The Fugitive Spirit of Historical Black Women Teachers: Theorizing Hush Harbors as Praxis

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Fugitive Modes of Curricular Production: Attending to the Forces of Mind, Body, and Spirit (Table 32)

Abstract

Historically, hush harbors were clandestine worship grounds where enslaved people stole away to commune with God, ancestors, and each other, all outside of the panopticon of whiteness. To illustrate its cultural, spiritual, theoretical, and pedagogical underpinnings, I draw on archival research of Black women teachers who not only survived during the era of chattel slavery, and its afterlives, but created sacred spaces for Black students to thrive, even in the midst of staunch antiblackness and persistent racialized terror. I highlight how these, often fugitive, ways of knowing, being, and believing can challenge the material conditions of antiblackness in contemporary schools by radically cultivating sites of sanctuary to restore Black humanity, spirituality, and joy in schools.

Author

• Amber Neal-Stanley, Purdue University