2025 Theses Doctoral

The Legacy of Antiblackness: Intergenerational Narratives of Black Students in Philadelphia’s Public Schools

Cabral, Leana

This dissertation centers the complicated interplay of history, racial politics, and community sensemaking to explore how antiblackness is reproduced over time and in different public school contexts within Philadelphia. By exploring the intergenerational educational experiences of Black Philadelphians, I document current and former Black students’ understandings of the different manifestations of antiblackness in educational policy and practice over several decades.

This research, therefore, brings the voices of Black current and former students into a historical analysis of the role of antiblackness in shaping schooling experiences and what it means (and meant) to be Black in different school contexts during different time periods. I examine this meaning of Blackness over time and across school buildings through interviews with current and former Black high school students, followed by more in-depth intergenerational interviews of three families to understand how memories of schooling shape intergenerational understandings of and experiences in schools. I contextualize this qualitative data through a review of published historical literature and archival research on the history of Black education in Philadelphia. Studying education through the intergenerational experiences of families is an under-utilized approach within educational research.

Yet, through this study, I demonstrate that it is an approach that reveals how various processes of social reproduction—particularly antiblackness—both persist and morph within the educational system over time as well as how family schooling memories and perspectives shape students’ educational journeys. Through the eyes of multiple generations of Black families in a northern city that was a destination for millions of Black people who moved from the South during the Great Black Migration, my dissertation contributes to the research on the enduring racial inequality in our schools from the early-20th century to today by showing the evolution of antiblackness over time.