Pilate's Wine House: Reimagining Black Women Educators' Histories and Futures

• In Event: "How We Get Over": Methodological Approaches for Black Herstory in Education

Abstract

In an 1896 speech, Mary Church Terrell said “We have to do more than other women” (White, 1999, p. 10). Black women have a legacy of doing more for our families, our communities, and ourselves- more advocacy, support, activism, teaching, and organizing. Our intersectional positionalities as Black and woman place us in precarious and dynamic positions in U.S. society. At the same time, Black women are often the central mobilizing leaders in the movement for Black liberation. In alignment with Terrell’s statement, this paper unapologetically centers and uplifts the “more” of four Black women educators-- a few of the many Black women who took risks to see the fruition of their visions. I draw upon the historical and contemporary legacies of Black women educators and scholars by asking (1) What are the historical pedagogical contributions of Black women educators to the field of education? and (2) How does their work continue to inform teaching and Black communities? Through investigating these questions and writing narratives, I highlight the ways Black women educators have innovatively disrupted white supremacy.
My theoretical framework grafts together an orientation of Black Feminist Epistemologies (BFE) that foregrounds the ways Black women have historically and continually cultivated oppositional gazes (hooks, 1992), language and action from silence (Lorde, 2007) and oppositional knowledges (Collins, 2002) to (1) validate and reify Black women’s experiences and (2) resist white supremacist epistemologies. hooks (1992) describes the oppositional gaze as “a site of resistance” that brings forth “contestation, revision, interrogation, and invention on multiple levels” (p. 128). Lorde (1978) urges us “it is better to speak/ remembering/ we were never meant to survive.” Further, oppositional knowledges, as outlined by Patricia Hill Collins (2002), are marked by a particular sense of self-definition that forcefully upends the white gaze and actively humanizes and centers Black womanhood.
In response to Evans-Winters’ (2019) call for research that more authentically positions Black girls and women, I theorize a data analysis method I am calling layered storying that is informed by portraiture, BFE, and Solange’s (2019) “Can I Hold the Mic?” Drawing on the ways portraiture blends art, or “subjective” with science, or “objective,” layer-storytelling plays with these “subjective/ objective” and “art/science” binaries to (re)imagine these women’s lived experiences and future visions. Next, hooks (1992) argued that the power of “Black looks” is the ability to envision and then create what is not yet in existence. In this way, Black women resist hegemonic powers by inventing lives and livelihoods for ourselves. Layered-storytelling is a powerful site for invention as it uses nonfiction and fiction to create space to (re)imagine Black women’s histories and futures. Finally, Solange (2019) reclaims space for Black women to be authentically seen by emphasizing the overflowing abundance of Black women’s ontologies and epistemologies. I use layered-storying as a data analysis method that seeks to expand the lens through which Black women are portrayed in research. Layered-storying uses a series of texts such as photographs, creative writing, and counter/narratives.

Author

• Renee Wilmot, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author