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June 11 - July 30, 2020
The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry, the first Black soldiers allowed to fight in the Civil War, consisted of residents from Beacon Hill and throughout the US;
White abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who encouraged the Crafts to tell their amazing story of bravery, intelligence, and determination,
Beacon Hill is also home to the African Meeting House. Built in 1806, it was where abolitionists would gather to share ideas, strategies, and give powerful, memorable speeches that would shape America forever.
The African Meeting House was also a recruitment site for the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry.
Abolitionist teaching starts with freedom dreaming, dreams grounded in a critique of injustice.
On June 27, 2015, Bree Newsome strapped on her climbing gear, climbed a flagpole over South Carolina’s State House, and removed its Confederate flag. It seemed liked a spontaneous act of rebellion, but it was calculated, well timed, and done in solidarity with others so that a Black woman would be the one who took down the flag. Nine days before Newsome’s climb, White supremacist Dylann Roof entered the oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church in the South,
We cannot have conversations about racism without talking about Whiteness.
Black joy is to embrace your full humanity,
Black joy is a celebration of taking back your identity as a person of color and signaling to the world that your darkness is what makes you strong and beautiful.
Teachers who understand Black joy enter the classroom knowing that dark students knowing their history, falling in love with their history, and finding their voice are more important than grades. Good grades do not equal joy.
not to be color-blind but “color brave,”
To be color brave means to speak openly and honestly about race.
Teacher education programs ask students to speak openly and honestly about race and racism without the students having any understanding about where they stand in relation to systems of privilege and oppression and how these systems function in their everyday lives. Whiteness “is a category of identity that is most useful when its very existence is denied.”
Settler colonialism is a lens that helps us understand how Native Americans experience systemic oppression in the United States in a different way than any other dark group. The constant theft of Indigenous land, the extraction of resources, and the cultural genocide of Indigenous people has led to “negative health, cultural, and economic consequences for Indigenous people and lands.”
People say that racism will die out when all the old racist White men are dead. I guess old racist White men are vampires because racism is alive and well.
One way to examine the resources of dark communities is through what critical race theorist Tara Yosso calls “community cultural wealth.”20 Yosso stresses that there are six types of cultural capital that educators should understand and use to empower students beyond White narratives of what cultural capital is and is not.
Aspirational—that dark folx continue to have “hopes and dreams” despite persistent, structural barriers in education, employment, housing, and healthcare 2. Linguistic—the beautiful and rich storytelling and communication skills of linguistically diverse students 3. Familial—how family members’ wisdom, stories, and traditions can be a positive resource 4. Social capital—using your network for accessing college and other social institutions 5. Navigational—how dark people have to maneuver hostile spaces to be successful despite being unsupported 6. Resistance—recognizes that dark folx
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Black feminism is not antimale, it is for all individuals who understand what Malcolm X once said: “The most disrespected woman in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”
A cofounder of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, says, “Co-conspiracy is about what we do in action, not just in language.” She adds, “It is about moving through guilt and shame and recognizing that we did not create none of this stuff. And so what we are taking responsibility for is the power that we hold to transform our conditions.”
Studying Whiteness, White rage, and violence is a fundamental step to moving from ally to coconspirator.
