“I question America…. is this America?” Learning to view the civil rights movement through an intersectional lens

Abstract

This qualitative case study investigates how two preservice elementary teachers crafted narratives of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement using an intersectional lens. Using Black feminism and Black critical patriotism as theoretical frameworks, the authors examine the process in which preservice teachers attempted to construct historical narratives using Crenshaw’s framework of intersectionality. The preservice teachers used this framework to examine the intersecting identities and resulting experiences of women in the past and present in order to present a more complex narrative of the Civil Rights Movement to elementary students. This study is important because it helps preservice teachers and their students become conscious of the ways in which different people experience(d) the world based on intersecting identities as a way to promote empathy and critical citizenship.

Keywords:

• Teacher knowledge
• teacher education
• multicultural/diversity education
• gender issues in education
• curriculum development

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Amanda E. Vickery is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Preparation at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in elementary social studies methods. Her research focuses on how Black women teachers utilize experiential and community knowledge to reconceptualize the construct of citizenship. Her scholarship has been published in Theory and Research in Social Education, Urban Education, Journal of Social Studies Research, Gender and Education, The High School Journal, Social Studies Research and Practice, and The International Journal of Multicultural Education. Dr. Vickery is a former middle school social studies teacher.

Cinthia S. Salinas holds the Ruben E. Hinojosa Regents Professorship in Education at the University of Texas at Austin and Department Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education. Her research focuses on social studies education including historical thinking with late arrival immigrant and migrant students, as well as broader understandings of citizenship. She has numerous publications in a number of top tiered research journals in addition to countless teaching and research awards.

Notes

1 I intentionally capitalize the term “Communities of Color” throughout this manuscript to use capitalisation as a grammatical strategy to (re)claim power typically removed to describe historically marginalised communities.

2 Speaking “truth to power” is a phrase coined by Quakers in the 1950s and famously used by activist Bayard Rustin during the Civil Rights Movement. Speaking “truth to power” means that we must speak the truth we know and have the courage to say what we see and believe. Audre Lorde (2012) noted that our silence will not protect us. Therefore, speaking our truths helps us imagine a world that we want to live in despite systems of oppression.

3 Baker, E.J. (1970), “Developing Community Leadership”, available at: https://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/ella-bakers-developing-community-leadership/text (accessed September 21, 2017).

4 Williams, F. B. (1894). The intellectual progress of the colored women of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation. In M. W. Sewall (Ed.), The World’s Congress of Representative Women (696–711).