Genealogies of Black Possibility within 20th Century Black Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores the transformative educational legacies of Black teachers during Jim Crow and its afterlives, centering their pedagogical innovations as acts of resistance and future-making. Drawing on historical archives and frameworks such as Sylvia Wynter’s overrepresentation of Man, the papers illuminate Black teaching practices in history, physics, and science. From the impact of Negro History Week on students’ critical consciousness to the liberatory practices of Black physics teachers at HBCUs, these papers challenge dominant narratives that marginalize Black educators, offering a counternarrative rooted in resistance and intellectual rigor. This symposium contributes to unforgetting Black educational histories and invites reflection on how past practices shape future possibilities in teaching and liberation.

Sub Unit

• Division F - Historical Inquiry in Education

Chair

• Jessica Lee Stovall, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Papers

• “The Dissemination of the Truth”: Black Educators’ Continued Fight for Social Studies Curricula, 1940-1970 - Ziyen Curtis, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• The Black Body of Physics: How Physics was used as a Form of Black Liberation - Ayshea Banes, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• “By Far the Greatest Stimulus”: Schoolchildren, Negro History Week, and an Inherited Legacy - Gloria J. Ashaolu, Michigan State University

• “Unsuited for the Times”: Edward K. Weaver’s (1913-1984) Conceptual Personae and Black Liberatory Science Education - Curtis O'Dwyer, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Session Organizer

• Jessica Lee Stovall, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Discussant

• Darion A. Wallace, Stanford University