The fugitive spirit of historical Black women teachers: Theorizing hush harbors as praxis

Abstract

Throughout history, US schools have often operated as a site of Black suffering, destroying the inherent genius and spirit of Black students. As a result, it is vital for teachers to not only develop the competencies and pedagogical skills necessary to teach Black children but also create spaces of healing for their minds, bodies, and spirits. In this article, I explore how historical Black women teachers subverted oppressive laws and policies, namely through the praxis of hush harbors. Historically, hush harbors were clandestine worship grounds where enslaved people stole away to commune with God, ancestors, and each other, all outside of the panopticon of whiteness. In the hush harbor, they were safe and experienced radical freedom, helping them to neutralize the psychologically and spiritually annihilating effects of enslavement. To illustrate its cultural, spiritual, and theoretical underpinnings, I draw on archival documents produced by historical Black women teachers who not only survived during the most brutal time in US history—the era of chattel slavery and its afterlives—but created sacred spaces for Black students to thrive holistically, even in the midst of staunch antiblackness and persistent racialized terror. I highlight how these, often fugitive, ways of knowing, being, and believing can challenge the material conditions of antiblackness in contemporary schools, and society, by radically cultivating sites of sanctuary—within, without, above, against, beneath, between, and beyond the state—to restore Black humanity, spirituality, and joy in schools.