Buried Blueprints of Black Education

FAIN: AB-295805-24

Morgan State University (Baltimore, MD 21251-0001)
Gretchen Rudham (Project Director: May 2023 to present)
Kendrick Kenney II (Co Project Director: May 2023 to present)

A two-year curriculum development project focused on the histories of Black education in the United States.

Buried Blueprints will illuminate the unknown, or often invisible, contributions of Black educators as founders of pedagogy and practice of Black education in America from the Colonial period to Civil Rights era. This Humanities Initiative illuminates the legacies of founding Black educators missing from curriculum and classrooms. This initiative aims to deconstruct oversimplified stories and caricatures of a few exceptional Black educators, and reconstruct a more full rendering of the beliefs, philosophies, practices, influences, curriculum, challenges, and insights—of the blueprints they left behind. As a recovery project for erased knowledge, Buried Blueprints offers a more complete story of the widespread efforts of many Black people, reframing Black architects of education from exceptions to the norm. This project will sync two new courses: Buried Blueprints of Black Education and Digital Storytelling as Curriculum, disseminating the courses at 25 partnering HBCUs.