Weaving Color into a White Landscape: Critical Literacy and Out of the Dust

1. Weaving Color into a White Landscape: Critical Literacy and Out of the Dust Lisa Simon City College City University of New York

3. Scholastic interviewer: How did you research the Dust Bowl for your book [Out of the Dust]? Karen Hesse: I always start my research in the children's room at the public library ... Then I use the footnotes and the bibliographies from those books to find more books…. I studied the effects of the dust, and what impact it had on farmers and non-farmers living in that area. The impact of anything in history ripples out to touch everyone eventually, so I also studied the effects of dust throughout the world. …. [D]oing the research led me to newspapers from that time period…. [A] lot of the events in the book are drawn straight from the newspaper…. The dust storms were only minor articles — what was going on there was life!

4. As a result of this process • Hesse’s historical novel extends and elaborates on the dominant depictions of the Oklahoma Dustbowl (e.g., Steinbeck, Guthrie, Farm Security Administration photographers). Included in Out of the Dust • White experiences and White perspectives Excluded • the experiences of Oklahoma’s communities of color during the time period. • The contributions of these communities and the effects of institutionalized racism and colonialization on the history of Oklahoma

5. Expanding literacy’s power in the classrooms • Students and teachers are consistently expected to read and teach texts which marginalize experiences in relation to their sexuality, culture, religion, economic status and English language fluency (Brantlinger, 2003; Carger, 1996; Nieto, 1999; Raible & Nieto, 2003; Sadowski, 2003; Valdes, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999, Zine, 2000). • When such texts dominate school curricula, literacy can be perceived as exclusively a tool for shoring up privilege and maintaining the status quo. • Teaching which encourages the critical reading of texts and offers ways to challenge depictions nurtures not only students’ academic engagement but their development of sophisticated literacy skills.

6. Critical Literacy Framework(Janks, 2000; McDaniels, 2004; McIntosh, 1986; Morrison, 1993) • Power is held and maintained by dominant groups. This power influences the construction of texts. • All texts involve biases and omissions. In constructing their texts, authors make choices about what to include and omit. • Particular interests, often those aligned with power and status quo, are served by those choices. • To challenge inequities, it is incumbent that we ask and encourage our students to ask: what has been left out?

7. The Critical Literacy Research Process The critical literacy research process gives educators and students the tools to challenge the biases of texts and bring marginalized stories into our classroom.

8. The Critical Literacy Research Process: 1. Recognize all texts are incomplete Ask whose perspectives are included, whose are absent? • Out of the Dust presents the experiences of White Oklahomans, many of whom are struggling economically. • There are no references to persons from any other race. Identify gaps to explore • The U.S.’s history of colonization, involuntary and voluntary immigration makes it unlikely that any historical event involved only White people. • The forced removal of the Five Southern Tribes ended in Oklahoma; • The Black Town Movement was centered in Oklahoma; • Spain and then Mexico controlled all or some of the land that is now Oklahoma until 1848.

9. The Critical Literacy Research Process: 2. Look for absent stories • Enter into a search engine key words that describe the missing/marginalized perspectives that you’ve identified. • Start with the most general terms, continually refining your terms and search as you access sources relating to missing stories. • Each link leads to new information and new key words that lead to greater specifics about those histories. Entering these key words: African American + Oklahoma + 1930 resulted in…

10. Project OklahomaHistory and CultureOklahoma in the 1930 ALL BLACK TOWNS African American Registry: Boley, Oklahoma, a FUBU of towns.

11. The Critical Literacy Research Process: 2. Look for absent stories Those initial results linked to information on: • the Black Town movement in Oklahoma • Tulsa Riot in 1921 • Native American and African American relations in Oklahoma • African American musicians from Oklahoma

12. The Critical Literacy Research Process: 3. Organize information • Create texts with the goal of sharing and critiquing the counter narratives you’ve accessed from the research process.

13. 3. Organizing Information – ExampleThe Black Town Movement • In the 1880’s many African Americans saw in Oklahoma the possibility of an all-Black state: “They came as unorganized individuals and as planned colonies. They rode the trains, if they could, and when they could not they either rode horses or walked. Some walked to Oklahoma from as far away as Little Rock and Memphis.” (Hamilton, 1977) • The migration of African Americans to Oklahoma became a significant debate in the African American community.

14. It is good that Oklahoma opens its gates and spreads its rich lands to welcome him home, to welfare, freedom, independence and happiness. -Frederick Douglass, 1892

15. [Oklahoma] did not offer sufficient inducements to warrant an indiscriminate exodus of our people, in that there appeared to be no ready employment to be had -Ida B. Wells, 1892 It is good that Oklahoma opens its gates and spreads its rich lands to welcome him home, to welfare, freedom, independence and happiness. -Frederick Douglass, 1892

16. The Black Town Movement in dialogue with the setting of Out of the Dust From Haven, a dreamtown in Oklahoma Territory, to Haven, a ghosttown in Oklahoma State. Freedmen who stood tall in 1889 dropped to their knees in 1934 and were stomach-crawling by 1948…. One thousand citizens in 1905 becoming five hundred by 1934. Then two hundred, then eighty as cotton collapsed or railroad companies laid their tracks elsewhere. Subsistence farming, once the only bounty a large family needed, became just scrap farming as each married son got his bit, which had to be broken up into more pieces for his children, until finally the owners of the bits and pieces who had not walked off in disgust welcomed any offer from a white speculator, so eager were they to get away and try someplace else (Paradise, Toni Morrison, pp. 5-6).

17. The Critical Literacy Research Process: 4. Address persistent gaps Accessible secondary sources led to • Complex stories of Native American and African American Oklahoman men with a range of education and wealth • Demographics about the work patterns of Mexican-born immigrants to Oklahoma. Unavailable through these sources were: • Complex stories of male and female Mexican American Oklahomans; • Stories of women in Oklahoma’s Native American and African American communities; • Stories of Asian-American Oklahomans.

18. 4. Address persistent gaps – ExampleFactors contributing to marginalization of Mexican-American Oklahomans • Mexican-Americans consistently constructed as outsiders (immigrants) • Denies the history of U.S. colonization • Ignores the reality of generations of Mexican Americans in Oklahoma

19. The Critical Literacy Research Process: 5. Seek additional (primary) sources • Expand research resources through artifacts such as: • U.S. Census • contemporary photographs • songs lyrics and record albums

20. 1930 Census Information for Checotah, McIntosh County, OK 1930 Census Information for Checotah, McIntosh County, OK Enumerator: Wynona Swafford

21. Jim S’s’ Father b.Mexico Jim S’sMother b.Mexico Juanita S’s Father b.Mexico Juanita S’smother b.Texas Jim Sanchas b.Mexico Juanita Sanchas b. Oklahoma Charles Martin b.Oklahoma Terry Martin b. Oklahoma Bennie Sanchas b. Oklahoma Martina Martin b.Oklahoma Sartas Martin b.Oklahoma Catarina Martin b.Oklahoma Mio Martin b.Oklahoma Cedra Martin b.Oklahoma The Sanchas-Martin Family

22. The Critical Literacy Research Process: 6. Create a new text • Construct a text that depicts the counter-narratives in a way that complicates dominant depictions. • Created texts can be in different genre (expository essay, historical fiction) and involve different media.

23. 1930 Census Information for Checotah, McIntosh County, OK 1930 Census Information for Checotah, McIntosh County, OK Enumerator: Wynona Swafford

24. Wynona Swafford came to our door today to take our census. She didn’t recognize us even though we’ve lived in Checotah as long as she. I think that’s why my mother got so nervous. Because at first she smiled. But when Miz Swafford looked at her like a stranger, when my mother offered her a glass of water my mother forgot how to speak English She called my father but he must have forgotten how to hear and my aunt Bennie just laughed and shook her head So then she called me With that look that told me not to say no even though I was supposed to be watching Carlo. So I picked up Carlo and came to stand beside her Miz Swafford asked the questions so quickly hand gripped tightly around the pen anxious and doubtful about having to write my answers down on the forms, yellow-white with thick black lines and boxes But the questions were easy: “Seven years old,” and “Oklahoma,” I told her. “And your mother?” “Here,” I said.  She wrote it down but she looked at my mother and I knew she was wondering why, if she was born here, she couldn’t talk. The Census Taker

25. But she did talk when Miz Swafford pointed to Carlo. “And this one?” “Two,” I told her. “Mio,” my mother explained. Miz Swafford wrote that down in the name box and I didn’t say a word. April 10, 1930 The Census Taker

26. The value of critical literacy research Offers students the opportunity to use and develop literacy skills in a purposeful and engaging way: • Read critically • Question and monitor their understandings • Link ideas across texts • Write to communicate new understandings

27. The value of critical literacy research Allows educators and students to use the power of literacy to create texts that speak to and challenge texts that marginalize experiences in relation not only to race but sexuality, religion, economic status, gender, and English language fluency