Urban South Grassroots Research Collective
As a writer and racial equity activist, I reject the mainstream model of disengaged research. Typically, researchers determine alone what merits investigation, gather “data” at a distance, publish works on people who are the “subjects” of their study, and advance their professional stature. That’s where it starts and ends. This model exploits communities rather than working in solidarity with them to raise consciousness and advance the wider struggle for change.
This is why I cofounded Urban South Grassroots Research Collective (USGRC) with Black educational and cultural groups in New Orleans. USGRC’s approach prioritizes the meanings and consequences of research for racially oppressed communities. Together, since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we have sought to document changes to schools and neighborhoods and challenge policies that threaten to undermine—and privatize—institutions at the center of Black communities. Further, we aim to link research to on-the-ground organizing for racial, economic, and educational justice.
Community groups in New Orleans that have been part of USGRC include:
Lower 9th Ward School Development Group, which fought to rebuild neighborhood schools
Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center, advocates for children with disabilities
Students at the Center, a writing program for youth storytellers narrating community history
Guardians Institute, focused on youth literacy and knowledge of Black New Orleans culture
Mos Chukma Arts-as-Healing Institute, using art and Indigenous/African American traditions to support youth resilience
United Teachers of New Orleans, the city’s teacher union
New Teachers’ Roundtable, early career teachers, once affiliated with Teach for America, who invite dialogue on social justice
The New Orleans Imperative, a radio program on racial and educational equity
Bayou and Me Media, which produces documentaries on Black education and history
Claiborne Avenue History Project, documenting the history of Tremé, the South’s earliest and largest free Black community
Plessy and Ferguson Initiative, committed to antiracist education and Black history commemoration
The context of USGRC’s work is important. The model of state takeover, which pairs the mass firing of veteran teachers and school closings with the expansion of charter schools largely managed by white profiteers who lack community roots, turned New Orleans into the nation’s first all-charter school district. This approach, and the gross inequities that come with it, are part of a well-funded effort to privatize public schools in cities nationwide. My work with USGRC foregrounds the voices of affected communities, who have firsthand knowledge of top-down school reform and strive to build a bottom-up movement that honors the culture and history of Black schools and communities.
Based on learnings from USGRC, I write counterstories that reflect the experiences of communities targeted by unjust practices and policies. I also document and participate in efforts to push back. USGRC builds on centuries of accumulated wisdom reflected in Black culture through oral tradition, literature, music, art, education, history, and insurgent scholarship. Street credibility and community outcomes matter to me. I consciously situate my work in a longer continuum of antiracist activism and movement building within Black communities.
To learn more about Kristen’s work with USGRC over the past two decades, read her article: Education Research and Critical Race Praxis: Fieldnotes on “Making It Matter” in New Orleans
Check out USGRC’s community-centered convening that brought together ten cities—Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Little Rock, Milwaukee, Memphis and Nashville, New York City, Newark, and Philadelphia—with students, parents, veteran teachers, and community members from New Orleans to address educational inequities and envision possibilities for resistance.
