Book
Fugitive pedagogy : Carter G. Woodson and the art of Black teaching
Publication Information
Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2021.
Physical Description
viii, 304 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Summary
"A fresh portrayal of one of the architects of the African American intellectual tradition, whose faith in the subversive power of education will inspire teachers and learners today. Black education was a subversive act from its inception. African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. They developed what Jarvis Givens calls a tradition of 'fugitive pedagogy'--a theory and practice of Black education in America. The enslaved learned to read in spite of widespread prohibitions; newly emancipated people braved the dangers of integrating all-White schools and the hardships of building Black schools. Teachers developed covert instructional strategies, creative responses to the persistence of White opposition. From slavery through the Jim Crow era, Black people passed down this educational heritage. There is perhaps no better exemplar of this heritage than Carter G. Woodson--groundbreaking historian, founder of Black History Month, and legendary educator under Jim Crow. Givens shows that Woodson succeeded because of the world of Black teachers to which he belonged: Woodson's first teachers were his formerly enslaved uncles; he himself taught for nearly thirty years; and he spent his life partnering with educators to transform the lives of Black students. Fugitive Pedagogy chronicles Woodson's efforts to fight against the 'mis-education of the Negro' by helping teachers and students to see themselves and their mission as set apart from an anti-Black world. Teachers, students, families, and communities worked together, using Woodson's materials and methods as they fought for power in schools and continued the work of fugitive pedagogy. Forged in slavery, embodied by Woodson, this tradition of escape remains essential for teachers and students today. "--Provided by publisher.
Contents
- Preface: a new grammar for black education
- Introduction: Blackness and the art of teaching
- Between coffle and classroom: Carter G. Woodson as a student and teacher, 1875-1912
- "The association ... is standing like the watchman on the wall": fugitive pedagogy and Black institutional life
- A language we can see a future in: Black educational criticism as theory in its own right
- The fugitive slave as a folk hero in Black curricular imaginations: constructing new scripts of knowledge
- Fugitive pedagogy as a professional standard: Woodson's "abroad mentorship" of Black teachers
- "Doomed to be botha witness and a participant": the shared vulnerability of Black students and Black teachers
- Conclusion: Black schoolteachers and the origin story of Black studies.