Black Women of the South Carolina Sea Islands and the (Re)Construction of Black Education

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Four
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT050 (Saturday)

Abstract

In this interdisciplinary, critical ethnographic dissertation project, I turn to Black women of the South Carolina Sea Islands (also known as Gullah Geechee women) to offer a layered story that contends with the tangled relationship between state-sponsored education for Black communities—and its necessity for physical and material survival—and intimate Black knowledge (re)constructed by Black communities—and its importance for epistemological survival. In examining how these women demonstrate how Black knowledge is (re)constructed amidst a changing sociopolitical landscape that seemingly affords greater access to federally-sponsored education, this study privileges Black folks’ ordinary knowledge work as worthy of deep study and incites ideas on what culturally-sustaining education looks like for Black children in the U.S.

Author

• Amber Chevaughn Johnson, University of Maryland