“We Had to Be Seen Because We Couldn't Be Heard”: Black Boys’ Stories Matter

Multiple Presenter Session: Alternative Session

Abstract

“We Had to Be Seen Because We Couldn't Be Heard” is an interactive creative research project that highlights the personal stories of resistance and the empowered voices of Black teen boys from Chicago’s South Side High School (pseudonym), a school that has experienced a significant historical racial and socio-economic shift in population due to decades of turnaround. We foreground with the words of Tommie Smith (1968 Summer Olympics gold medal winner and world record holder stripped of his laurels for standing in resistance to oppression) because his words and deeds are not lost on the students of South Side. Through a mixture of audio soundbites and video clips, current South Side students tell their stories: their passion for life, their fight against the vilification of Back male bodies, and their determination to learn from the past so that they may improve the future for themselves as well as their community.

Sub Track

• AESA

Discussant

• Marlon Cummings, Governors State University

Presenters

• Shaka Rawls, Leo Catholic High School

• Dawn Hicks Tafari, Winston-Salem State University