Bearing Witness: Protecting Black History Within Black Nonfiction Picture Books

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 1:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Civic Spaces: Seen, Unseen, and Waiting To Be Seen

Abstract

With ongoing debates, bans, and mandates on whose history should and shouldn’t be taught, school districts continue to struggle with integrating Black history into curriculum (Johnson, 2023). African American children’s literature has been a tool to relay information to children for centuries (Bishop, 2007; Martin, 2004; Nocera, 2023) and today, quality African American children’s literature is often excluded. This study focuses on how Black ancestral text analysis (Teague & Nagbe, 2024) can instruct and transform educators’ understanding of what is read, revisioned, and recovered in Black nonfiction picture books to help them effectively teach Black history. Using the history of African American picture books as a guide, this study recovers Black nonfiction picture books as archival texts and sites of protection.

Author

• Dawnavyn James, University at Buffalo - SUNY