“They’re Already Punished Enough:” Fugitivity and Abolitionist Lessons from Black Women Alternative School Teachers

Abstract

ABSTRACT While much of the literature on Black women teachers documents their legacy of addressing anti-black racism in traditional public-school settings, there is room for more dialogue about the labor of Black women teachers who teach in non-traditional school settings. This study draws on endarkened storywork, a methodological approach derived from the convergence of Endarkened Feminist Epistemologies (EFE) and indigenous storywork (ISW) to grasp insight from the storytelling of Black women teachers at an alternative school in central Georgia. To honor the breadth and depth of storytelling as an analytical tool, this paper focuses on how one of the three Black woman alternative schoolteachers creates a “fugitive space” in which she subverts conventional ways of schooling and offers nuanced narratives about herself and her students. The question that guides this study is how do Black women teachers’ praxis in non-traditional school spaces invite us to imagine liberatory possibilities in education?