“Harriet Tubman is a Superhero”: Conceptualizing Young African American Children's Sociopolitical Awareness as Imaginative Praxis

Abstract

Imagination is often relegated to the margins of African American children's schooling experiences. Furthermore, the varied role of children in liberation struggles and their centrality in ushering in just futures remain underexplored. This article examines five African American first graders’ sociopolitical knowledge and how they used their imagination to develop counternarratives of refusal and agentic possibilities. I offer imaginative praxis as a conceptual tool to analyze how young African American children name historical and contemporary racialized realities and generate joyful visualizations of actionable resistance. Young children's imaginative praxis challenges the notion that the fight for liberation is void of joy.

Keywords

African American students < Urban education racism < Social race < Identity literacy < Urban education

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