Emancipatory Pro-Black Early Literacy Research and Pedagogy Two Special Issues of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy (JECL)

By Eliza Braden, Kamania Wynter-Hoyte, Gloria Boutte, Susi Long, and Dinah Volk

As you read this blog in 2023, the U.S. continues to be gripped by a resurgence of forces advocating white supremacy. This resurgence is evidenced by the ongoing racial profiling and murder of Black people by police; attempts to take down the teaching of racial histories in K-12 and university classrooms including the banning of books written by Black authors about Black people; and racially disproportionate suspensions, expulsions, and special education placements of Black students in contrast to that of white students. A wave of anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) laws destroy academic freedoms as legislatures adopt wildly inaccurate definitions of CRT, culturally relevant pedagogy, equity, and anti-racist education purely to serve those who fear the loss of white supremacy in schools and society. Yet despite endemic and global anti-Blackness, innovative Pro-Black literacy initiatives continue to be developed and taught by courageous educators who refuse to allow young Black children to be marginalized, invisibilized, and brutalized through short-sighted, white-dominant classroom practices and research methodologies. Simultaneously, their teaching and research helps to broaden the perspectives of all students to embrace Blackness and Black histories, literatures, languages, resistance, beauty, resilience, and joy in ways that are not normalized in typical schooling.

To highlight the need for Pro-Black literacy pedagogy and research and to provide examples, we point you toward two special issues of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy (JECL) focused on Emancipatory Pro-Black Early Literacy Research and Pedagogy. With deep love for humanity, the articles in these special issues do not promote Pro-Black as anti-white; instead they demonstrate why and how to center, celebrate, and normalize Blackness where it is typically marginalized, misrepresented, or silenced. The articles do this by illuminating ways that teachers, teacher educators, and researchers of early childhood literacy cultivate revolutionary and transformative Pro-Black teaching and research. The very existence of these special issues also responds to the need for Pro-Black work to be done in institutions such as academic journals by addressing white dominance in editorial boards, reviewers, contributors, and topics. Finally, without ignoring other forms of oppression, these special issues acknowledge that, across the globe, anti-Blackness continues to be a dominant form of racism (ross and Dumas, 2016). This means it is essential for researchers and practitioners everywhere to unpack ways to identify and combat anti-Blackness in research and teaching.

Each of the two special issues consists of five articles, six reviews of professional books in support of Pro-Black pedagogy and research, and celebrations of 10-12 picture books that support Pro-Black teaching in early childhood classrooms. The articles across both issues address the following topics:

September 2022 Issue:

Why Pro-Black work is needed globally from children’s youngest years, a conceptual framework;
Centering Black women’s ways of knowing in early childhood and elementary classrooms;
The role of Black art forms – music and poetry – in developing racial pride and critical consciousness;
Drawing on BlackBoyCrit Pedagogy to offer Prison Abolition Literacies as young children grow their critical consciousness through communication with incarcerated Black men;
How research methodologies must be transformed if we are to illuminate young children’s abilities to understand and articulate complex and layered issues of race and racism;

December 2022 Issue:

First and second grade boys’ critical understandings of citizenship developed through study of Nat Turner’s rebellion;
Using an African-centered framework emphasizing eldering pedagogy, belongingness, and Black children’s knowledge and brilliance to teach Black third graders;
Nurturing children’s racial identities through teaching Civil Rights history in Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom Schools;
Examples of Pro-Black, Afro-centric teaching in kindergarten through grade three classrooms, including challenges met and negotiated;
Guidance for interrogating literacy education spaces (schools, classrooms, teacher education programs, researcher training) to identify anti-Blackness and replace it with Pro-Black practices and policies.

We invite you to engage with this series and use the special issues in your professional development, grade level discussions, university courses, and faculty study groups. We believe that, within the pages, you will find guidance, hope, and courage in the work to dismantle anti-Black practices and replace them with Pro-Black pedagogies and methodologies in the work to challenge and change an unjust status quo.

About the Guest Editors

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Eliza Braden, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in Elementary Education at the University of South Carolina. Her major research interests include critical literacy and language practices of Black and Latinx children and their families, culturally relevant teaching, and critical multicultural children’s literature. She conducts professional development and has published widely in these areas including co-authoring the recently released Revolutionary Love: Creating a Culturally Inclusive Literacy Classroom. She impacts national professional organizations through her leadership positions with the National Council of Teachers of English and Literacy Research Association. She is a 2023 recipient of the University of South Carolina’s MLK Social Justice Award.

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Kamania Wynter-Hoyte, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her teaching and scholarship center the brilliance, joy, and stories of diverse young learners through humanizing and critically culturally relevant pedagogies. Her co-authored book, Revolutionary Love: Creating a Culturally Inclusive Literacy Classroom is in high demand in support of equitable educational practices. She carries this work into her leadership in national professional organizations including as co-chair of the National Council of Teachers of English’s (NCTE) Committee on Diversity and Inclusivity. She is a 2023 recipient of the University of South Carolina’s MLK Social Justice Award.

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Gloria Boutte, Ph.D., is an Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and a Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina. She is the author/editor of six books and approximately 100 publications. She has received prestigious awards such as the Fulbright Scholar; Fulbright Specialist; 2020 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts—Elementary Section; and the 2021 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division K Legacy award and 2022-23 AERA Fellow. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Education and Equity of African American Students (CEEAAS).

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Susi Long, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of South Carolina. Following a 25-year career at the university, her work continues to focus on culturally relevant, humanizing, and anti-racist practices in schools and in preservice teacher education. She works with inservice and preservice teachers and has published widely on these topics with books that include: “We’ve been doing it your way long enough” and Courageous Leadership in Early Childhood Education. She also co-edits the Routledge/NCTE Research series focusing on critical work of scholars of Color.

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Dinah Volk, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Early Childhood Education, Cleveland State University. She has taught children in the U.S. and Chile and has conducted research and published widely on the languages and literacies of young bilingual children, family engagement, and culturally relevant pedagogies. She is co-editor with Gregory and Long of Many Pathways to Literacy: Young Children Learning with Siblings, Peers, Grandparents and Communities and with Lytra and Gregory of Navigating Languages, Literacies and Identities: Religion in Young Lives. She was a co-organizer and board member of the Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching project of the Early Childhood Assembly of NCTE.