Lance Eaton

“People always gone hate. They hate on me when I opened this place. But I'm still here.”
― Lawrence Lindell, Blackward

“Stories of black learners developed into a critical black memory—a visual narrative comprising individual yet interrelated historical events. These accumulated accounts of black student witness formed a vantage point from the view of the black pupil: first, outside the American schoolhouse; then, inside on contingent and probationary terms. These memories prefigured the oppositional gaze of black students as a historically situated group of learners. The oppositional gaze of black students was made and remade through shared testimonies and personal experiences, and these memories were called on in black students’ educational journeys.”
― Jarvis R. Givens, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Racial socialization took place in schools and society, whether done explicitly or not. The prevalence of antiblackness in US popular culture and school content made it necessary to offer purposeful and humanizing perspectives on blackness to support the healthy development of black student identities. The learning aesthetic offered through Woodson’s program presented resources that supported the development of student identities that were historically grounded, aware of their oppression, and committed to imagining and building new possibilities for their collective futures. It was enacted discursively through curriculum development, materially through decorative educational resources produced for classrooms and schools, and affectively through performances and dramatizations during Negro History Week celebrations and classroom activities. This aesthetic presented new symbols of being and belonging that were distinct to black students, all of which offered explicit critiques of the master narrative about black life shaping their Jim Crow surroundings.”
― Jarvis R. Givens, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching