Black Women’s Activism and Leadership as the Blueprint for Visioning Black Girl Futures

• In Event: Celebrating 15 years of Herstories: (Re)membering Black Women's Leadership Then and Now

Abstract

This paper examines Black women’s activism and educational leadership as a foundational framework for reimagining Black girlhood and cultivating liberatory educational futures. Drawing on Alston and McClellan’s (2011) Herstories: Leading with the Lessons of the Lives of Black Women Activists alongside scholarship in Black girlhood studies and literacies (Brown, 2013; Butler, 2018; Haddix & Muhammad, 2016; Halliday, 2023; Hill, 2019), I contend that Black women’s communal care and justice-oriented approaches to leadership provide essential models for developing affirming and transformative third spaces for Black girls in schools and communities.

It is not surprising that Black women's perspectives on leadership have been historically excluded from the literature (Alston, 2012) and in turn, so have the perspectives of Black girls and the ways in which they view and embody leadership in multiple spaces. Similar to Black women, their unique epistemologies shaped by lived experience and intergenerational care work have long advanced educational and everyday practices rooted in collective well-being. This paper positions the knowledge foundation articulated in Alston and McClellan’s work as a blueprint for how we might support Black girl leadership practices and civic imagination. Using a hybridized framework of Black feminism alongside Black girl literacies, this paper considers key themes: leadership as care and accountability; the politicization of Black girlhood; and the role of Black women in fostering community-based spaces ultimately fostering agency and belonging for Black girls.

Overall, this paper calls for a renewed focus on Black women’s leadership histories as critical to understanding and shaping futures in which Black girls are not merely included but empowered to lead with vision, voice, and freedom.

Author

• Courtney Mauldin-Jones, Syracuse University