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.