Deconstructing dread: Teaching through Black histories

Abstract

Some Black histories are absolutely dreadful. When we consider enslavement, racial violence, the terrors in the lynching of Emmett Till, the destruction of Tulsa during the Race Massacre, and the intergenerational traumas these events left behind, the residues of dread are made visible. Black histories are in a contentious social-political moment that often eradicates them from instructional programming or discounts their inclusion to simple stories that privilege educators’ comfort over students’ critical engagement (Jones, 2022). Years of miseducation (Woodson, 1933) document horrors done in the name of Black histories that require a revival through curricular pedagogical resuscitation or CPR (Johnson & Nicol, 2020), using strategies to move beyond the dread. This paper examines the experiences of educators deconstructing and moving beyond the “dread” through engagement with (1) spirit, (2) contextualized histories, and (3) otherworldly and beyond human means to show possibilities of moving through dread to center Black humanity. The discussion illuminates examples of teaching beyond the “dread” while outlining suggestions for anyone teaching Black histories.