From the Southern Plantation to CRT: Exploring the Evolutionary Forms of Black Resistance in African American Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Throughout American history, African Americans have formed a culture of resistance to white supremacy from their enslavement on the Southern Plantation to modern-day practices of Critical Race Theory. This presentation will explore the evolutionary forms of resistance African Americans have used to overcome their historical barriers. Slave culture during the antebellum period was mostly a combination of West African traditions, “spiritual rituals”, and rebellions (Blassingame, 1972). These were acts of a “culture of survival” and resistance in response to the brutal system of slavery. The panel will explore how enslaved Africans sought to maintain a distinction in establishing cultural practices to resist white dominance on the Southern Plantation.
This panel will also explore how Black people historically used their bodies in protest, resistance, and revolution. From the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Black Lives Matter movement, the diasporic black body has been a source and resource in the struggle for freedom. This paper examines how black bodies have capitulated to the struggle for freedom as a source of fear and power in American Culture.
Furthermore, the panel will examine the resources of a whole community working together to nurture the African American students in their community primarily by ecological systems theory (EST) and secondarily by critical race theory (CRT) (Bell, 1978; Bronfenbrenner, 1976; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Stovall, 2005; Tate, 1995) to bridge the gap between opportunity and achievement to resist white supremacist policies embedded in the American educational system. Through the lens of EST and CRT the panel will discuss the lived experiences of modern-day education using a multi-level social network of families, educators, and community members that educate, support, and empower Black students as they resist historic and ongoing oppressions (England, 2021).

Sub Unit

• 108th ASALH Annual Conference

Chair

• Deirdre Foreman, Ramapo College of New Jersey and Executive Council

Individual Presentations

• Slave Culture in the American South: The Original Form of Black Rebelliousness - Deirdre Foreman, Ramapo College of New Jersey and Executive Council

• Bridging the Gap Between Opportunity and Achievement: Using Ecological Systems and Critical Race Theories to Educate, Support, and Empower Black Children, Families, Educators, and Community Members - Tanya England, Manhattan Branch

• Conjuring the Black Mystiq - Black Bodies and the Struggle for Freedom in America - Constance L. Diggs, Nyack College/Alliance Theological Seminary

Commentators

• Constance L. Diggs, Nyack College/Alliance Theological Seminary

• Tanya England, Manhattan Branch