They “Specialize in the Wholly Impossible”: Black Women’s Contributions to Black Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session aims to explore the heritage of Black women in education, attending to the archival silences that obscure the contributions of Black women educators, how Black women’s educational leadership and practice deconstruct normative logics of race, gender, and care, and Black women’s methodological offerings for humanizing educational research. Together, the four papers in this session build upon foundational theoretical concepts in the fields of educational studies, Black Studies, and Women’s Studies, arguing that through the construction of alternative educational spaces, practices, and discursive scripts, Black women have worked to disrupt the intersecting systems of antiblackness and patriarchy and build educational models grounded in Black humanity.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chair

• ArCasia D. James-Gallaway, Texas A&M University

Papers

• Beyond Triage: Uplifting Black Women’s History in Education Through the Life of Maria W. Stewart - Zenzile Saharee Riddick, Northwestern University

• Black Women Principals and the Undoing of the Othermother - Kristen Jackson, Stanford University; Renée Wilmot, Michigan State University

• “Sapphire’s” Educational Imagination: Black Women’s Activism and the (Un)Gendering of Black Education in the Americas - C. Darius Gordon, University of California - Berkeley

• June Jordan’s Testimony: Framing the Educational Lives of Black Boys - Christian J. Walkes, Harvard University

Discussant

• ArCasia D. James-Gallaway, Texas A&M University