Pillars of Black Self-Determination: Historicizing the Political Ontology of Weeksville-Brooklyn’s Black Educational Community

• In Event: For the Culture: Black Self-Determination and Schooling

Abstract

Deploying political ontology as a conceptual underpinning, this article historicizes the foundations of self-determined Black education in Weeksville, Brooklyn during the first part of the nineteenth century. I argue that the political acumen and commitment of Black teachers and parents, particularly those involved in the abolitionist movement, was an essential component of the form and function of Black education in the years of gradual emancipation in antebellum New York. From this perspective, we learn more about the dynamic ways Black education undermined politics of racial domination through communal arrangements and political advocacy.

Author

• Darion A. Wallace, Stanford University