We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

by Bettina L. Love

You cannot discuss White supremacy without considering White rage. Historian Carol Anderson, author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, argues, “The trigger of White rage, inevitably, is Black advancement. It is not the mere presence of Black people that is the problem; rather it is Blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship.”14 A devastating example of White rage, which is always present, festering, and plotting, occurred in the town of Ocoee, Florida, on November 2, 1920. The region was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan. According to reports, until at least 1959, a sign hung at the town’s line that read “Dogs and Negroes Not Welcomed.”15 Ocoee was also considered a sundown town,