Jarvis R. Givens takes us through a history centered on Black students’ experiences and witness. He introduces his book explaining the meaning of a veil, a term referenced by W.E.B Dubois in Souls of Black Folks. School Clothes intentionally tells the story of learners behind the veil in an attempt to follow DuBois and Black students behind it. Givens uses Black students’ experiences to show that they have a distinct way of seeing school, and he uses the term “school clothes” as a metaphor for the lived experiences, resilience, and resistance of Black students across history. School Clothes is not only written for Black students but also for people who are wanting to understand, educate, and care for them. Articulating the ways in which Black Americans have valued and continue to value education, School Clothes explains this journey and celebrates Black students bearing witness to it. This book is not designed to change policies or fix the system; School Clothes demonstrates the importance of Black student life and helps us to rethink how we should make space for Black students.
School Clothes is, as the subtitle indicates, a collective memoir. Givens uses autobiographies, diaries, poems, yearbooks, and oral histories to share the voices and history of over one hundred African Americans and their primary and secondary school experiences. These histories are pieced together and shared in relation to one another. He also embeds personal stories from his schooling experiences and includes his former teachers. Givens is clear that he wants School Clothes to be a counter-narrative to the deficit perspectives of Black students’ experiences in education. He does this by explaining and appreciating the complex history of Black student life. Weaving together individual stories and collective voices, he stitches archives and memories into a living history.
In Chapter 1, “Going to School North of Slavery”, Givens shares the history of Black students not being welcomed in the antebellum North. Using the personal stories of Alexander Crummell, Henry Highland Garnet, Charlotte Forton and others, Givens explains how difficult it was to earn an education during this time period. All of this, he argues, caused Black students to view themselves as separate from schools, as they saw themselves and their mission in tension with society. This tension caused Black learners to realize they were in school but not of it. Having observed this entanglement of Black youth and education, in Chapter 2, “Becoming Fugitive Learners”, Givens explains how Black students gained their education surreptitiously during the Antebellum Era. Wrapping their books in newspaper, stitching pamphlets into jackets, and pretending not to be literate were all examples of fugitive learning tactics adopted by these students – practices that emphasized the dream of education freedom and the precarity of fostering that dream.
In Chapter 3, “Learning and Striving in the Afterlife of Slavery” Givens tells the educational experiences of Black students post emancipation. This chapter explains that Black students still had to hide their education while in school, but these experiences helped Black students read the world around them. Through fugitive learning, Black students used education as a way to transform the world they knew. When away from white surveillance, Black students continued to learn and fully understand that acquiring an education was not what white elites in society wanted for them.
In Chapter 4, “Reading in the Dark: Becoming Black Literate Subjects,” Givens writes about the literacy history of Black Americans. Givens explains the barriers of gaining literacy and shows through various examples how Black children were relied on to become literate to help their families and communities. For example, he shares the history of Jerry Morre, emphasizing how his mother and father helped him receive an education. As he witnessed his community “double tax” themselves to educate him and other Black children, Morre’s Black identity became inseparable from his student identity.
In Chapter 5, Givens tells how the segregated Black school was a safe space for Black students into the civil rights movement. In schools, Black students would engage in protest through the art of singing. The singing of songs, such as Lift Every Voice and Sing, collectively allowed Black teachers and students to demonstrate their shared life experiences. Givens uses the pedagogy of singing to reiterate the educational dreams of Black students. By singing together, Black students understood the lyrics as a consciousness of the here and now. Givens demonstrates this by providing commentary from Albert Murray, Al Young, Angela Davis, and John Bracey.
Chapter 6 titled, “Some of Them Became Schoolteachers”, highlights how Black teachers inspired many of their Black students to become teachers. This connects to Givens’ purpose for the book; Black students who became teachers passed on the narratives and lived experiences, bearing witness to education as a right of freedom. In this chapter, he shares his own personal experiences as a student of several influential Black teachers in his life. Givens concludes the book by expressing that Black students’ history and witness deserves to be recognized and appreciated. He does this by including a teacher’s guide that provides questions and writing activities for each chapter. Givens takes time to use the histories of teachers and students to explain how school clothes represent the narratives that “cover” Black students. These narratives include the dreams, stories, and promises of Black students and how these coverings help students understand who they are.
School Clothes deepens our understanding of Black students, their history, and identity in education by authentically and effectively sharing an important history of education. This book refutes the narrative that Black children do not want to learn or cannot learn. The title itself expresses the continued respect that Black students have earned when it comes to education, as their collective stories bear witness to how they have navigated education under oppression. One piece of Black education history Givens could have added was the importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and their impact on Black education. While this is a small critique, sharing the background and development of HBCUs would have brought in further history of Black educational institutions and their impact on Black students. Nonetheless, School Clothes is a history that allows Black students’ voices to be heard and remembered instead of silenced, explaining how Black communities have always worked collectively to sustain education.
