CBFS: Educational Injustice & the Struggle for Liberatory Education

About this event
VIRTUAL
Discover the history of the struggle for liberatory education and the unjust structures it seeks to dismantle. Join the virtual discussion with scholars Leslie M. Alexander (Ideas in Unexpected Places: Reimagining Black Intellectual History), Zebulon Vance Miletsky (Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle), Keith A. Mayes (The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education), and Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed (New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University).
PANELISTS
Leslie M. Alexander | Rutgers University
Leslie Alexander is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. She specializes in early African American and African Diaspora history, focusing on late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Black culture, political consciousness, and resistance movements.
Alexander was one of the editors of the 2022’s Ideas in Unexpected Places: Reimagining Black Intellectual History. This book of essays draws from diverse methodologies and fields to examine the ideas and actions of Black thinkers from the eighteenth century to the present, offering fresh insights while creating space for even offering fresh insights while creating space for even more creative approaches within the field.
The text encourages scholars to ask new questions through innovative interpretive lenses-and invites students, scholars, and other practitioners to push the boundaries of Black intellectual history even further.
Zebulon Vance Miletsky | Stony Brook University
Dr. Zebulon Vance Miletsky is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies. His 2022 book Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle was published by the University of North Carolina Press.
Dr. Miletsky is an historian specializing in recent African-American History, Civil Rights and Black Power, Urban History, Mixed Race and Biracial identity, and Hip-Hop Studies. His research interests include: African-Americans in Boston; Northern freedom movements outside of the South; Mixed race history in the U.S. and passing; and the Afro-Latin diaspora. He is the author of numerous articles, reviews, essays and book chapters and is currently working on an edited volume on new directions in Boston African American History and school desegregation. He is also at work on his second monograph, a history of interracial marriage and racial passing in Boston and in Massachusetts.
Keith A. Mayes | University of Minnesota
Keith A. Mayes, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of African American & African Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
Mayes is an expert on African American history, primarily from the 1960s to present. He has special expertise on social and political movements and current issues of race and perception.
His book, The Unteachables: Disability Rights and the Invention of Black Special Education, illustrates how special education used disability labels to marginalize Black students in public schools.
Conor Tomas Reed | Shape of Cities to Come Institute
Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed (all) is a Puerto Rican/Irish gender-fluid scholar-organizer of radical cultural/pedagogical movements in the Americas and the Caribbean, and the Program Director of the Shape of Cities to Come Institute.
Coco’s new book New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (Common Notions) chronicles the rise of Black, Puerto Rican, and Women’s Studies and movements at the City College of New York and in New York City, as well as CUNY’s post-9/11 opposition to US imperialism, colonialism, and carcerality. Coco is also developing the quadrilingual anthology Black Feminist Studies in the Americas and the Caribbean (Malpaís Ediciones) with co-editors Diarenis Calderón Tartabull, Makeba Lavan, Tito Mitjans Alayón, Violeta Orozco Barrera, and Layla Zami. They are the current co-managing editor of LÁPIZ Journal and a contributing editor of Lost & Found:The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative.
ABOUT CONVERSATIONS IN BLACK FREEDOM STUDIES
The founding curators of this series, Professors Jeanne Theoharis (Brooklyn College/CUNY) and Komozi Woodard (Sarah Lawrence College), introduced a new paradigm that challenged the older geography, leadership, ideology, culture and chronology of Civil Rights historiography. Jeanne Theoharis continues in her role and is joined by Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine (Wayne State University) ) as co-curator. Komozi Woodard continues to advise the series from an emeritus position. Discussions take place on the first Thursday of each month.
Learn more: www.blackfreedomstudies.org

[@maroonrebel]

Jah & Jahes love. I LOVED much of what was said and discussed in this segment of the CBFS. And, I really appreciated Dr. Leslie Alexander's comments because I'm of Ayiti descent and appreciate the solidarity that African Americans felt with my ancestors. I'm also a descendant of African Americans who migrated to Ayiti during the early 1800s. I'm excited to watch and catch up with the past Season of CBFS and see you all in the Fall. Blessed love.#1804#Ayiti#ToutMounseMoun#AbolishCPS#AbolishPoverty#DefundFosterCare#ProChoice#RawVeganforLife#HRES40NOW#220YearsFREE#FreeAyiti#HandsOffAyiti