The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) opened in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26, 2018. The memorial provides a sacred site where people can gather and reflect on America's history of racial injustice and represents an essential milestone in the ongoing process of racial reckoning in the United States. As Alabama has historically been…

Multiple racial issues in America have been brought to the forefront by the recent deaths of African Americans, yet many teachers feel unprepared to engage with students around issues of race. Their discomfort is likely because traditional textbooks omitted the experiences of non-dominant, marginalized groups, thereby denying readers an…

HBO's "Lovecraft Country" is a model resource for developing speculative civic literacies, which are forms of meaning making aimed at helping students conceive of a more equitable democratic society. Speculative civic literacies and "Lovecraft Country" both center the tension between Afrofuturism and Afropessimism in the…

Historians of social studies and race have focused overwhelmingly on formal educational settings, textbooks, and curriculum, thereby overlooking the informal educational spaces valued by African Americans. This study examines civic education in informal settings by considering the educational programs of Black voluntary organizations. Hundreds of…

In recent years, under the guise of anti-CRT legislation, politicians nationwide have attempted, and at times succeeded, in prohibiting the teaching of race and racism in PK-12 public schools. Although these laws target a theory not taught in elementary and secondary schools, too often the voices and feelings of caregivers from marginalized…

The authors analyzed three Advanced Placement U.S. History textbooks' narratives of U.S. 20th century social democratic policies (e.g. New Deal, G.I. Bill, pro-suburbanization policies) using Lipsitz's "possessive investment in whiteness" as a theoretical framework. The authors found texts portrayed the exclusion of Black populations…

In spring 2021, we taught a course called Honors White Supremacy and Privilege to university honors students at our higher education institution in Florida. Aimed at helping students process intellectually the Black Lives Matter events of the preceding year, the course took place just as a reaction was gathering momentum against anti-racist…

This research article explores the socio-historical and contemporary context of Black home education within the Black Belt of the American South through a literature review. This literature review aims to uncover the historical evolution, socio-cultural dynamics, and contemporary challenges and opportunities associated with Black home education in…

In this article, I document and analyze all municipal, state, and county-level efforts for Black reparations in the United States. Most efforts resemble H.R. 40's exploratory commission model, possibly due to policy path dependency. Few geographies have allocated funding for committee recommendations, but some have allocated funds for committee…

This article seeks to determine how and why countermemory shifts from being a fringe narrative to being a part of the U.S.'s collective narrative. We establish two complementary--and often interlocking--reasons for this shift: 1) The role of media portrayals in film and series, and 2) The impact of grassroots community-engaged public memory…

A critical reappraisal of the origin story of early care and education (ECE) in the United States, this article unsettles dominant narratives by investigating the carceral foundations and liberatory strategies that characterise the emergence and sociopolitical evolution of ECE. Integrating Foucauldian counter-historical genealogy and…

In this article, the authors focus on a one-week research project examining Frederick Douglass's civic actions to challenge racial discrimination African Americans faced before and after the U.S. Civil War. Our one-week research project was implemented at a free public charter school in amid-sized Southern city. Our project connects to the…