teachers throughout the South in the Civil Rights Movement. TIM explores teachers’ ideas and pedagogy inside and outside the classroom during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Based upon twenty-nine oral histories with former teachers, the project explores how their pedagogy, curricula, and community work were instrumental forms of activism that influenced the movement. Sharing video excerpts of Johnnie Fullerwinder, Lillian Carter, and Nancy Samuels, teachers who were interviewed as part of TIM, this paper will introduce an online archive on the politics of protest and education developed to inspire present-day education organizing.

The oral histories collected through TIM maintains that educators’ work constituted a distinct form of intellectual and pedagogical activism. A largely overlooked form of activism, intellectual and pedagogical activism included integral work in the curriculum, extracurricular courses, culturally relevant education, and community engagement opportunities fashioned by educators in black schools during the era of segregation. Teaching behind closed doors and developing their profession inculcated a sense of resistance throughout segregated black schools across the South that resonated deeply with the principles of the Civil Rights Movement.

The intellectual and pedagogical activism regularly practiced by educators delineates a spectrum of political activities that essentially redefines activism during the Civil Rights Movement. Historically repositioning educators on a broader plane challenges the prevailing narrative that teachers were not a part of the struggle or, worse, staunch defenders of the status quo. Teachers’ work did not often place them in the headlines or spotlight of the movement. Yet the intellectual and pedagogical work they practiced facilitated an understanding that imbued a segregated society with the groundwork to challenge structural discrimination in earnest by the 1950s. By redefining educator activism, this paper provide a more robust and comprehensive view of teachers’ contributions to the movement in their classrooms and communities.

Author

• Danielle Wingfield-Smith, University of Virginia