The East Side Six: A Narrative Inquiry Into How Critical Consciousness Development Works in Tangent with the Black American Experience to Achieve High Educational Attainment

Abstract

To be in a state of constant awareness of reality, in that you are moving and interacting within society from an interrogative standpoint, is what bell hooks defines as a critical consciousness. Most African American people, as hooks explains, are conscious that we live in a racist and white supremacist society, aware of their environment and how it influences their movement through it. One can think about focusing on how dominant society has historically built and perpetuated systems of exploitation and oppression, forcing the flaws of the environment onto Black communities. These flaws are molded onto all aspects of living that in most cases are often best combatted through utilizing the knowledge of the reality we live in. Shifting the focus to specific traditions and social practices that Black communities have exhibited, the African American experience can serve as evidence of something that guides our actions for survival. This allows us to question the significance of everyday practice in critical consciousness development for African Americans, and how it represents resistance to and survival in a society that both discounts and diminishes their self-interest. In centering the build-up of events around the integration of six African American students into East Side Junior High, Little Rock, Arkansas, and the students’ lived experience that contributed to their response to school desegregation in the late 1950s, and early 1960s, I argue how students as stakeholders exhibit the development of critical consciousness for educational attainment and equity. I argue that by understanding the childhood development and lived experiences of the East Side Six, Equilla Banks, Alfreda Brown, Myrna Davis, Shirley Hickman, Sarah E Jordan, and Glenda Wilson, and other “soldiers” all over the US who had the courage to stake a claim in their education, being among the first to desegregate all-white schools in the nation, we can measure high levels of student attainment and implement it to future studies on educational attainment and equity in public schools. In addition to segregated all-Black schools in America, the support of home life, community organizations, and the Church serve as outlets for African Americans to cultivate critically conscious minds. Combining that with newly integrated schools exposing how Black students are implementing knowledge of their reality, a reality circumvented around racism and oppression, I examine a key point of interest in history to understand the development and nurturing of a critical consciousness vital for the future of African Americans.