Chapter 1: A Legacy Of Literacy: Mathematics Teachers and the Quests for Racial Justice

The expansion of scholarly discourses on Black educational histories in narratives on the development of the United States’ educational systems present crucial insights on justice and futurity. One core narrative in the history of African Americans, our diverse experiences, and contemporary educational practices, is situated around the integral and progressive development of knowledge-generating communities within and outside of normalized school settings. These communities support multiple forms of literacy development, from those formally educated to the enslaved, the young and the elderly, despite economic background (Anderson, 1988; Foster, 1996; Givens, 2021; Tillman, 2009; Walker, 2006; Williams, 2005). The priorities of these communities were initially developed to increase the number of Black community members who could read and write. They expanded pathways to higher education and, more recently, digital and computational literacies; the narratives are as diverse as the communities they serve.