MyStory, YourStory, OurStory: A Three-Generation Critical Approach to Sustaining Racial Justice and Community Activism

• In Event: Critical Literacy for Racial Justice: Cultivating Equity Through Intersectionality

Abstract

This community-based participatory research project was birthed from a shared desire to push back on the dominant narrative that African American foundry workers were second class citizens. This deficit perspective is prevalent in the community and was one of the reasons that many African American students were unfamiliar with the numerous contributions made by their ancestors.

Students utilized multimodal approaches to collecting and sharing family and community stories including: 1) collecting family and community artifacts; 2) collecting oral histories; 3) creating family vision boards that included past, present and future information; and 4) writing narratives about their histories and future plans.

The project helped students think about their rich heritage, develop a greater level of respect for the sacrifices made by their forefathers, and understand that the “new” migration is toward a better quality of life that is only possible when they become successful readers and writers – capable of telling their own story and advocating for themselves.

This 3-generational perspective of family and community history provided an opportunity for community youth to learn that their ancestors traveled North during the Great Migration seeking a better quality of life. Many were sharecroppers in the South and moved to the North seeking a better way of life. The project emphasized that their forefathers moved from sharecropping in the South to foundry work in the North during the Great Migration, but the “New Migration” is for African American students improve their quality of life by “migrating” to college campuses, where they can become educated and give back to their communities to improve the quality of life for others.

This study has implications for envisioning racialization as a cross-generational construct in critical literacy teaching and learning.

Author

• Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon, Oakland University