Teaching as Resistance: A Review of Fugitive Pedagogy

This review of Jarvis R. Givens’ Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching highlights its important contribution to the history of Black education, teaching, and resistance. Focusing on Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s life and work, Givens demonstrates how Black educators challenged oppressive curricula, racial surveillance, and anti-Black schooling during the Jim Crow era. The review highlights Givens’ main argument that Black teaching functions as resistance, care, intellectual effort, and a way of telling the truth about history. Special attention is given to Woodson’s educational development, communal learning, the role of Black teachers in resisting dominant narratives, and the use of Black historical knowledge for educational self-determination. The review also highlights the book’s strengths, such as its theorization of Black teachers as intellectual workers and its richer depiction of Woodson as a teacher, mentor, scholar, and institution builder.