Curbside pedagogy: Bringing glocal black curricula to the streets

1.Introduction

Since 2021, I have opted and been invited into Black storytelling across cities in four continents: Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. Many of these experiences occurred during my solo travels, for which I hungered to hear, in real-time, local Black voices and perspectives on places visited. Within the structure of advertised tours, I also met fellow travelers (mostly Black) who had varied journeys, yet shared hopes for intentional and Black authored, place-based learning. The tour guides, or more precisely, educators and pedagogues, left me feeling visceral gratitude which became evident in my conscious breath, emotionality, and increasing physical comfort while occupying space with relative strangers. These tours cemented that, while traveling, I could feel at home inside a ‘glocal’ (simultaneously local and global) Blackness which encompasses radical, educative, and kinetic stories. Such stories – passionately researched, lived by racialized Black people, disseminated on sidewalks and city squares, and remembered through photographs and lifelong conversations – undergird the construction and deconstruction of often taken for granted landmarks, street signs, apartment complexes, pavements, and other structures. In these contexts, glocal Black community is, thus, operationalized through tour educators’ invitations to visitors/travelers and local residents; their disruptive and imaginative research, pedagogy, and counter-storytelling; relationship-building and space-making among tour participants; the endurance of stories via knowledge from tours being passed on; tour educators’ calls-to-action to disrupt settler-colonial relationships to land and erasures of Black stories from dominant and “official” local narratives; and the rendering visible of threads and resistances across Black experiences in diasporic geographies.

“Glocal” has been understood as describing complex, non-binary, and mutually shaping inner workings between global and local factors (Robertson, 1995). To further make sense of this concept, Sarroub (2008) explains, “Glocalization thus describes how people relate linguistically, culturally, and cognitively to one another and to the institutions they inhabit in times of change” (p. 61). This definition emphasizes the centrality of people’s relationships and how they process their encounters in sociopolitical contexts. Pertaining to Blackness, glocal sense-making can support Black people’s languaging of anti-Blackness as a global force that weaponizes in locally specific ways. BlackCrit, for instance, is a particularized derivative of critical race theory, that recognizes the “nowhere-ness but wherever-ness of the Negro as non-human” (Busey & Dowie-Chinn, 2021, p. 154). In tandem with anti-Blackness, Blackness is a ‘glocal’ connective framework, generating counter-narratives and transnational possibilities. An example is found in hip hop, with which Alim & Pennycook (2007) explore how “artists emphasize very local expressions of global theories of racialized oppression” (p. 94).

I situate ‘glocal’ as a consciousness that can be Black, communal, and activating (epistemologically, relationally, and politically). I draw connections to Katherine McKittrick’s (2011) analysis on Black people and place. She notes, “…that which ‘structures’ a black sense of place are the knotted diasporic tenets of coloniality, dehumanization, and resistance” (p. 949). Human trafficking, through transatlantic enslavement, forced enslaved Africans’ centuries-long labor on stolen indigenous land. Yet, it could not eradicate Black people’s resistant practices of self and community preservation (assertions of wholeness and personhood) and creation of “alternative mapping practices” in spite of white supremacist displacement (p. 949). Like McKittrick, Alves (2012) understands Blackness as being locationally conscious. He also believes that Blackness is embodied and made borderless (p. 52) through global experiences of anti-Blackness and transnational, diasporic political potential.

With this essay, I conceptualize and celebrate curbside pedagogy as an enactment and activation of glocal Black community consciousness. I particularly center two questions:

As a bridge to illustrating these inquiries, I offer some historical context on Black heritage tourism education. Through prose and poetry, I then invite you to envision what it was like for me, a Black girlhood scholar, educational researcher, listener, traveler, walker, and learner, to feel confidently un-alone while being called into disruptive, expansive, and unapologetically Black storytelling as curricula. Ultimately, I hope for you to imagine curricula and pedagogy that disrupts and thrives outside the state-surveilled school classroom. May you consider how such decolonial pedagogy and praxis names racism and anti-Blackness, nuances Blackness, relies on participants’ agentic decisions, and digs up buried narratives.

2.A historical snapshot of Black heritage tourism education

Several scholars note an undeniable link between cities’ Black heritage tourism and governments’ globalized economic motives. Grant (2005) describes how post-industrial Philadelphia (Philly) marketed itself as “colonial America’s busiest and richest seaport” (p. 852), selling national heritage as a product. At the time of the article, Philly’s Black heritage offerings (facilitated through Black cultural festivals, tour groups, museums, etc.) were more concentrated in the downtown, Center City area and mainstream historical sites. Grant additionally notes that Black travelers and Philly locals exercised economic agency regarding tourism. Black heritage experiences increasingly became prerequisites for travelers choosing Philly as a leisure or conference destination. Locals, knowing the city’s priority of heritage tourism, continued advocating for more heritage investment in neighborhoods like North Philly.

Assessing Black tourism in Salvador, Bahia, Calvo-González and Duccini (2010) discuss how the Brazilian government regarded post-emancipation Blackness/Africanness in the country as problematic and incommensurable with modernity. Yet, starting in the 1930s, the government began considering local expressions of Blackness in Brazil as externally interesting and, thus, economically profitable (for international and domestic tourism). Over time, the country incorporated Afro-Brazilian cultural practices, like capoeira, into its narrative of an authentic, particularized national identity (p. 140). Also emphasizing the power of narratives, Thomas (2009) centers her hometown, post-Katrina New Orleans. She remarks on endorsed anti-Blackness, evidenced by a:

Thomas illustrates that post-Katrina tours in the city are far from insignificant. She evokes questions about whose imaginaries the tours’ competing narratives feed and their complicity in threatening the cultural memory of Black New Orleans.

In essence, the selected literature indicates a thread linking Black heritage tourism in cities to globalized economic priorities, colonial legacies, anti-Black racial narratives and mythologies (Thomas, 2009, p. 749), tourist desire, and local Black agency. This context helps frame my attentiveness to and honor of resistant curbside pedagogy, which I introduce in the following section.

3.Curbside pedagogy: Bringing glocal Black curricula to the streets

I needed my next tattoo, a quarter-sleeve with the quote, “Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.” Against my mama’s wishes, I drove 20-plus hours, solo, for new ink. Along the way, I stopped in Philly, where I met Chrissy. I first learned about her “Morals + Murals Hood Tours” online. It is a part of the umbrella initiative, “Philly Experiences.”

Over 40 percent of our population identifies as Black yet Black intersectionality is not properly represented in traditional tours in Center City particularly the last 50 years. We are hood advocates and experience curators who offer a variety of experiences that showcase the rich cultural heritage of Black Philadelphia, including historical landmarks, Black murals by local Black artists, businesses, current topics, local music, food and celebrities (Philly Experiences, 2023).

For over five years, Chrissy has facilitated tours of North and West Philly that revere Black and local counter-narratives. In her presence, I felt thankful to be entrusted with such stories that I otherwise could not access. Since, then, in 2021, I have returned to Philly and taken Black-led tours in other locations. While in New Orleans, I learned from Mama Vera. In my hometown, Detroit, I finally met Baba Jamon Jordan during the Black Scroll Network History and Tour. Most recently, I took a solo trip to Portugal, where I learned from Naky during the African Lisbon Tour.

My experiences frame my conceptualizing of curbside pedagogy (CP). Through witnessing, I have noticed these elements of CP:

4.Poetic ‘Thank You’ notes

My post-tour gratitude and debriefing practice often involves crafting poems and blog posts. After my Moral and Murals Hood Tour and African Lisbon Tour experiences, I could not rest until I wrote and shared about who and what I witnessed. Tagging Chrissy and Naky’s professional accounts in my social media posts, I wanted to reflect back to them how I honored them as people, educators, and community-cultivators. I also hungered to let others know about the necessity, rigor, love, creativity, richness, and proud Blackness of their tour experiences. Below, I share two pieces I wrote, “Poem for Chrissy: The Philly Jawn” and “Thank You, Naky: The African Lisbon Tour.” My poetry serves as inquiry into my glocal, transnational experiences and encounters. I repeatedly refer to Chambers (2023) celebration of poetry as a decolonial arts-based research practice for women of African descent. Her work asserts how “the commonalities amongst African, Afro-identified, and Black people, while recognizing their cultural heterogeneity and geographic diversity has become part of a broader decolonizing project …” (p. 2). In alignment with this statement, I am deeply committed to passing on what I witness and learn and inviting my community to join me in activating such wisdom.

Poem for Chrissy: The Philly Jawn

Figure 1.

Chrissy, founder of Philly Experiences (photograph taken by author).

Sometimes, love means staying where you are rooted and learning to be unashamed of the soil inside your garden even though it is still littered with the history of broken glass and broken people broken by white supremacy, so broken that though they looked like you, they still tried to break your mirror, Black girl.   You should have always seen yourself as beautiful. You should have always been protected. You should have never had to heal before your time.   But you, Philly sis, grew into something far more than a wound. You are a whole organic fruit tree, tall and Black, leaves leaving legacies of broken cycles, seeds planting exhales of permission in your people’s mouths, like: “it’s okay to be Black and cry”, “it’s okay to be Black and say, ‘that hurt me.”’ “it’s okay to be Black and air dirty clothes in therapy and moments with anyone needing to listen, to know they’re not alone.” “it’s okay to stay hood and demand respect with the defense of being human.” “it’s okay to be Black and tend to your garden, to make up your Black mind that love is your water to pour just as it is your water to drink.” “it’s okay to be Black and name gentrification a disease contagious between cities.” “And no matter how much they try to displace you, it’s okay to be Black and fight for home, to be a tree and speak forests of stories from the ground, living and planting deep beyond the pull of digging and demolishing, shading and feeding your people, unapologetically.”

Thank You, Naky: The African Lisbon Tour

Figure 2.

Naky, founder of African Lisbon Tour (photograph taken by author).

Learn to read the un-confessions of national buildings and monuments, street signs and textbooks Say “yet again” to the audacity of whiteness, the burying of Black histories by a proud nation that stole the most Africans in the transatlantic trafficking trade Mourn the colonizers’ 15th century prayers for protection on their saint named ships and voyages of violence Hold this Black history in hand with today: Portugal’s systemic uncare for Black immigrants – Brazilians and Africans from its former colonies (What must the colonizer keep telling itself and its youth about itself to cater to its conscience?) Stand on an area that the griot calls the Blackest square in Lisbon, a gathering space and homegrown counter-embassy where African immigrants can find their people and a path Hug the storyteller who defies eraser curriculum and defines legacy as teaching so that we will transmit Hug the sista who is also in the walking classroom and shouts, “What up doe!” when you tell her you’re from her city, too Take notes to soften your fears of forgetting, to archive the miraculous continuum and complex fullness of Blackness, and to say thank you to those who seek to know truth

5.Conclusion

Hence, I conceptualize curbside pedagogy (CP) as a decolonial praxis that Black city-based tour guides – or, more accurately, educators and storytellers – have enacted. With this essay and its poetic offerings, I emphasize the rich truth-telling and knowledge generated through their pedagogical commitments. Specifically, I illuminate their vocal and embodied disruptions of historical and ongoing institutional erasures of colonial, anti-Black violences. Their curricula draws from thorough place-informed research, relationships, and personal journeys. A crucial part of their work, too, is inviting participants (often travelers) to join their work of dismantling and reconsidering narratives. All involved in these tours take part in occupying space, confronting discourses, reflecting on their locations and positionalities, being welcomed to feel, and envisioning how to honor what they learn. Ultimately, glocal (simultaneously local and global) conversations are enabled through these educators’ efforts. On one level, tour guides, from Salvador to Philly, unearth and resist anti-Blackness occurring globally, yet in locally specific ways. Furthermore, tour participants join these city-based experiences from the context of where they call home. Importantly, these tours not only name Black struggle, but also realities and possibilities of Black joy.

During a subsequent visit to Philadelphia, in which I reunited with Chrissy, I heard poet Amir Sulaiman perform and say, “You will be somebody’s ancestor. Act accordingly.” I loudly celebrate folks like Chrissy and Naky who are embodying legacy, significantly through their work. I thank them for confirming that I am a part of a glocal Black community that is agentive and exponential in possibility. I end this paper with a short letter written to my ancestors. May it fill you up.

Dear Ancestors,

When I think about y’all, I confront an infinitude of undocumented names, intimacies, and inner galaxies. I, every so often, feel ritual tightness in my shoulders and routinely interrupt orderliness with a laughter that only belongs to me. I wonder what pieces of you I carry throughout my body, mannerisms, sounds, and depths. Along with imagining your lifetimes, I try to make sense of mine as an extension to generations after me. Faith prompts me to believe that, perhaps, I was created for such a time as this. Maybe, too, I have been entrusted to specific strangers, teachers, loved ones, and so on with whom I will physically share space on this Earth. Joy and responsibility magnetize me toward being in community with Black people and youth across cultural, linguistic, and geographic locations. I want to co-author stories, conversations, legacies, and dreams with Black people, girls, and youth.

It gets difficult, living in the longing-unknowing about many of you who I could not be without. But, I narrate that I am not alone. I am a member of a glocal Black community, undaunted by borders. We are prioritizing a journey toward knowledge of self and each other. We are honoring our ancestors, even if only accessing fragments and speculative fictions. We are conversing across diasporas, visiting each other when we can, committing through the complexities, and declaring that our stories and existences are in permanent ink.