The Antioppressionist Thoughts and Pedagogies of Anna Julia Cooper and Septima Poinsette Clark

Abstract

Anna Julia Cooper and Septima Poinsette Clark were two prominent late 19th- and early 20th-century educators. Cooper and Clark taught African American students in federally sanctioned, segregated schools in the South. Drawing on womanist thought as a theoretical lens, this chapter argues that Cooper and Clark’s intellectual thoughts on race, racism, education, and pedagogy informed their teaching practices. Influenced by their socio-cultural, historical, familial, and education, they implemented antioppressionist pedagogical practices as a way to empower their students and address the educational inequalities their students were subjected to in a highly racialized, violent, and repressive social order. Historical African American women educators’ social critiques on race and racism are rarely examined, particularly as they pertain to how their critiques influence their teaching practices. Cooper and Clark’s critiques about race and racism are pertinent to the story of education and racial empowerment during the Jim Crow era.

Citation

Johnson, K.A. (2017), "The Antioppressionist Thoughts and Pedagogies of Anna Julia Cooper and Septima Poinsette Clark", Black Female Teachers (Advances in Race and Ethnicity in Education, Vol. 6), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-69. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2051-231720170000006003