This article theorizes Hip Hop as Black liberatory practice by explicating the links between Hip Hop knowledges, pedagogies, and futures. I draw on multiple research and classroom experiences, including co-teaching a course with pioneering Hip Hop artist Chuck D of Public Enemy. The course examined Hip Hop culture as an extension of Black freedom…

In this essay, we center hip-hop culture and Black cultural legacies. We envision and offer a two-fold framework which illuminates the intersection between the two. We explore ways that the Black cultural experience (or better yet Black cultural praxis) has always brilliantly and organically demonstrated the shape and form of a scholarship of…

The work in this article (re)traces the nuances embedded within the aesthetics of the Wu-Tang Clan to draw attention to two theoretical, Wu-based concepts: "Shaolin" and "swarming." This article leans into fugivity and critical race theory (CRT) to demonstrate how hip-hop music can be a capacious avenue for theorizing alternate…

Through conceptual framing of "a vibe" and abolitionist teaching, our study explored the self-determining work of Black and other People of the Global Majority (PGM) who have curated "by us, for us" (BUFU) community spaces of belonging, healing, and liberation. We asked where PGM community members were finding refuge and what…

We center and unpack the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Commission on Research in Black Education's (CORIBE) research validity principle, which emphasizes that the highest priority must be placed on studies of: (A) African tradition (history, culture and language); (B) Hegemony (e.g. uses of schooling/socialization and…

This article centers on freedom dreaming as a critical approach to educational policy studies. I examined how one Black and Indigenous American educator activist collective's conversations linked freedom dreaming to critical praxis. Educational policy studies would benefit from centering on Black and Indigenous knowledges especially if scholars…

Scholars, educators, writers, and librarians have been calling for richer literary depictions of Black culture since the 1930s. Using a critical content analysis framework with the books "Ada Twist, "Scientist" and "Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut," I discuss how the concepts of fugitivity, fantasy, futurity, and freedom…

The migration of blacks in North America through slavery became united. The population of blacks past downs a tradition of artist through art to native born citizens. The art tradition involved telling stories to each generation in black families. The black culture elevated by tradition created hope to determine their personal freedom to escape…

Communication is the use of language to exchange information to one another. African slaves used to embark on communication by means of using common symbols and speech, telling stories, singing spirituals, writing poems. As time revolved, blacks valued education. Education and the ability to read write and effectively would give them the skill or…

Different subgroups in society have diverse motives for remembering or forgetting important events in history. In American history, slavery has had a deep and enduring bad effect on everything that came afterward. There have been attempts to forget or remember this chapter in the national narrative related to the intentions of subcultural groups…

In this study, we sought to understand how Black lives matter (BLM) epistemology, as displayed through six months of social media content from official accounts, can inform a racially liberatory pedagogy in higher education for Black and other racially minoritized students. We found BLM, through Facebook and Twitter, situated intersectional Black…

The present investigation considers the program outcomes of one community youth project, Leadership Excellence Inc., Oakland Freedom Schools. Oakland Freedom Schools are culturally relevant 6-week summer Language Arts enrichment programs for primarily inner-city African American youth aged 5 to 14 years. In this study, 79 African American youth…

In U.S. schools, African American students are typically fed steady diets of stereotypical and culturally invasive literature and often do not see themselves positively and consistently represented in books. The crisis is fueled, in part, by teachers who (for various reasons) do not include and draw upon counter-narratives in their classrooms.…

The visionary social struggle that resulted in the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" decision did not take into account the ways ideologically distorted knowledge sustains societal injustice, particularly academic and school knowledge about black history and culture. This delimited vision of equal justice raises a number of questions of…