Agents of Change: African American Contributions to Writing Centers

African Americans and their contributions to our field’s first pedagogical models operational structures are absent from writing center histories. This archival research invokes presence by recounting the stories of five American innovators—Bess Bolden “B. B.” Walcott, Coragreene Johnstone, Anne Cooke, Hugh Gloster, Percival Bertrand “Bert” Phillips—spanning four decades at three historically Black colleges universities (HBCUs). Their invite an expansive understanding work, moving beyond a focus on traditional tutoring strictly alphabetic literacies into “strategic literacies”—the survival skills needed stand up for oneself one’s community in face dangerous times violently racist places. The leaders described here saw as tool be used concert with embodied performances expression advance struggles labor equity, legal justice, civil rights. conception work springs sites such HBCU archives popular press that less often examined dominant disciplinary From those sites, timeline administrators emerges spurs further these under-studied figures, who together constitute remarkable legacy.