Black Leaders Research Articles

Public housing, homeplaces, and entangled spatial strategies of Black freedom

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how and why Black leaders in Chicago successfully lobbied for the construction of the first public housing in the city’s south side, the Ida B. Wells Homes, completed in 1941. It does so in order to recover the hopefulness and optimism – the dream of public housing – at its very beginning, in the 1930s, and to understand its significance in the long history of Black struggles for better housing, struggles that almost always were entangled within structures of dominance and resistance. Through investigating the archives of the Chicago Urban League, an organization that was heavily involved in those struggles, and by conducting content analysis of the organization’s publication Opportunity and the major Black newspaper in the city – The Chicago Defender – I document the actions of those who fought most directly and assiduously for the construction of the Ida B. Wells homes, the Black leaders of Chicago’s Urban League. By so doing, I highlight the significance within the history of Black freedom struggles of examining organizations and institutions that are entangled within dominant and resistant structures, showing in particular how struggles for control over homeplaces are central to that history.

Seeking “Self-Determination” in Detroit: Housing, Race, and the Activism of the West Central Organization, 1964-1971

This essay examines the advocacy efforts of the West Central Organization (WCO), which was established in 1964 to protect Detroit neighborhoods that were historically mostly white but were becoming increasingly Black. Seeking “self-determination” for citizens, the WCO’s communications campaigns attracted media and administrative attention to housing crises caused by urban renewal policies. Drawing on literature and news stories published by and about the WCO, this essay focuses on political battles the WCO picked with Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and Wayne State University. The WCO garnered a small measure of political power and managed to alter urban renewal policies—before the WCO’s confrontational tactics turned white mainstream press outlets and public opinion against the organization. Ultimately, the WCO’s white leadership and race-blind approach to organizing mitigated its effectiveness in the wake of the 1967 Rebellion, when Black leaders confronted racial discrimination, policy brutality, and other systemic issues that continue in present-day Detroit.

Black Girls as Transformative Leaders in Physical Activity Programs

Background: Black adolescent girls possess a unique ability to inspire and enact change in their communities, yet are overlooked in discussions of leadership and empowerment. Coupled with deficit approaches to school-based physical activity programming, positioning Black girls as physical activity leaders is missing from practice. BLinG-HealthTM (Black Leadership in Girls’ Health) trained peer leaders in group fitness instruction instrumental in delivering group fitness sessions in an 8-week after-school physical activity pilot program. Methods and Analysis: This paper presents the qualitative data illustrating the program's impact on Black girls leading peers in a group fitness setting using general inductive narrative analysis based on group interviews, observations, reflection notes, and faculty leadership testimonials. Results: Participants exuded community, collaboration, and confidence. Peer leadership was effective but differed. Girls recognized the program's benefits and challenges while enjoying it. Conclusion: Black girls can lead physical activity initiatives when allowed to do so while building a community. Researchers and school and community activists should empower Black girls to lead physical activity programs to foster better health outcomes.

‘A Cultivated Leader and Sensible Spokesman for Black African Views’1: Britain's Courting of KaNgwane Chief Minister Enos J. Mabuza

AbstractThis article analyses British policymakers’ efforts to court Enos John Mabuza, Chief Minister of the self‐governing South African homeland of KaNgwane, in the final years of apartheid. It contends that despite taking place nearly 30 years apart, there were striking similarities between British policy at the end of apartheid and in the era of decolonisation, particularly the efforts to build relations with moderate nationalists in an effort to maintain long‐term influence. While KaNgwane was a small territory lacking in material resources, Mabuza, as a moderate Black leader working within the law to challenge apartheid, took on greater importance in the minds of British policymakers seeking a peaceful transfer of power in South Africa. This was helped by Mabuza's ability to maintain relations with a diverse range of important political actors including the South African government, KwaZulu Chief Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and the African National Congress in exile. Additionally, KaNgwane's close proximity to Mozambique, which at the time was in the midst of a civil war, also gave the territory greater prominence. This article will highlight how Mabuza used these interconnecting factors to demonstrate his value as an important ‘interlocutor’ for Britain, which in turn saw him extract important resources for both the KaNgwane people and his own family, as well as a degree of protection from interference by the South African government.

When a Black man is in the principal’s office: Black male leaders navigating racialized spaces

This study describes the experiences of fourteen Black male principals or heads of school navigating racialized spaces, including the politics of race, and experienced racism in educational settings as well as in school leadership. Data analysis utilized a critical race theory (CRT) and culturally sensitive methodological and interpretive framework. The data analysis revealed themes associated with identity scrutiny, right to lead, meritocracy and color evasiveness, all falling within the white gaze paradigm. However, the results also suggest a demonstrable pathway for Black leaders to successfully navigate the pitfalls of the white gaze and experienced negative professional and personal reactions to this phenomenon. This self-developmental journey is marked by increasing self-awareness, self-efficacy and a growing Black identity. A developmental model is proposed which could be deployed to coach and develop these school building-level leaders and accelerate the learning curve. Thus improving leader’s sense of positive well-being, leadership impact, while decreasing retention risks.

How Whiteness Fuels Anti-Blackness: Black Leaders’ Experiences in an Urban High School

This article explores whiteness and how it manifests itself in an urban, Midwestern high school. This examination is done through counter-storytelling to unpack how Black women leaders navigate whiteness while simultaneously experiencing anti-Blackness within and outside a research-practice partnership. These counter-stories came from a larger research project on how school practitioners work towards anti-racism using an anti-racist policy decision-making protocol. Much research centers on the experiences of Black students in PK-12 education settings; however, there is an underwhelming amount of research that analyzes how anti-Black racism or anti-Blackness exists in educational leadership. Our findings reveal that Black women leaders negotiate whiteness through various strategies, encounter moments of anti-Blackness and witness it occurring among Black students within the school. Implications of this study illuminate the importance of counter-narratives in uncovering details otherwise unseen, as well as describe the ways counter-narratives moved the work within the research-practice partnerships forward.

Black Pentecostal reflections on the inward-looking approach in classical Pentecostalism

ABSTRACT This article problematises the inward-looking approach adopted by classical Pentecostalism in a South African context. A literature review on White-led classical Pentecostal churches reveals that in their early development, these churches were inward-looking and only concentrated on their theology of Spirit baptism, evangelism, and eschatological expectations. This inward-looking approach made classical Pentecostalism passive in response to socio-economic and socio-political issues. Issues such as racial segregation and economic challenges are highlighted here to demonstrate classical Pentecostalism’s non-engagement. The aim of this article is the rationale the benefits for classical Pentecostal churches in broadening their ways of engaging with South African society. This can be done by learning from African Independent Pentecostal Churches whose theology on socio-economic and socio-political issues is exceedingly outward-looking. These lessons have implications for Blackness as they demonstrate that Black leaders can change their circumstances without the supervision of Whiteness.

Gentrification and Racial Distrust in Communities: Evidence from 911 Calls

The prevalence of racial bias in policing has long concerned social scientists and policymakers. This article studies a predecessor mechanism that constitutes an important source of policing bias in American society: calls by individuals to the police to investigate “suspicious” behaviors, often involving neighbors. We construct a novel data set of more than 39 million 911 calls across 14 U.S. cities from 2011 to 2020. These data, obtained through the digitization initiatives of local governments, provide us with a unique opportunity to study neighborhood-level trust and social cohesion and demonstrate how changes to a neighborhood’s composition lead to systematic increases in the prevalence of “unfounded” suspicion calls to the police. Across a range of specifications, the proportion of unfounded suspicion calls increases as more non-Black residents move into neighborhoods with historically high levels of Black residents. This relationship is exacerbated in gentrifying neighborhoods and those with public spaces that enable more contact between community members. However, we also find some evidence that Black leadership and public support of Black citizens in communities mitigate the association between non-Black residents and the proportion of unfounded 911 calls. We discuss our results and implications for future research and policy. This paper was accepted by Anindya Ghose, information systems. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.00362 .

Reimagining Governance in a Racial Justice Coalition: A Case Study in Transforming Power

This case study elucidates the experiences of a mid-sized community-based nonprofit coalition whose mission is to address systemic racism and organize and advocate for racial justice. Following several years of operating as a fiscally sponsored coalition, their staff decided it was the opportune to establish themselves as an independent nonprofit with its own 501(c)(3) designation. This juncture presented a unique opportunity for the Coalition to design a governance model that was in alignment with their deep values of racial equity, shared leadership, democratic principles, nonhierarchal organizational structures, and the advancement of grassroots Black leadership, and the prioritization of individuals most adversely affected by systemic racism and oppression. This case study illustrates the Coalition’s transformational journey and the challenges encountered during the design process of their new governance model, based on the principles of the pioneering governance framework, Community Engagement Governance™ (Freiwirth, 2013).

Reexamination of Multi-level Representation and Critical Mass: The Roles of Black Leadership and Its Relationship With Street-Level Officers in Police Killings

The study’s goal is to examine the multi-level representation in the context of cooperation and support between black police chiefs and street-level officers. Another goal here is to re-examine and propose different critical mass models in policing. The study uses police killing data from 2014 to 2017 in the United States. Using multi-level modeling techniques, the existing critical mass model, which assumes a single threshold, is not supported. Instead, the study finds that the mutual support model is supported, showing that street-level black officers need support from the black chief, while the black chief also needs further support from street-level officers. Simultaneously, it finds that the presence of a black chief shifts the threshold of street-level representation to a lower level, showing a close relationship between mutual support and critical mass due to a similar mechanism. The findings suggest the importance of police leadership.

Good soil: The community cultural wealth of Black Seventh-day Adventist schools through the lens of Black males

Research concerning Black-led schools has centered around Black public schools prior to desegregation. Much of the data concerning these institutions is dated and the empirical data is limited concerning Black education under Black leadership. The data has found that Black schools under Black leadership had high-quality teachers, elevated principals as community leaders, rigorous academic standards, and developed a socio-political consciousness. However, there is limited knowledge concerning contemporary religious Black schools. This study fills this research gap by utilizing Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis on the reflections of Black males who attended contemporary Black-led Seventh-day Adventist schools. This study found that these Black-led Seventh-day Adventist schools served as producers of four distinct forms of capital. These four forms of capital are navigational, aspirational, religious, and joy.

Words of a Leader: The Importance of Intersectionality for Understanding Women Leaders’ Use of Dominant Language and How Others Receive It

Management scholars have long examined gender disparities in leaders’ communication and followers’ reactions. There is, however, a paucity of research that takes an intersectional perspective. This article takes that step, using an intersectional lens to examine women leaders’ use of dominant language and how others receive it. Leveraging advances in natural-language processing, I analyzed the stereotype content of more than 250,000 Congressional remarks (Study 1) and almost one million tweets (Study 2) by leaders. Women leaders referenced dominance more than men did (using more words like “powerful”), violating stereotypes that depict women as submissive. However, as theory on racialized gender stereotypes suggests, this effect was unique to White leaders. Two additional studies revealed backlash to women leaders’ use of dominant language. Analyzing almost 18,000 editorials revealed the more that women leaders referenced dominance, the more they were portrayed as dominant but also cold. Effects were strongest for Black and Latina women (Study 3). Finally, an experiment using simulated social media profiles found the more that Black women (but not men) leaders referenced dominance, the more voters rated them as less likeable, a result that was unique to Black leaders (Study 4). The article demonstrates the critical importance of intersectionality for understanding gender inequality in leaders’ communication and its reception by the media and the public.

Black Leaders in American Foreign Policy:

Data on Black Ambassadors from 1949 to 2020 presented as WEB Du Bois-inspired data visualizations, and a historical review of Black Americans in the US State Department confirm the State Department has not achieved diversity reflective of American society. The theory of racialized organizations helps to explain why, and the lens of institutional theory suggests elements that could contribute to achieving a more representative State Department bureaucracy: 1) networks of institutional entrepreneurs; 2) accessing power and influence sources; as they work towards 3) establishing new norms; and 4) data for justice.

Recruitment of Underrepresented Groups into the AHEAD Study: Strategic plan of Action

AbstractBackgroundTo ensure that therapies are applicable for all groups, ethnic/racial diversity in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) clinical trials is an ethical imperative. Toward this goal, we developed a recruitment model founded on 1) building trust by providing accurate and transparent information, and 2) using culturally sensitive approaches to address legitimate concerns. Our ultimate goal is to empower individuals from under‐represented groups (URG) to participate in AD research.MethodOur group focuses on recruitment of racialized groups. Using a multistep approach (figure1), we established partnerships and created community advisory boards (CABs) comprised of leaders who effectively advocate for community needs. Research projects are presented to the CABs to determine alignment with community needs. Assessments with community leaders and advisory networks help identify opportunities to fulfill community needs. Recruitment of African Americans (AA) into the AHEAD study, a study assessing the recently approved monoclonal antibody, lecanemab in participants with preclinical AD, began by presenting the project to the Black Leaders of Brain Health (BLBH) CAB. Incorporating their input into our approach, we will structure community talks and events in a culturally appropriate manner in discussions with the larger AA community. Example, we utilized a questionnaire at an event to introduce AA participants in a biomarker study to the AHEAD study (figures 2 & 3).ResultFeedback received from BLBH includes advocating to funders, including the NIH to fund research that reflects inclusivity and diversity. BLBH recommended building URG voices into study design by having a diverse scientific team and hiring community members to collect data. Additionally, rather than excessive compensation, researchers should speak to the study benefits both for the individual’s and the community’s health. Finally, BLBH members emphasized the need to include hopeful messages and advice to improve health, rather than merely pointing out that AA are most likely among racial groups to have the disease.ConclusionRecruitment models involving trust building and partnerships with groups consisting of community members of URG will be mutually beneficial for both the health researcher and the communities that they serve. This may serve as a means to tip the scale toward increased participation by URG in biomedical research.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and Black Higher Education Administrators: Reflections on Illusions of Change

Over the past two decades, universities and colleges in Canada have increasingly styled themselves as being deeply invested in addressing anti-Black racism, coloniality, and histories of exclusion. To address these long-standing grievances, academic institutions have ramped up and mass-promoted the implementation of equity-focused initiatives such as equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) offices; executive-level EDI positions; race-based data collection; EDI working groups; subcommittees and councils; anti-racism charters; statements of solidarity; and EDI training and workshops. In this article, the author argues that these efforts have done nothing to meaningfully address entrenched inequities present at every level of academic institutions. Of particular focus is the role of the Black administrator, who, the author argues, is hired to nullify dissent within the institution while manufacturing optics of diversity and progress. Drawing on the author’s own experience as a former college dean, this article first provides examples of how these strategies amount to a nullification of dissent. The author argues that universities and colleges have become sophisticated in stifling legitimate challenges to hierarchies of power through incorporating and co-opting calls for change. The author shows how such practices not only undermine radical demands for change but also provide ways for institutions to maintain their racial capitalist, neoliberal objectives. In thinking about what may yet be possible in “another university,” the author reviews a set of principles derived from Black radical tradition and Black queer feminist theory, which point to ways in which we may move toward an alternative learning commons or what others refer to as the “off-university” or the “undercommons.” Extending on the concepts of the “Black test” and an “ethics of care,” the author suggests some fundamental criteria for moving toward transformed academic institutions while also addressing ways in which we can rethink notions of Black leadership that are too often deployed to frustrate calls for change.

K–12 Schools in Ohio Are Separate and Unequal

Schools are one of the main determinants of lifetime employment and wages. In the 1950s and 60s, many Black leaders were concerned that Supreme Court rulings outlawing the racial segregation of schools might not effectively eliminate school segregation. This Economic Commentary uses data from Ohio to show that, even today, Black and white students attend largely separate K–12 schools that provide unequal educational opportunity.

Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership by Sonya Y. Ramsey (review)

Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership by Sonya Y. Ramsey (review)

Spirituality Empowers Black Leadership: A Phenomenological Study of Black Men College Students Leaders

Abstract: In this qualitative study, the spiritual experiences and leadership of 15 Black collegiate men enrolled at higher education institutions were examined. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand how Black men student leaders make meaning of spirituality. The first finding described how Black men students make meaning of spirituality to navigate life challenges and empower their leadership. The second finding revealed how Black men student leaders defined spirituality, which was influenced by but not exclusive to their religious beliefs. And the last finding underscored who they were as Black men and leaders, providing context to spirituality's meaning in their leadership experiences. Overall, the central focus of this study was the phenomenon of spirituality and leadership; however, this study revealed that research needs to focus on the intersection of leadership development, racial identity development, and spirituality. This article provides recommendations for administrators, faculty, and staff to be more inclusive of spirituality in the leadership development of Black men college students.

The Firsts: The Interiority of Black South African Principals Inside White-Majority Schools

In this essay, Jonathan D. Jansen and Samantha Kriger make visible the inner lives of the first Black principals in white-majority schools in South Africa. Through in-depth, on-site, narrative interviews with thirteen principals, and using the lens of interiority, they report on the anxieties, insecurity, and uncertainties experienced by these pioneers in the after math of apartheid, as well as their aspirations, commitments, and determination to transform predominately white institutions. Respondents spoke openly and candidly about their vulnerability as Black leaders in white schools, discussing the toll of school-based racism and resentment on their emotional lives, explaining the struggle between advancing and yet holding back change to avoid alienating white parents and teachers, and revealing how the racialized contexts in which they work awakened a reassessment of their own identities and of those they lead.

Cannabis Policy in the 21st Century: Mandating an Equitable Future and Shedding the Racist Past

The cannabis legalization movement in the United States has experienced unprecedented success in the past decade due to a wave of grassroots reforms in states across the country. The current legalization movement began in 2012, when Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize the use and sale of cannabis for adults aged ≥ 21 years. Since then, the use of cannabis has been legalized in 21 states, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Washington, DC. Many of these states have explicitly framed the law change as a rejection of the War on Drugs and its harms, felt disproportionately in Black and Brown communities. However, racial inequities in cannabis arrests have increased in states that have legalized cannabis for adult use. Moreover, states working to implement social equity and community reinvestment programs have made little progress toward their goals. This commentary describes how US drug policy, racist in intention, gave way to drug policy that perpetuates racism, even when its ostensible or stated goal is equity. As the United States prepares for national legalization of cannabis, it is critical that we break away from past legislation and mandate equity in cannabis policy. Developing meaningful mandates will require us to acknowledge our history of using drug policy for the racist goals of social control and extortion, study the experience of states that are trying to implement social equity programs, listen to Black leaders and other leaders of color who have developed guidance for equity-focused cannabis policy, and commit to a new paradigm. If we are willing to do these things, we may be able to legalize cannabis in an anti-racist way that will stop causing harm and enable us to effectively implement reparative practices.