Black Civil Rights, Spatial Entitlement, and the Struggle for Educational Justice in South Los Angeles

• In Event: Location, Location, Location! The Politics of Race and Space

Abstract

This study examines how Black educational activism in LA during the time of busing (1961 – 1982) was simultaneously a struggle for spatial entitlement. Through adopting theoretical frameworks from the “spatial turn” in social science, the paper complicates the present historiography on race-based educational justice campaigns. In particular, it argues that such campaigns should be seen as efforts to engage in radical space reclamation and place-making Additionally, the paper utilizes a critical race educational history methodology to make sense of school board records, public comments, Black newspaper articles, and Op-Eds. The study concludes with implications for how its insights should inform our understanding of current educational movements that have been amplified by the pandemic and the protests for Black lives.

Author

• Julio Ángel Alicea, Rutgers University - Camden