Solidarity is a Verb: Karen Lewis and the Long Fight for Public Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Former Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis is best known for leading her union to a historic 2012 strike, challenging establishment politicians, and paving the way for a wave of #RedForEd strikes nationally in the decade that followed. Lewis was also the child of Black educators and a student organizer in the Black Power movement. In this session, an intergenerational group of panelists—with backgrounds in history, education research, union activism, PK-12 teaching, and school and district-level leadership—will use Lewis’s posthumous memoir, I Didn’t Come Here to Lie: My Life and Education, to draw broader connections across histories of Black organizing for education, social movement unionism, and 21st century multiracial coalition-building to help us freedom dream more just futures.

Sub Unit

• Division F - Historical Inquiry in Education

Chair

• Elizabeth Todd-Breland, University of Illinois at Chicago

Papers

• The Impact of the Black Power Movement on Black Educators and Black Education - Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University

• Black Women’s Leadership in Urban Education - Camika Royal, Morgan State University

• “The Foundation of Union Work is Classroom Work”: Union Leadership in Perilous Times - Karla Hernández-Mats, American Federation of Teachers

• Civics Education in Real Time: Multiracial Coalition-Building for the Public Good - Jessica Marshall, Spencer Foundation

Session Organizer

• Elizabeth Todd-Breland, University of Illinois at Chicago

Discussant

• Elizabeth Todd-Breland, University of Illinois at Chicago