Pictured: Carter G. Woodson and leaves on Langson League Book Club Pick flyer. Purchase Fugitive Pedagogy by Jarvis Givens, here.
Purchase Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, today.
Hey Langston League! It's been a minute. We took much-needed rest the last quarter of Q4 while maneuvering through a pandemic that still affects loved ones near and far.
We spent a lot of time reflecting, and we did quite a bit of reading too. We also did a lot of do-nothing and sleeping, because that’s important too.
We wanted to start off this year by reading and rereading Fugitive Pedagogy by Jarvis R. Givens.
We’ve always been aware of the “renegade” element while teaching truth. Many of us are and once were educators who’ve had pertinent and culturally responsive central texts, facts, and representation tossed out, ignored, or negated from core instruction. We’ve witnessed our Black and Brown students ask where their triumphs throughout the generations are and why the people and movements that looked like them were only strewn across a few chapters.
We have had the same questions.
Our ancestors, and many others today, have always been answering. As individual instructors and as a collective, we have always recognized that Woodson’s (and many of his contemporaries) intentions were rooted in collectivism. From Woodson’s first bout with a classroom, teaching to formerly enslaved coal miners who’d not yet learned to read, was fueled by primary sources: Black newspapers, Black authors, and scholarship written about Black people.
Standing before people who’d been through enslavement, a civil war, and newfound “freedom”, he was given counter-narratives and tales of our uplift and power. At this moment he realized that the westernized curriculum did not view Black people as a historical subject. He realized that America failed to recognize Black history as World History. From the founding of Negro History Week, which was the foundation of Black History Month and a major shift in Black Historiography, Woodson was on a mission to ensure Black learners of every generation knew the extent to which their forced labor built a nation.
“Fugitive Pedagogy chronicles Woodson’s efforts to fight against the “mis-education of (Black people) by helping teachers and students to see themselves and their mission as set apart from an anti-Black world.”
To know anything that refutes this is to know a mainstream and veneered Woodson.
Join us as we read “Fugitive Pedagogy.” Each week, we’ll tell you where we are and what reflections/questions/resources we’re delving into. We’re sending a FREE copy to one lucky reader! Want to enter? Head to our Instagram.