Complete Community Control: A Historical Ethnography of Educational Self-Determination at St. Joseph’s Community School (1969-1985)

Abstract

What educational models have African American educators and families developed to combat the pervasive impacts of antiblackness in education? This study explores the practice of self-determined education through a historical ethnography of St. Joseph’s Community School, a women-led, community-controlled institution formerly located in Roxbury, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. Foregrounding the voices of Black women, I pair the historical methods of archival analysis and oral history collection to explore St. Joseph’s social and historical context, as well as the school’s leadership model, political philosophies, partnerships, pedagogy, and curriculum. As both an institutional history and a social history of Black women and families’ educational activism, the study departs from traditional historical narratives that frame desegregation era Boston as a site of antiblack violence – a discursive practice that overlooks the city as a site of African American agency and organizing. Instead, I draw upon Black feminist theory to argue that Black Bostonian educators, mothers, and perhaps most surprisingly, politically active nuns, engaged in educational leadership as an act of Black Power. In doing so, the school community constructed their own definitions of Black Power that diverged from dominant historical frames of patriarchal and militaristic ideology and centered the development of a rigorous, culturally relevant educational alternative for Black children. This study provides readers the opportunity to rethink the key actors, sites, and practices of the Black Power Movement and to better understand educational practices that foster Black students’ academic achievement and holistic well-being. Ultimately, this study aims to engage the past educational pursuits of Black women and families to inform a justice-based vision for the future of education.