Black School Spirit and Critical Archival Recovery at Kentucky’s First Black Public High School

• In Event: New Directions in Black Educational History

Abstract

Black teaching and learning worked to insulate African American communities from the hostile and unequal politics of race and education in late 19th and 20th century America. Despite the long history of intellectual, legal, extralegal, and vigilante attacks on Black education from Reconstruction through school desegregation, Black high schools worked to create, collect, and protect the essence of Black academic life during this period in archival sanctuaries that have often gone overlooked. Preserved within the archives of historically Black high schools, the personal writings, yearbooks, newspaper clippings, graduation programs and more reflect a deep tradition of school spirit among both Black teachers and student-youth. In this way, Black School Spirit reveals a historical commitment to racial uplift and loyalty to one’s school, and thus, a responsibility to leverage Black education, through teaching and learning, as a means to bring about social equality. This paper explores the import of Black educational archives as an intervention to the study of Black educational histories and Black teaching and learning in the contemporary. Drawing from the theoretical framework of Black archiving as “central to Black intellectual and social life in the early twentieth century” demonstrated in Laura Helton’s Scattered and Fugitive Things, this paper presents how the introduction of Black student-youth to local historical figures and voices captured in often hidden archives at historically Black high schools allow for the past to inform the present and future. Focusing on the case of Central High School, Kentucky’s first public Black high school, and its hidden archive––a collection of unprocessed historical materials nearly 150 years old, yet completely unengaged in the academic culture at the school and community despite being housed within the institution––this paper highlights the political and academic importance of Critical Archival Recovery. Situated at the intersection of Black educational history, archival analysis, and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), this methodological intervention goes beyond preservation for history’s sake. By prompting current Central High School students to think deeply about the historical implications of their school as a refuge from racism, I explain how critical archival recovery can help build an educational movement among Black student youth. Perhaps more importantly, this work offers an instruction for the field in how we can leverage local archives to insulate Black learners under the threat of surveillance and hostility from the outside world today.

Author

• Jordan Jackson-Collins, Harvard University