Coming of Age in California: Black Girls’ Educational and Social Experiences in Northern California Schools (1920-1970)

• In Event: Visibilizing Research About the Educational Experiences of Black Women and Girls

Abstract

Objectives: “They were expecting girls to be married and have children,” Betty Reid Soskin responded when asked about post-secondary expectations for girls in the 1930s. Grounded in a critical analysis of interviews with Black women, and artifacts from their childhood, this paper tells the story of Black girls' access to educational and extracurricular opportunities, and their agency in creating a supportive Black-girl community during the Great Migration.

Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives: Using the dual lenses of Black Feminist Thought (BFT) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study identifies the discourses and practices of gendered racial subordination that mediated Black girls’ access to educational and extracurricular opportunities, the messages Black girls received about their role in the social order, and the protective factors and conditions that helped them navigate, resist, and survive a subordinating social order. BFT is useful for highlighting Black girls’ unique experiences of racialized gender, subordination and resistance, and analyzing the ways that structural violence, dehumanization, and barriers to educational and extracurricular opportunity are racialized, gendered and classed (See Morris, 2016; Evans-Winter, 2019; Meyers & Parker-Holliman, 2022). When used with BFT, CDA (Fairclough, 1992, van Djik, 2015) is useful for visibilizing the discursive nature of the social order, such as the messaging Black girls received about their academic and intellectual abilities, ability to join school clubs and community-based organizations.

Methods and Data Sources: This qualitative study draws on data from interviews with twenty-eight African American women who came of age during the Great Migration, personal artifacts from their educational and childhood experiences, and relevant documents from the historical record such as yearbooks, newspaper articles, and photographs. Using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 2017) with the interview transcripts and artifacts, I refined the initial in vivo codes and language that described patterns across the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) into the themes that organize this paper.

Results: Black girls growing up in Northern California during the Great Migration endured marginalizing educational and social experiences because of their racialized gender. They navigated and resisted a social order from men, women, educators, and sometimes within the Black community, that was dominated by misogynoir, classism, and colorism. It affected their access to educational opportunities, peer acceptance and eventual life chances. The social messages they received, the exclusion they faced, and biased counseling often encouraged Black girls to become wives and mothers, and prepared them for low wage work rather than to continue their education or pursue a professional career. While Black girls found acceptance, friendship and organized social activities for one another and within the Black community, they also practiced within-group colorism that created a barrier to belonging for some girls.

Significance: Little has been written about Black girls’ educational and social history in the West. The study contributes to our understanding by identifying Northern California educators’ discursive and actual practices of misogynoir, classism, and colorism, and the detrimental impacts for Black girls over five decades. This paper also documents Black girls’ agency, assets, and resistance for the historical record.

Author

• Mariama Gray, California State University - East Bay