Black Studies in Prison Classrooms: Transforming Education and Activism from the Inside

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Discussion

Abstract

The Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP) is a higher education project grounded in Black feminist abolitionist principles and pedagogies housed at The Ohio State University. Our prison-based classes enroll both incarcerated students, who are admitted to the University for the semester as non-degree seeking students, and campus students, who travel to the prison each week for the class. In the spring of 2022 and the spring of 2024, Dr. Tiyi Morris, one of OPEEP's co-directors, taught a course on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, OH and Southeastern Correctional Institution, a men’s prison in Lancaster, OH, respectively. The panelists are incarcerated students from those classes who will discuss the transformative power of Black Studies. In so doing, they will consider how the class shaped their educational journeys, their understandings of social justice, and their own activism, as well as the need for more Black Studies classes to be taught in prisons. Dr. Tiyi Morris will discuss OPEEP’s mission, ideological and pedagogical groundings in Black feminisms, and the course’s structure.

Sub Unit

• Theory, Practice & Struggle

Chair

• Tiyi Morris, Ohio State University