This article is an ethnographic telling rooted in Black feminisms and radical identity praxis. I center the life and labor of Mrs. Rhodes/Mama and name my experiences with her, growing up in Chicago and in Chicago public schools to historicize the legacy of Black liberatory practices. I ask the question: What can Mama teach us about how we engage Black youth in urban education? I conclude with four assignments she offers for personal and professional pedagogies: cultivating Village that reflects and affirms strong Black identities, listening & serving, maintaining joy, and looking beyond standardized metrics.
A Tribe Called Quest. (1991). Check the Rhime [song]. On the low end theory. Jive Records.
6.
BrantB. (1994). Writing as witness: Essay and talk. Women’s Press.
7.
BrooksG. (1960). The bean eaters. Harper & Brothers.
8.
Carter AndrewsD. J.BrownT.CastroE.Id-DeenE. (2019). The impossibility of being “perfect and white”: Black girls’ racialized and gendered schooling experiences. American Educational Research Journal, 56(6), 2531–2572. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831219849392
9.
ChilisaB. (2011). Indigenous research methodologies. SAGE.
10.
ColesJ. A. (2023). A BlackCrit re/imagining of urban schooling social education through black youth enactments of black storywork. Urban Education, 58(6), 1180–1209. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085920908919
11.
Committee on Labor and Human Resources. (1979). Basic Skills, 1979: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Education, Arts, and Humanities of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, First Session on Examination of Basic Skills Achievement designed to assist both states and local school districts to expand and improve their programs in basic skills in the elementary and secondary grades. US Government Printing Office.
CuttsQ. M. (2012). A critical pedagogy of place. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 28(3), 142–150.
14.
CuttsQ. M. (2020). More than casual concern: Critical Black pedagogical excellence and the Asa G. Hilliard, III teacher preparation framework. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 33(7), 709–728. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2020.1753258
15.
DavisA. (1990). Women, culture and politics. Vintage.
16.
DunnD.LoveB. (2020). Antiracist language arts pedagogy is incomplete without Black joy. Research in the Teaching of English, 55(2), 190–192.
17.
Evans-WintersV. E.EspositoJ. (2010). Other people's daughters: Critical race feminism and Black girls’ education. Educational Foundations, 24(1–2), 11–24.
18.
FanonF. (1967). Black skin, white masks. Grove.
19.
FreireP. (1990). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum International Publishing Group. (Original work published in 1970)
20.
GuinierL. (2004). From racial liberalism to racial literacy: Brown v. Board of education and the interest-divergence dilemma. The Journal of American History, 91(1), 92–118. https://doi.org/10.2307/3659616
Hill-CollinsP. (2009). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of government. Routledge. (Original work published 1990).
23.
HilliardA. G. (1992a). Behavioral style, culture, and teaching and learning. The Journal of Negro Education, 61(3), 370–377. https://doi.org/10.2307/2295254
24.
HilliardA. G. (1992b). The meaning of KMT (ancient Egyptian) history for contemporary African American experience. Phylon (1960), 49(1/2), 10–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/3132613
25.
hooksb. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. South End Press.
26.
hooksb. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
27.
hooksb. (2000). All about love: New visions. William Morrow.
28.
IrbyD. (2015). Urban is floating face down in the mainstream: Using hip-hop-based education research to resurrect “the urban” in urban education. Urban Education, 50(1), 7–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085914563183
KabaM. (2021). We do this ‘til we free US: Abolitionist organizing and transforming justice. Haymarket Books.
31.
KelleyR. D. G. (2003). Freedom dreams: The Black radical imagination. Beacon Press.
32.
Kendrick Lamar. (2015). To pimp a butterfly [CD]. Top Dawg Entertainment.
33.
Ladson-BillingsG. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465
34.
Ladson-BillingsG. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X035007003
35.
LordeA. (2007). Poetry is not a luxury. In LordeA. (Ed.), Sister outsider (pp. 36–39). Crossing Press. (Original work published in 1977)
36.
LordeA. (2007). Uses of the erotic: The erotic as power. In LordeA. (Ed.), Sister outsider (pp. 53–59). Crossing Press. (Original work published in 1978)
37.
LoveB. (2014). I see Trayvon Martin”: What teachers can learn from the tragic death of a young Black male. The Urban Review, 46(2), 292–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-013-0260-7
38.
LoveB. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.
39.
LoveB. (2023). Punished for dreaming: How school reform harms Black children and how we heal. Macmillan Publishers.
MilnerH. R. (2008). Critical race theory and interest convergence as analytic tools in teacher education policies and practices. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(4), 332–346. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487108321884
RichardsonE. (2019). Centering black mothers’ stories for critical literacies. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 19(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-05-2019-0078
50.
SamfordG.BoudreauxT.GatsonA.LewisA. (2021). Lost restaurants of Galveston’s African American Community. Galveston Historical Foundation.
51.
Sankofa WatersB. (2016). Freedom lessons: Black mothers asserting smartness of their children. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(6), 1223–1235. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1168545
52.
Sankofa WatersM. B. (2023). Black storytellers and everyday liberation: At the nexus of home, school, and hip hop. Qualitative Inquiry, 29(6), 705–719. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221139
53.
Sankofa WatersM. B.MorrisM.Childers-McKeeC. (2023). Black women faculty engendering brave (online) spaces for students of color and themselves. In LomoteyK.SmithW. A. (Eds.), The racial crisis in American higher education ((3rd ed, pp. 297–318). Suny Press.
54.
Sealey-RuizY. (2021). The critical literacy of race: Toward racial literacy in urban teacher education. In MilnerH. R.LomoteyK. (Eds.), Handbook of urban education (2nd Edition, pp. 281–295). Routledge.
55.
ShujaaM. J. (1994). Too much schooling, too little education: A paradox of Black life in white societies. African World Press.
56.
Slick Rick (1988). Hey young world [Song]. On the great adventures of Slick Rick. Def Jam Records.
57.
StovallD. O. (2023). Panel discussion for Hip Hop Theories, Praxis and Pedagogies Special Interest Group business meeting at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL, United States.
58.
Thiong’oN. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. J. Currey.
TuckE.McKenzieM. (2015). Place in research: Theory, methodology, and methods. Routledge.
61.
TysonK. (2011). Integration interrupted: Tracking, Black students, and acting white after Brown. Oxford University Press.
62.
YossoT. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006