Chapter 12: The Outsider-Within: Toward a Socially Critical Theory of Leadership

This paper examines how African American women make sense of their roles as leaders within poor and marginalized school communities. Strong African American women have provided leadership for formal educational systems serving poverty populations since the dismantling of slavery. However, this alternative image of leadership has been largely overlooked within the profession. By examining and juxtaposing the historical and contemporary narratives of inspirational leaders, this study reveals that the theories and practices of the African American women portrayed in this paper do not neatly align with masculine or feminist images of school leadership. Four dominant themes emerged in the leadership of these women: critical institutionalism, rational resistance, an ethic of risk and urgency, and deep spirituality. These themes exemplify and illuminate the outsider-within standpoint of African-American women leaders who have historically had to fight against the educational systems in which they worked to better serve the children and families of their communities.