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“To want freedom is to welcome struggle.”
If you’re anything like me, the moment you saw that abolitionist teaching was an approach you could bring to your classroom, you had to know more. And, perhaps like me, while this concept evoked striking images of resistance, liberation, and justice, you still weren’t quite sure what it meant or where to begin.
According to Bettina Love, to be an abolitionist teacher is to be constantly working towards freedom since, as it was understood by the revolutionaries of America’s past, freedom cannot exist for one of us if it does not exist for all of us. In that sense, the “land of the free” cannot truly be until this country is no longer a place where a disproportionate amount of Black bodies are behind bars, assaulted by the police, and systematically discriminated against. In her book, We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, Love wastes no time in letting the reader know that in order to engage in the abolitionist work of bringing about true freedom, one must first open themselves up to struggle.
Ah, struggle. Anyone else ready and willing to fight the good fight, but just a teensy bit conflict-averse? In my case, it could be due to how I was socialized as a female to please and not rock the boat, or perhaps because I was raised in the sugar-coating South, I prefer my conflict drizzled in a bit of honey. Well, my fellow go-with-the-flow-ers, Love has presented us with our first hurdle on this all-important journey for justice-- accepting the inevitability of constant struggle. The uphill battle the abolitionists faced is not unlike the one before us today, and we must confront ours with the same determination and creativity. White supremacy does not care to be challenged, but it is our duty to do so, as it has always been.
But what does it look like to face this struggle head-on? Love offers many vignettes of abolitionists and other freedom-focused allies, but one particularly stood out to me- the story of William Lloyd Garrison. I had recently learned about his contributions to this movement while researching his life for The Case of the Absent Abolitionist, a free resource designed to introduce students to the activists that transformed our nation, and his approach to struggle inspired me. (Download it now and bring that abolitionist spirit into your classroom today!)
Love documents how in the first issue of his abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator, Garrison wrote, “I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation… I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD.” Straight out of the gates, he was resolute in his purpose and prepared to weather the impending storm. He knew the critics were coming, but his vision for a socially just America rooted him, and Garrison was able to stand strong in this struggle.
But in the research for my curriculum, I came across some history to better understand the ideology that led Garrison to pen those words. Early in his search for the true abolitionist way, he began rubbing elbows with a group called the American Colonization Society. This organization was coated in a shiny veneer of justice, freeing enslaved peoples and assisting them back to their homeland of Africa. But underneath their seemingly well-intentioned ways, an ugly truth simmered-- these Northerners believed that Black people had no place in the Union and belonged only on the continent of their ancestors.
Garrison vehemently rejected this mission for he was fighting this fight, not from a place of superiority, but rather from a place of solidarity, a central tenet to the true abolitionist way. He disavowed that organization, converted other members to his approach of immediatism, and founded the Liberator on a vision of America becoming a country of multi-racial communities where every citizen, no matter the color of their skin, was truly free.
The struggle Garrison faced was complex--he was working against racism, a federal institution, and even other so-called “abolitionists,” yet he pressed on, publishing every single week for 35 years. As abolitionist teachers, our struggle for educational freedom will be just as complex, and we would do well to bring an unyielding drive, a vision of equality, and a Garrisonian sense of solidarity to this fight.
The struggle is real--both Garrison and Love have prepared us for that. Are you up for it, in the name of true, liberating transformation? Then take a breath and say it with me, “To want freedom is to welcome struggle.”
Cover photo: unsplash.com/@zacharytnelson
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