Standing Up For the Future: Historicizing Education, Youth Activism, and the Black Freedom Struggle

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Modern student activist movements vary widely in subject, size, and success, with all kinds of students in all kinds of educational settings participating, including public and private school students; K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students; and encompassing all races, socio-economic backgrounds, and political perspectives. Often, students’ issues and demands are either trivialized as youthful exuberance or short-lived hash-tag movements rather than examples of collective action grounded in a long historical tradition. This roundtable attempts to bring a historical perspective over contemporary debates in education, student activism, and social justice. Concerned over the quality of their education, community, and future selves, each participant will demonstrate how students, past and present, to enter a debate being decided upon by adults as actual change agents, and how individuals in power of authority have responded to their collective action.

Sub Unit

• 101st Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Chair

• Hilary Nicole Green, University of Alabama

Discussants

• Dwana Waugh, North Carolina A&T State University

• Charles V. Reed, Elizabeth City State University

• Cecelia Moore, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• ASALH Audience, .