Abstract
In this article, the author uses the critical race theoretical construct of master narrative to explore historical and ideological assumptions about the Civil Rights Movement held by two Black youth in an urban community. Master narrative is defined as the dominant social mythologies that mute, erase, and neutralize features of racial struggle. Through a synthesis of literature by critical race theorists and critical social historians, the author outlines four themes present in master narratives about the Movement, and illustrates how each theme functions to reinforce ideologies of White supremacy. Through counterstory, the author examines ways in which these themes seem to constrain participants’ understandings of race, racism, and racial struggle. The author concludes posing questions to encourage urban social studies educators to think deeply about their historical content knowledge, curriculum, and classroom practices, and restating the need for continued exploration into the implications of master narrative in Black, urban students’ understandings of history and their contemporary conditions.
Introduction
“Civil Rights Movement” most often refers to organized efforts against Black disenfranchisement that began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1954, and culminated with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Hall, 2005). In social studies education, this period is routinely presented as central to conceptualizations of Black civic life (Hess, 2005), and as an exemplar of Black youths’ civic action, efficacy, and behavior (Levinson, 2007, 2009). In many instances, however, the same curricula that afford iconic status to the Civil Rights Movement (referred to hereafter as “the Movement”) simultaneously present “an incoherent, disjointed picture of those who are not White” (Ladson-Billings, 2003, p. 4). Theorists and activists continue to advocate for more comprehensive and democratic representations of racial and civic struggles (Alridge, 2006; Brown & Brown, 2010; Frost, 2012; King & Swartz, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Linter, 2004; Nieto, 2004; Nieto & Bode, 2009; Woodson, 2015; Zimmerman, 2004), arguing that the distortion of these historical events co-opts “knowledge of the past” in ways that “reproduce power relations between already privileged groups and everyone else” (King & Swartz, 2014, p. 33).
In this article, I use the critical race theoretical construct of master narrative to explore historical and ideological assumptions about the Movement held by Vanessa and Omar, two Black, urban youth who did not complete high school. Master narrative is defined as the social mythologies that mute, erase, and neutralize features of racial struggle in ways that reinforce ideologies of White supremacy (King & Swartz, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In contrast to master narratives, counterstories are narratives that convey “struggles . . . often overlooked by those in positions of power,” and that draw “explicitly” on the experiential knowledge of those silenced in education research (Howard, 2008, p. 964). In the critical race framework, counterstories are used to challenge master narratives and strengthen traditions of resistance (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Through Vanessa and Omar’s respective counterstories, I detail the ways in which their historical knowledge of civil rights activism exposes the limitations of master narratives about the Movement. My objective is to advance theory about how Movement master narratives constrain the present-day civic action of Black youth. I argue that closer attention to the implications of master narratives in the lived experience of urban youth like Vanessa and Omar is necessary if social studies educators hope to increase the relevance of the field broadly, and to improve the reception of history in urban schools specifically (Epstein, 2000; Gay, 2004; Milner, 2014).
In the paragraphs that follow, I summarize how the construct of master narrative has been used to examine representations of the Movement in social studies education through the critical race framework. Then, I elaborate four themes that have emerged in master narratives of the Movement, based on a review of literature that calls into question well-established representations of the period. Although themes of Movement master narratives have previously been identified in social studies education (Alridge, 2006; Brown & Brown, 2010; Frost, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 1998, 2003), I present and interpret these themes in relation to the tenets of the critical race framework, with an emphasis on the function of White supremacy in these historical accounts. I then present the findings and analysis of my two case studies. To conclude, I build on and extend Alridge’s (2006) argument that “[educators] risk producing a generation that does not understand its history” (p. 663) when we fail to recognize and challenge how master narratives limit meaningful access to and engagement with history for Black youth.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the Construct of Master Narrative
In this section, I review CRT and summarize how critical race scholars have used the construct of master narrative to examine representations of the Movement in social studies education. Most historical accounts of the Movement are tightly framed between the years 1954 and 1965 (Hall, 2005). As the 1960s drew to a close, scholars began to question the meaning and impact of the legislative and social reform that characterized the period (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). One vein of research and analysis exploring this reform is critical legal studies (CLS). CLS holds that the political rhetoric of meritocracy, equal opportunity, and equal treatment under the law did not reflect the lived conditions of many people living in the United States (Bell, 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Instead, this rhetoric functioned as a master narrative, a construct defined in depth below, that attributed persistent post-Movement social inequality “to cultural lag, or inadequate enforcement of currently existing beneficial laws” (Delgado, 1989, p. 2413).
CRT was developed to extend the CLS framework by centering issues of race in the analysis of post-Movement legal systems (Bell, 1995; Crenshaw, 2001; Delgado, 1987; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). The framework is specifically concerned with limitations of majority-rule democracy and post-racial philosophies in addressing racial inequality. Core features, or tenets, of CRT include the permanence of racism, a critique of liberalism and the attendant feature of race neutrality, and the legitimacy of marginalized voice in illuminating the nature of racism (Bell, 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). These tenets are used to disrupt dominant representations of the law, whom the law is intended to serve, and the legal symbolism of the Movement (Bell, 1995, 2000). Critical race scholars in legal studies would often embed the tenets in narrative accounts of their own experiences with the law, or as they recounted the experiences of other marginalized racial group members (Bell, 1992; Delgado, 1987).
These tenet-centered narratives are referred to as counterstories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Counterstories are intended to illuminate the ways in which social relationships, institutions, and artifacts are deeply and irrevocably structured by racial and other forms of marginalization. The purpose of counterstories in legal studies is replicated in the field of education, where counterstories highlight how the rhetoric of de jure desegregation and the multicultural curriculum movement do not reflect or meet the needs of Black youth, specifically those in urban settings (Gay, 2004; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Milner, 2007). For example, critical race scholars in social studies education have collected and composed counterstories that demonstrate how the philosophies and content in multicultural history curricula minimize or ignore the significance of race and racism, resulting in an incomplete portrayal of racism’s origins and implications (Brown & Brown, 2010; Howard, 2003, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1998, 2003). Consequently, this curricula often overstates the achievements of the Movement (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) and fails to offer insight into “the limitations of racial progress achieved in the post–Civil Rights era” (Brown & Brown, 2010, p. 36). In part due to these misrepresentations, Ladson-Billings (1998) argued that in many social studies classrooms the curriculum functions as “a culturally specific artifact designed to maintain a White supremacist master script” (p. 18).
Master script is functionally synonymous with master narrative, a concept used to identify and challenge misrepresentations of race, racial identities, and racial struggle across scholarship in social studies education (Alridge, 2006; Hall, 2005; Huggins, 1991; Ladson-Billings, 1998) and legal studies (Ikemoto, 1992; Robinson, 1995). For example, Alridge (2006) defined master narrative as “the dominant and overarching theme or template that presents the literature, history, or culture of a society” (p. 681). Critical race theorists also use master narrative to refer to dominant themes and templates, but specifically those that represent reality in ways that prescribe and legitimate White supremacy 1 (Delgado, 1989; Ikemoto, 1992; Robinson, 1995; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). The CRT construct of master narrative is the conceptual focus of this article, and is advanced through Ladson-Billings’s (1998) analysis that master scripts of White supremacy mute, erase, or attempt to neutralize the “stories of African Americans . . . when [these stories] challenge dominant cultural authority and power” (p. 18). A working definition of master narrative, then, would be the social mythologies that mute, erase, and neutralize features of racial history and struggle in ways that reinforce ideologies and practices of White supremacy (King & Swartz, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).
Movement Master Narratives and White Supremacy
Master narratives emerge with troubling consistency across history standards and textbooks used in K-12 classrooms and in teacher education (Alridge, 2006; Anderson, 2013; Brown & Brown, 2010; Gay, 2003; Journell, 2008; Ladson-Billings, 2003). In this section, I reference critical race theorists and critical social historians to outline four themes present in master narratives about the Movement, and illustrate how each theme functions to reinforce White supremacy. The four themes framing this discussion are as follows:
Master narratives of the Movement essentialize Black people and Black struggle.
Master narratives of the Movement portray racism as an accident.
Master narratives of the Movement are stories of martyrs and messiahs.
Master narratives of the Movement suggest the Movement eliminated racism.
Master narratives of the Movement essentialize Black people and Black struggle.
Montecinos (1995) argued that master narrative “essentializes and wipes out the complexity and richness of a group’s cultural life” (p. 293). In this instance, to essentialize refers to practices that impose qualities on a social category or group, and that represent all members of the group as possessing certain features or traits. For example, Enlightenment philosopher Hegel (2004) helped to articulate themes of White superiority that characterized all African and African-descended people, history, and culture as irrational, backward, and undeveloped, arguing that
[Africa] is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit. Historical movements in it—that is in its northern part—belong to the Asiatic or European World . . . What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History. (p. 99)
Although representations of Black people have progressed somewhat since Hegel’s eighteenth-century depictions, essentialism remains evident in textbooks and other portrayals that represent Black identity and thought as monolithic, static, and marked by a “group-think mentality” (Ladson-Billings, 2003; Shelby, 2005, p. 233). While these representations have been problematized by calls for philosophical and empirical inclusion by Black queers, Black women, Black atheists, and Black Marxists, the Movement is still broadly conceived as struggle predicated on middle-class, capitalist, heteropatriarchal Christian values (Alridge, 2006; Barnett, 1993; Hall, 2005; Joseph, 2006; Kelley & Esch, 1999; Thomas, 2005).
For example, textbook authors tend to disregard King’s leftist critique of Western capitalism and military imperialism to support depictions of King as a political moderate (Alridge, 2006; Ladson-Billings, 1998). The diluted platform of “one man in a movement” dominates textbook depictions of Black political thought throughout the Movement (Huggins, 1987, p. 477). This approach to history obscures diversity of thought and practice among Movement-era Black activists. For example, political leaders including El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and Stokely Carmichael disagreed with King’s approach to social change (Payne, 1981). Furthermore, the majority of Black people disagreed with King’s position against the war in Vietnam (Forman, 2002). Despite this reality, a reductive understanding of King has been constructed to represent the whole of Black people’s philosophies and experiences throughout and beyond the Movement (Alridge, 2006; Huggins, 1987). Essentializing the participants of the Movement reinforces White supremacy by muting Black identities and demands that challenge how textbooks present King’s philosophies, a presentation which rests on principles of assimilation, gradualism, and integration (Alridge, 2006; Bergerson, 2003; Carlson, 2003; Tyson, 2003).
Master narratives of the Movement portray racism as an accident.
Levinson (2009) defined the “moderately triumphalist” narrative of U.S. history as “a story of a country founded on universally admirable ideals of freedom and equality, admittedly tempered in practice by egregious violations of the ideals” (p. 12). This interpretation of Western history suggests that the values and beliefs undergirding White manifest destiny are inherently good, historically “inevitable” (Gordon, 2004, p. 193), and will eventually triumph over other ways of doing and being. From this perspective, racism is an unintended by-product of progress that the “Enlightenment principles of equality, rationality and objectivity” will gradually resolve (Headley, 2005, p. 95). When racism is conceived as an aberration to the country’s ideals, rather than as a problem innate to the colonial condition, it can be reduced to the acts of a few irrational individuals or the temporary failure of dominant consciousness (Bell, 1992; Brown & Brown, 2010; Huggins, 1991; Maldonado-Torres, 2005). Understanding racism as an accident neutralizes the scope and structure of institutional and structural racism in the United States.
For example, Brown and Brown (2010) conducted an analysis of U.S. history and social studies textbooks that illustrated how the “sanctioned historical discourse” of racial violence minimizes the severity and structural implications of such acts (p. 60). They argue that portraying widespread, socially and legally condoned attacks on Black people and communities as the isolated acts of individuals—or as historical happenstance—makes it more difficult to understand the ways in which systemic racial violence afforded material and symbolic benefits to White people as a social group. Portraying racism as an accident reinforces White supremacy, as these portrayals mute critiques of philosophies and institutions and instead shame the individual “bad whites” that do isolated bad things (Carlson, 2004, p. 307). This shaming disassociates Whiteness “from racism and [diverts] attention away from an analysis of how racism is part of the deep fabric of American culture and maintained through institutional structures” (p. 307). Understanding racism as an accident also predicates Black struggle on the appeal to the language and values of preexisting and presumably just ideals, such as those in the Constitution (Roberts, 1997), instead of allowing space to define racial justice from new or critical perspectives.
Master narratives of the Movement are stories of martyrs and messiahs.
Harris (1982) described the work of Huggins as a caution “against creating a fantasy of the impossible by imagining invincible black heroes” (p. 115). Although the countless assassinations of Black activists prove that they are not invincible, an analogous fantasy is supported through textbooks that portray King and others as exceptional, infallible, bowdlerized individuals whose ultimate sacrifice advanced the consciousness of the nation (Alridge, 2006; Hall, 2005; Woodson, 2015). This is not to suggest that racial violence and assassinations should be ignored, sanitized, or minimized in the history curriculum (Brown & Brown, 2010). However, though most history educators are broadly familiar with the names and stories of Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair, students know far too little about those who survived the racist attacks and intimidation that characterized the Movement, and what shape the lives and struggle of these individuals may have taken after the period ended (Fendrich, 1993; Hill, 2004).
The glorification of and disproportionate emphasis on the Black martyrs and messiahs in representations of the Movement serves numerous interrelated functions in reinforcing White supremacy. For this brief analysis, I highlight three: First, this practice valorizes King’s model of redemptive, unmerited suffering as the basis of Black civic struggle (Cone, 1992), silencing discussion of Black self-defense, offense, or retaliatory action as historical and contemporary strategies. Second, as Alridge (2006) indicated, this practice deifies activists and politicians in ways that obscure their personal struggles and the nature of their philosophies. As a result, Black youth cannot recognize themselves or their struggles in the “inaccurate, simplistic and disconnected” portraits of historical figures (Alridge, 2006, p. 663; Montecinos, 1995; Woodson, 2015). Last, as with the practice of lynching, the glorification of Black martyrs and messiahs literally offers corpses as examples of the potential cost of Black activism. The bodies of the victims of racial violence serve simultaneously as a call for community action and a poignant reminder of the sacrifice that such action might entail. If educators are not equipped to frame these narratives and photographs within critical discussions about the “historical and contemporary intricacies of race and racism” (Howard, 2004, p. 487), portraying the Movement as a story of martyrs and messiahs might deter students of color from civic activity.
Master narratives of the Movement suggest the Movement eliminated racism.
While outlining his philosophy of racial realism, Derrick Bell (1992) argued,
Even those herculean [civil rights] efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary “peaks of progress,” short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance. This is a hard-to-accept fact that all history verifies . . . (p. 374)
Bell’s claim that racial dominance is a permanent feature of social life stands in stark contrast to assumptions throughout history curricula that the Movement succeeded in eliminating racism (Bell, 1992; Chandler & McKnight, 2009). Many textbooks suggest that the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 symbolized the success of “black activism . . . in abolishing legal segregation and granting full citizenship rights to African Americans” (Nasstrom, 2008, p. 330). Critical race scholars reject this account, contending that practices of legal segregation are ongoing (Bell, 2000; Dixson & Rousseau, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 2009), and that these practices represent only one manifestation of White supremacy (Bell, 2000; Crenshaw, 2001; Gillborn, 2005, 2006; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995).
As stated, CRT took shape in response to “the reality that formal segregation was not the only mechanism through which racial power would find expression in American institutions” (Crenshaw, 2001, p. 1345), and that racism as a feature of White supremacy cannot be eliminated through legislation alone (Bell, 1992; DeCuir & Dixson, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Yosso, 2005). The legislative victories attributed to the Movement were only modestly successful in improving the lived experience of most Black people (Harris, 2012). Further challenging this theme, Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) argued that in some instances, the modest success of the Movement actually had adverse effects, as “civil rights law is regularly subverted to benefit whites” (p. 63). Interpretations of history that suggest the Movement eliminated racism legitimate White supremacy by suggesting that racial equality has been achieved, that legislative mechanisms were the means of this achievement, and that existing disparities are evidence of marginalized communities’ cultural or moral deficit (Hall, 2005; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). It also functions to erase and neutralize post-Movement and contemporary racial struggles.
Researcher Positionality
Milner (2011) recommended that researchers be attentive to how they position their own “privileges, oppression and assumptions in the process and outcomes of” research (p. 72). Toward demonstrating such attentiveness, I review features of my identity and education that influenced how the research was conducted, and how I present and interpret the data in this article. I approached this research as a former Black, urban secondary history student, and as a current Black doctoral student, social studies teacher educator, and developing critical race theorist. The latter identities provided certain privileges, including access to literature, coursework, and mentoring that expanded my understanding of the relationship between historical narrative and social power. Specifically, I was introduced to theories elaborating how representations of history are never neutral, and that historical narratives are constructed in ways that center and serve the interests of some social groups while marginalizing and undermining the interests of other groups (Alridge, 2006; King & Swartz, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Nieto, 2004; Tyson, 2003). These insights helped me to identify and interpret the historical omissions and inaccuracies that influenced my P-12 social studies education, and the types of challenges that these omissions and inaccuracies presented as I developed a sense of my own racial, cultural, and professional identity. Based on this knowledge and experience, I entered the research process assuming that my participants may have faced similar challenges in their own development. While I did not presume that we would describe our “cultural and racial heritage” or “historical landscape” in the same language or in the same ways (Milner, 2007, p. 395), I did look for “patterns of experience” and shared “legacies of struggle” (Collins, 2002, p. 26) that contribute to theorizing the convergent and divergent meanings that Black adole-scents in urban contexts afford to history broadly, and to the Movement specifically.
Method
I identified these meanings through my participants’ counterstories about the Movement. As stated, in CRT, master narratives are exposed, analyzed, and challenged through counterstorytelling, defined as “a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 32). In a broad sense, for this research, I sought to understand what the counterstories of Black youth who withdraw from or are pushed of from high school tell us about the history, social studies, and civics education that they encountered while in school. Building on the use of counterstory as a qualitative method in CRT (Carter, 2008; Howard, 2008; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Terry & Howard, 2013), this study presents stories and insights shared by two Black youth in Tubmanville, 2 a mid-size, urban city in the Midwest. Vanessa and Omar, the youth whose stories are shared in this study, were included as participants after being identified through a community program intended to help young adults prepare for the GED or to develop job readiness skills.
Vanessa
Vanessa is a 19-year-old aspiring cosmetologist. Her developing skills were apparent in her self-styled, edgy, and often intricate hair and makeup. She seemed happiest when discussing or exerting her control over her own self-presentation. Vanessa left high school during the fall semester of her junior year and moved out of her mother’s house that spring. At the times these stories were told, she lived with her boyfriend’s family as he completed a 90-day sentence for possession of a controlled substance.
Vanessa’s stories were full of impulsiveness, extreme sensitivity to perceived criticism, and her difficulty comprehending questions and instructions. She shared how some of these self-identified personality factors greatly contributed to her decision to leave school, as the daily academic and emotional expectations became too much for her to manage. Vanessa perceives herself as incapable of most social, academic, and civic tasks. She has never voted and indicated little, if any, previous participation in civic activity.
Omar
Omar has mastered the cool pose 3 (Majors & Billson, 1992) and all of its attendant mannerisms. Intitially, we struggled to establish a rapport as he kept his arms folded, responded with disinterest to my questions, and repeatedly stated his suspicion of my motives. Despite this, it was evident he enjoyed conversations about political events and civic life. He demonstrated that he had seriously thought about his relationship to systems of civic authority before.
Omar’s withdrawal from high school was especially perplexing, considering his intelligence, a high level of familial support, and the fact that he was less than 6 months from degree completion when he chose to drop out. He said he left school to help care for his 1-year-old son and girlfriend. As I completed the first draft of this article, Omar was just being released from jail on bond, working to defend himself on charges of aiding and abetting another person to use a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.
Data Collection and Analysis
Qualitative interviews, community observation, and field notes constitute the data for this study. I conducted three semi-structured individual interviews and one member-checking session with both Vanessa and Omar; all were audio-recorded and transcribed. Each interview lasted from 90 min to 2 hr. I also shadowed Vanessa and Omar, by invitation, at community and life events that they each considered significant in their civic or cultural development. These events included birthday parties, church services, candlelight vigils for homicide victims, a high school graduation, a rally against police brutality, and meetings of a local youth group. Unstructured interviews of varying length were conducted before, during, and after these events when possible. These latter interviews were not audio-recorded or transcribed; however, I recorded reflections on their substance and meaning in my field notebook immediately following the events. Detailed descriptions of the research settings, my reactions and observations, and beginning analyses of the data were also included as field notes.
Through continued conversations with Vanessa and Omar, I became interested in how their understandings of the Movement seemed to reproduce master narratives of the period. To highlight this phenomenon, I read each interview transcript in relation to early and more developed field notes, as well as in relation to other interview transcripts. I noted how and when references to the Movement emerged, and how each reference connected to Vanessa’s and Omar’s respective understandings of their community, contemporary politics, and ongoing struggles for racial justice. During this process, field notes were developed into analytic memos about the patterns and themes that appeared to best explicate their knowledge about the Movement, and the relationship of this knowledge to master narratives of the period. As recommended by Solórzano and Yosso (2002), I then returned to the literature to identify the language used to describe, proposed implications of, and potential correctives for master narratives in social studies and history education. This allowed me to make connections between the research data and the existing literature on Movement master narratives, to illuminate the concepts and experiences that “challenge the perceived wisdom” and “established belief systems” that frame discourse on the Movement (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 34). During the member-checking sessions, I presented Vanessa and Omar with my descriptions of their respective understandings of the Movement. They confirmed these descriptions, and helped me to make final revisions to my analysis when they felt revisions were needed. In the next section, I present excerpts from Vanessa’s and Omar’s stories that exemplify the connections drawn through this process.
Findings
In this section, I share some of Vanessa’s and Omar’s respective references to and stories about the Movement. I organize their references and stories toward illuminating the types of knowledge they, respectively, possessed about the Movement, and how this knowledge served to reproduce master narratives of the Movement. My analysis of the data highlights the four themes of Movement master narratives, as explained in the previous portions of this article.
Vanessa’s Story
Although Vanessa was hesitant to identify herself as a civic actor and insisted that she knew very little about history, historical references and imagery were prominent in her stories about civic life. I highlight two of the four themes of the master narrative through conversations with Vanessa: Essentializing Black people and struggle and racism as an accident. The theme the Movement as a success was implied through her heavy reliance on it as a model for contemporary and future struggles, suggesting that she deemed the model worthy of regard, and potentially of replication.
Essentializing Black people and Black struggle
Halfway through our second interview, Vanessa shared her reflections on a neighborhood march for nonviolence that had taken place 2 years prior. In response to increasing gang activity in the city, a group of pastor-activists called Parishioners on Patrol orchestrated a march intended to inspire 100 days of nonviolence, beginning in October 2011 and concluding on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2012. Vanessa walked by at the start of the procession with a friend to determine whether or not it was worth her time to participate. She expected to see pastors and community members dressed in their Sunday best, singing church hymns in harmony as they prayed throughout the streets of the city. In her words,
You know, in suit and dresses, maybe White dresses? And the men would wear Black suits. You carry some signs, you sing like songs about [singing] I shall not, I shall not be moved. You know?
When I asked where these ideas originated, she referenced documentaries on the life and activism of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her understanding of how civic agents looked was also greatly influenced by images of civil rights marchers of the early 1960s in her history textbooks. As a result, once she arrived at the Parishioners on Patrol march, Vanessa was discouraged to see one local pastor was in a sweat suit, and several women who looked like they “was probably going clubbing or something next.” Vanessa was most frustrated to see a group of young girls texting, even as the march began to move down the street:
This is not what we supposed to be about. You can’t even just stop texting for one second to be part of something like this. Everybody so caught up in they personal business we can’t do what they used to do. I think that’s interesting, V, but it’s also interesting to me that you critique them for texting during the march, but you didn’t march at all. I mean . . . if you gonna do it, do it . . . I’m not gon be out there not committed. So if you just want to be texting, then you not committed. And if they not committed, basically it’s like it’s gonna be a waste of everybody’s time. If I could see it, don’t they think White people could see it?
In Vanessa’s mind, the Movement “was like a time when you know we really had our stuff together . . . when we didn’t just be looking any kind of old way.” Vanessa believed that all Black people who fought for civil rights during the Movement adopted Black middle-class ways of self-presentation, and that this standard must be replicated to achieve civic outcomes. In her opinion, assimilation to this essentialized representation of Black struggle was the ground by which the protections entitled to citizens could be earned by Black people.
Two aspects of Vanessa’s analysis of the Parishioners on Patrol march were particularly illuminative, as I worked to understand her sense of civic self. First, I noted her presumption that high school girls’ texting was sufficient deterrent to prevent White allies from addressing gang violence in her community. It seemed unlikely that any individual would feel empowered in a relationship so tenuous that adolescent texting might disrupt the alliance. Second, I noted her aversion to the types of dress and behavior stereotypically associated with urban identities in civic spaces. This suggested that she considered the culture and customs within her community to be less worthy or appropriate than the culture and customs of the activists during the Movement. For Vanessa, essentialized representations of Black struggle perpetuated the idea that some Black identities are more worthy of civic attention than others.
Although the efficacy of the politics of respectability is debatable, I argue that it is Vanessa’s right to adopt whatever strategy of struggle and self-presentation she deems legitimate. It is problematic, however, that her understanding of struggle and self-presentation seems so constrained, and that she does not feel that she has a voice in civic spaces. When I asked if she would ever consider speaking or writing a letter to an elected official about the gang violence in her community, she replied,
. . . Who gonna listen to me? I can’t do that. That takes a degree and shit, like, or you have to be some kind of celebrity. You have to look a certain kind of way for White people to even see you . . . So why not look that way? Why not dress in such a way that White people will see you? I’m not gonna live my life every day like that, you know, because basically I don’t even see White people like that on the day to day. But if you asking them to help you with something, then you should have a plan about it. That’s what the march was for, to ask White people for something? Who else was they marching for? They not marching for each other, to see each other. Just to say “Please White people, help us.” Or the police or whatever.
Vanessa assumed she was unqualified to speak to civic authorities due to her appearance, her lack of formal education, and her lack of prestige. As White people were not members of her immediate community, she felt it unnecessary to dress or speak in ways that might garner White approval “every day.” But when White people were needed as allies, as she understood them to be in order for the Parishioners on Patrol march to prove successful, it was important to Vanessa that she and her community have their “stuff together” and to “look a certain kind of way.” When this expectation was not met, she presumed the march would fail and chose not to participate.
Racism as an accident
The assumption that racism could be remediated simply through raising the awareness of good White people, supporting the theme of racism as an accident, emerged in Vanessa’s civic story as she reflected on the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom:
Nobody wants to see nobody get hurt . . . And I feel like maybe if we could just get [White people] to see [that people were being hurt], you know, they would like see and know. Like something big like the old marches.
Above, Vanessa expresses her belief that a large enough demonstration on behalf of violence in Black communities might draw the attention and interest of White allies. If Black people could get White people to pay attention, White people might work to resolve the unfortunate and unintentional problems of racism, poverty, and gang violence. This belief likely contributed to her fascination with “the old marches,” and we often discussed historical mass demonstrations. During one discussion, I showed Vanessa a YouTube video of Mahalia Jackson singing “How I Got Over” at the Lincoln Memorial on my laptop and asked for her response. She was impressed, and we collectively pondered which contemporary singers might be selected if Dr. King were alive to host a similar march today. After Vanessa decided on John Legend and Beyonce, she suggested, “We better pick some White music, too, because you know they’d have them up there.”
Her insistence that White people be involved in civic demonstrations did not reflect a commitment to multiracial coalitions, and extended beyond an interest in entertainment diversity. She felt that she might better attract White people’s attention if other White people were involved. Our conversation led to her assessment of what it would take for the personal sacrifices of Black protestors to prove meaningful:
You know what? Dr. King, when you see pictures of him, he had all kinds of White friends. I know, because I be watching PBS sometimes. And I bet you got all kinds of White friends. Don’t you? Ashley? I work with a lot of White people. I go to school with them. I don’t know how many White friends I have. You ever been with a White guy? No. How come? What do you think? I mean, you all about that Black stuff, huh? I see you. You could prolly get a White guy if you wanted. And not one of them homeless ass looking ones. Like a really nice one . . . Because niggas will date any White girl they see but White men only date Black girls with degrees and shit. But I was even saying, you go out there all them White people you work with they are going to care that you got beat up in jail or something. They will call people, judges and stuff. The district attorney. But there ain’t no White people here.
In her observation that “There ain’t no White people here,” Vanessa expressed her perception that no one in her community was important enough to warrant moral attention to the social injustices that she and her neighbors face. In contrast, if I were to get “beat up in jail or something,” Vanessa presumed that White people in my professional and social networks would call the authorities on my behalf. Vanessa describes a world in which respectable Black bodies are the currency that pays for good White people’s attention.
The influence of Movement master narratives in Vanessa’s understanding of her contemporary condition was most evident through her adherence to essentialized Black middle-class values, values that notably contrasted with her personal aesthetics. As a result, she was only able to envision racial struggle predicated on assimilation to dominant norms, White acceptance, and interracial alliances. It is apparent that she understands the Movement as an exercise in the politics of respectability, and that she conceives of racism as a social problem that White people will remedy if Black people appropriately seek White assistance. Her interpretations deeply influence how she might participate in future civic endeavors.
Omar’s Story
Omar expressed a general distrust of White people and politics. As his stories demonstrate, he was acutely aware of racism and suspicious of contemporary authority. This analysis highlights how the themes of the Movement as a success, racism as an accident, and martyrs and messiahs complicate his ability to translate this awareness into action. The theme, essentializing Black people and Black struggle, is also noted in Omar’s narrative, particularly in reference to assumptions about the demographics and politics of Black communities during the Movement.
The movement as a success
During our first conversation, Omar demonstrated considerable familiarity with Black history trivia. When I asked about Black history, he recited several Black male inventors (including George Washington Carver and Elijah McCoy) and Black firsts in sports (including Jackie Robinson, Jackie Joyner Kersey, and Willie Eldon O’Ree). Beyond references to discrete individuals or accomplishments, however, he spoke rather broadly:
What happened during the Civil Rights Movement? What you mean what happened? What events occurred? How did it go down? What did it look like? What it look like? What it look like? Like we was fighting for you know, for our rights. What were the outcomes of those fights? The outcomes? Those is, basically, yeah, yeah, well we won. We got that shit together, you know? Made some moves, changed some shit. They’d boycott something, ask for something and the government would fall back and do it and then they’d march again and the government would fall back, do it and you know eventually we basically got what we wanted.
The theme, the Movement as a Success, is evident in Omar’s contentions that “we won” and “we basically got what we wanted.” It is important to note that Omar’s present civic self is not constrained by his acknowledgment of the notable social and political achievements of the Movement. Rather, it is constrained as he equates those accomplishments with the eradication of racism:
If our ancestors in the Civil Rights Movement won, then how are we still facing the problems you describe in Black communities? I mean, basically we just can’t get it together. I don’t know what we doin’ wrong, maybe we just don’t be caring.
For Omar to imply that he did not care about the problems in Black communities was surprising. Throughout our conversations, he expressed deep care and concern for his family and city. More than once, he became emotional discussing violence in his community. Although he wanted to return to the South, he spoke frequently about his desires to “make a life” for himself and eventually “give something back, like start a new community center or some shit.” He also observed and critiqued racial injustice, and desperately wanted to improve his neighborhood and world for his daughter. Omar valued knowledge, desired to be a good father, sought gainful employment, and worked to avoid conflict with the legal authorities—he did his best to do right by himself and his community. Still his understanding that the Movement was wholly victorious, yet problems within his community persisted, contributed to a perception that his generational cohort was “we just don’t be caring.”
Racism as an accident
Omar’s belief that the government “fell back” in response to political protest harkens descriptions of the Movement as a linear march that inspired the gradual retreat of unintentional racism over time (Harris, 1982). This supports the theme of racism as an accident. Consider his later comment:
[White people] was just doin’ what they do, you know, and Dr. King and Malcolm X basically showed [White people] what was up, that racism couldn’t go on like that for the future.
It appeared Omar understood that teaching White people about the nature of racism was a governing task for leaders in the Movement. However, conceiving racism as an accident perpetuated by a lack of White awareness seemed to obscure the conscious, systematic, and violent efforts to extend and defend White supremacy. For example, Omar possessed a very limited understanding of the ways in which elected and appointed officials actively sought to subvert civil rights legislation. For example, he was unaware of the extensive federal wiretapping used to investigate and undermine Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists throughout the Movement (Cooper, 2007).
You know all of my life is electronic? Like, everything from the bank to text messages to Facebook. So basically, if I was gonna do something, then like I can’t. They already know. Back then they didn’t have these problems.
I do not intend to argue that specific knowledge of historical government sanctioned wiretapping would influence or improve Omar’s sense of civic efficacy. Rather, I use this example to suggest that a more precise understanding of the nature of the obstacles that Movement activists faced might have allowed Omar to more accurately assess his own condition. Omar’s declaration that “if I was gonna do something, then like I can’t” makes sense, given that he believes he is facing the threat of surveillance for the first time, and that his community “don’t care.”
Martyrs and messiahs
Martyrs and messiahs developed in Omar’s narrative as he communicated his critique of the Parishioners on Patrol march introduced in Vanessa’s story. For him, the march was fatally flawed at conception, regardless of the conduct of its participants. For instance, the strategy of the nonviolent collective action and civil disobedience seemed ineffective to Omar:
That shit don’t work no more. What they think, police gonna come up like “Oh my bad, we shot you fifty fucking times on accident?” Or like “We’ll just take all the crack back, my bad, though, didn’t mean that shit right there.” So if not a march, what would work, Omar? Ain’t that what you supposed to tell me? Because basically, nobody know out here. But that old shit is out. Just for real.
With the example of police brutality and the theorized intentional introduction of crack cocaine into Black communities, Omar did not seem to understand contemporary racism as an accident. On the contrary, the closer our analysis of civic life came to the present day, the more likely he was to attribute various forms of racism to government conspiracies. However, whether struggling against historical unintentional racism or contemporary conspired racism, Omar was concerned that the struggle might cost him his life.
For example, although Omar saw hypothetical potential in some form of mass protest, the possibility that such a protest would be met with lethal force prevented him from exploring the idea any further:
Nothing’s probably going to change, so why take that chance you know? Like why take that one in a million chance that of millions of niggas who die every day, somebody’s gonna care if you live or die? You think any direct action—even non-violent direct action—would be met with violence? From the police? [eight second pause] Yeah, yeah I do. Okay, so what’s an alternate plan of action? I mean, I’m kind of like about I don’t bother them motherfuckers, they don’t bother me, you know? Like don’t start no shit won’t be no shit. But there’s already shit. You’ve already identified the shit going on in this city. Yeah, I mean there is shit, for sho. But I’m talking about me personally, me and mines. There is nothing you can do about that. It is not a place to march on these streets because it’s not about Black people anymore. It’s about these niggas, and they will kill you, one nigga at a time. There is no Dr. King. If he was here he’d kill hisself. What we gonna do march half us up to the South Side, then stop, let half march to the East Side then stop? That’s not a concern with police brutality, Omar, that’s a concern with gang violence. Um, don’t . . . you can break it down however, basically. Basically, you could say that the reason there is gangs is because there is police brutality, and it started good but now niggas got nothing to lose.
Omar made an important distinction between the shit he faces every day, and the shit that might be incurred through civic engagement. His analysis of the everyday shit speaks to the theme of essentializing Black people and Black struggle. His conclusion that Dr. King would kill himself if faced with the reality of gang violence suggests that Dr. King was unacquainted with deep, potentially fatal tensions within the Black community during the Movement. The one-dimensional representation of Movement-era Black communities seems to Omar’s understanding of what tensions may have been faced, and negotiated or overcome. Again, I do not intend to argue that knowledge of historical Black-on-Black violence would influence or improve Omar’s sense of civic efficacy. I instead wonder how Omar might perceive his current situation differently if he knew how Dr. King and others fought with, against, and on behalf of Black people with varying social, political and material interests.
Although the historical reality and continued threat of racial violence is under acknowledged in literature on Black youths’ civic life, it featured prominently in Omar’s narrative. His concern with gang violence, and White violence against Black bodies in public and civic spaces emerged numerous times throughout our conversations. As most of the civic role models presented to him in high school history lessons were assassinated, Omar was convinced and understood this as the singular outcome for his action:
I ain’t Jesus, you know? I ain’t trying to be. You know, I don’t wanna be Trayvon Martin. Cause no matter what happens, I bet you that nigga would say he’d wanna be alive. That’s not justice . . .
The master narrative of the Movement was evident in Omar’s narrative through his understanding that the Movement eradicated racism, an understanding that he internalized to support a deficit perspective of his community’s continued struggle with injustice. Although Omar was more militant than Vanessa in his language and politics, it seemed he still understood historical racism as a problem of White awareness. In his insistence that he does not want to be Jesus or Trayvon Martin, 4 he communicates his understanding that the cost of this awareness could be his life. Like Vanessa, Omar’s interpretations influence his understanding of his contemporary condition.
Discussion and Conclusion
In critical race traditions, it is well accepted that master narratives of history serve hegemonic functions in the experiences of the communities misrepresented within them. As the nature of these functions is examined, Alridge’s warning that educators’ risk producing a generation disconnected from their history indeed seems prescient. This qualitative study investigated how Movement master narratives were reproduced through two Black urban youths’ historical knowledge about struggles for civil rights and racial justice. Although Vanessa’s and Omar’s respective accounts of the Movement are not distinctly or essentially urban, the constraints of Movement master narratives have distinct and troubling implications in urban contexts. For example, Vanessa’s understanding of the Movement leads her to exclude identifiably urban bodies—including her own—from participation in effective racial and civic struggle. Similarly, Omar’s belief that the Movement eliminated racism complicates his contemporary assessment of structural racism and related phenomenon, such as police brutality, gang violence, and poverty. These understandings, and the frustration and confusion that these understandings facilitate, seem to constrain Vanessa’s and Omar’s sense of historical and civic agency.
Although I frame this discussion within the context of social studies education, I do not suggest that Movement master narratives are produced and consumed solely within social studies classrooms. Vanessa’s and Omar’s stories developed in relation to school knowledge, as well as in relation to conversations with families and friends, in their community, and through the media. It is nonetheless important to recognize the institutional role the field has played in shaping previous and current generations’ historical knowledge, the imagery created and discourse that occurs within communities, and the metaphors, symbols, and public facts invoked in media (Alridge, 2006; Howard, 2004; Journell, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Tyson, 2003). Consequently, social studies education shares responsibility with other avenues of knowledge dissemination in creating, sustaining, and potentially reconstructing how the Movement is understood. King and Swartz (2014) described one form that this responsibility might take. They argue that “there is no neutrality in recounting the past” (p. 55), but suggest that more comprehensive and democratic historical accounts are possible when social studies educators work to produce historical narratives that privilege the worldviews and political interests of their students.
Producing these accounts will require intentional (Ladson-Billings, 2003), race-centered (Howard, 2004), and “purpose-driven” (Milner, 2014) social studies pedagogies, grounded in the lived experiences and contextual realities of urban students (Gay, 2004). I recommend that educators committed to developing and embodying these types of pedagogies ask the following types of questions about their historical content knowledge, curriculum, and classroom practice:
How might I facilitate my students’ access to the complexity and richness of Black political thought? Do I include voices and identities in my curriculum that challenge historical and contemporary racial status quo?
What are some of the pressing civil rights and racial justice issues faced by the students whom I teach? When examining these issues, do I move beyond shaming “bad people” to identifying systems and practices that afford benefits to some at the expense of others?
To what extent am I aware of diverse forms of Black activism and diverse outcomes to civil rights and racial struggles? Do I use my awareness to support my students’ development as informed civic agents? Do I present international, national, and local models of civil rights activism for my students to examine and potentially adopt?
How do I define racism? Does my definition account for the contextual realities of my students?
The findings from these case studies cannot be generalized across all Black urban youth. However, asking these types of questions might inspire instructional strategies that connect the symbols and content of social studies education more directly to the “racialized experiences that [students] will inevitably face” (Milner, 2014, p. 14).
This article contributes to a growing body of literature that emphasizes the importance of accurate representations of historical racial struggles within the social studies curriculum, and within society more broadly. Further attention to the meaning urban students afford to the Movement and other racial and civic struggles might help social studies educators construct visions of history that allow all students to identify master narratives, critique these accounts, and make informed decisions about engaging within ongoing racial struggles.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Dorinda Carter Andrews, Terry Flennaugh and H. Richard Milner for their helpful comments on drafts of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.