Overcoming Darkness with Light & Resistance as a Motto: Black History is American History

African American and Black persons have encountered generational pain and personal hardships, ever-present barriers to equality and fiercely-protected systemic racism, and a history of racial terrorism and social oppression, both nationally and locally. And yes... even within educational institutions and their communities, justifying demands for life, liberty, equality, truth, justice, and the pursuit of happiness in a protected self-determined experience in a just, democratic society.

Resistance progressed slowly and quietly, much like the Cold War, with instances of fiery clashes. Armed rebellions against plantation owners, or protective positions against angry white mobs in the South occurred early and infrequently after the Civil War. Rather, silent battles were waged in the forms of discriminatory voting and housing legislation in state and local politics, in both the South and the North. Black faith institutions and Black political and literature publishing houses sprang into action in response. Freedom fighters, giants such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer, organized non-violent actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, walk outs, and strikes by African American and Black individuals and their other identifying allies, fighting for justice against discrimination in the workplace, in the classroom, while renting, while voting, and beyond.

Yet, again, like the Cold War, resistance didn't always remain peaceful, from those on either side of the struggle: those oppressing and fighting to retain their power, and those being oppressed and fighting to breathe free. Malcolm X and the Black Panthers advocated loudly for armed resistance movements to take hold. The Ku Klux Klan ebbed and flowed, and oftentimes found root even in communities who vowed to protect and serve, like law enforcement and the military establishment. However, Rev. Dr. King's words (1963) rung clear through the darkness, like a candle emblazoning a moonless night: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." Historically, in his spirit, sometimes even retroactively, we see the beauty of Rev. Dr. King's light in the creation of the NAACP, in HBCUs, in anti-Jim Crow laws, in the Million Man March, in the #SayHerName and #BlackLivesMatter movements, in the election of President Barack Obama, in the Civil Rights Act, in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, in the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History, and others.

In every step walked, every barrier broken, every candle remaining lit, Rev. Henry Highland Garnett thunderously shouted a reminder to all of us, then and now: "Let your motto be resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!"

So as we begin Black History Month in 2023, let us continue this charge. Let our motto ring forth in resistance and unity, and may we always overcome the darkness of discrimination and hate with the light of equity, inclusion, and love.

A Call to Action

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the organization that has established national themes of annual Black History Months since 1928, notes its intention as focusing attention of the general public, but not limiting or dictating conversations in the study of the history, impact, identity, and ideology of Black and African American communities. Regarding the intention of 2023's theme, ASALH (2023) states, "This is a call to everyone, inside and outside the academy, to study the history of Black Americans' responses to establish safe spaces, where Black life can be sustained, fortified, and respected."

But how can educators effectively respond to this call? How can we best respond to calls for establishing safe spaces for Black and African American people? How can we best assist protecting and sustaining Black and African American students' lives? How can we most impactfully fortify Black and African American students' learning, growth, development, and success? How can we best respect Black and African American student experiences, opinions, and voices? We can find guidance in theory, best and high-impact practices, and student-centered frameworks; realistically, though, and most importantly, we must be open and honest with ourselves and our institutions and address our own self-imposed barriers preventing Black and African American students from feeling safe and seen on our campuses, in our departments, and within our programs or interventions. We must:

• Amplify ways students can advocate for themselves and their community members, establishing lines of communication between those in power and those in marginalized and oppressed communities, while removing barriers and addressing inequities.

• Illuminate opportunities for uplifting community engagement and active citizenship.

• Highlight Black and African American histories and experiences so as to best sustain, fortify, and respect learning, growth, development, and success, especially within programming spaces.

• Collaborate so as to build wide-ranging, interdisciplinary partnerships and holistic approaches in college and university experiences.

• Incorporate theory, with intentionality and purpose, centering students within the lens of our work versus processes, policies, procedures, operations, and workflows.

As attacks on multicultural and diversity, equity, and inclusion education programs and content in educational spaces increase (I give you, Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis, and Ron DeSantis, as well as his buddy Greg Abbott), these conversations become more vitally important. As states and localities, such as Florida and Texas, attempt to place controls on faculty tenure, establish what I would refer to as alternative history institutes at state colleges and universities, prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, eliminate AP African American Studies courses from high school curricula, legislate against critical race theory (without actually knowing what it is) being used in curricula construction, and ban books of suspect authors or with suspect topics, the erasure of truth sets the stage to understand why Black and African American students don't feel safe, seen, or supported in educational spaces moving into 2023, which, come on folx, is painful to admit. 2023. Which makes our work, our resistance, even more important.

Amplifying Advocacy

Advocacy - noun - 1. The act of pleading or arguing in favor of something, such as a cause, policy, or interest, or 2. the active support of an idea or cause.

Arabella Advisors, 2023

Student affairs educators must more readily take on the role as amplifiers on their individual campuses; we must be ready, willing, and able to empower our students to advocate for themselves and for their peers, especially when systemic inequities have harmed already marginalized student groups, and trumpet their voices, using our privileged identities and statuses to raise theirs up above our own whenever possible. This will likely trigger difficult conversations, centered around white people not understanding how their whiteness has been a privilege to them compared to how others' Blackness or Brownness has actively put them in danger or scrutiny. This will likely trigger tons and tons of questions from students and will honestly require hours of your time, dedicated to advising, coaching, and helping them develop self-efficacy, communication, organizational, and event planning skills, which luckily are important pre-professional, transferable skills. This will likely draw the ire of upper-level administrators who will actively refer back to the institution's mission statement, or strategic plan, or diversity values, and will claim that Black and African American students couldn't possibly feel othered while on campus:

"See! It's written right there! 'University College Tech is a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and welcoming place. Period.' Says so right in the strategic plan beside the picture of the statue of our founder, General John G. Confederacy!"

So it's up to our student affairs staffs to participate in this vitally important work, and Arabella Advisors (2023) provides an awesome seven-step framework for enabling and amplifying advocacy within our organizations: 1.) identifying influential supporters and building that coalition, 2.) having a well-defined narrative, 3.) defining feasible solutions, 4.) opening up strong capacity, 5.) finding strong champions, 6.) mobilizing those around you (that's next!), and 7.) freeing up time, space, and resources to implement your plan. See this graphic above!

OCLC, 2023

And how do we translate all of this into action? Well, OCLC (2023) has a handy five-step process of planning for advocacy in day-to-day work for just these questions: 1.) plan out the campaign with goals, objectives, and intended outcomes, 2.) create awareness through a variety of media formats based on your intended audience(s), 3.) generate engagement to get people talking about your cause and why it's impacting them and their community, 4.) encourage action by developing outreach events, philanthropy drives, open forums, and freedom of speech or expression programming, and 5.) sustain momentum, which is especially uneasy and incredibly important as we navigate a profession of constant student matriculation, changing demographics, unstable hiring practices, and rampant over-reach from various stakeholders. However, student-centeredness reminds us that we place our students' concerns at the forefront of our professional action, no matter the work involved or the difficulty encountered.

Illuminating Community Engagement

The natural byproduct of advocacy in a democratic society is civic engagement - the ideal of a population meaningfully connecting with fellow citizens to identify, address, and reverse systemic barriers that have disenfranchised communities for years rather than apathetically disengaging from problems simply because they are seemingly too large, too complex, too out of reach of normal individuals, or too far removed from one's own experiences from negatively impacting one's life. Community engagement commonly addresses food insecurity, housing insecurity or homelessness, the unbreakable grip of poverty, crime, outbreaks of disease or other maladies, influences of drug and alcohol usage, limitations on personal or group rights based on protected classes or identities, and green space and grocery deserts in urban areas.

So, how can educators help support our African American and Black students engage in such community engagement opportunities as part of our commitment to Black History Month's charge of overcoming darkness with light through resistance? Neighbors West-Northwest Coalition of Portland, Oregon, gives us a great starting point, reminding actors that activities can stretch locally to nationally, and efforts can range from individual foci to entire system changes. Foci in such models stretch across advocacy for changes in public policy, community organizing, political reform at the local, regional, and state level, and stress towards active volunteerism. Examples of activities include annual social events, arts and culture showcases, testimony, fact checking, ongoing and lifelong learning and teaching, place-making, block or neighborhood celebrations, shop local events, fundraising initiatives, clean-up days, peaceful demonstrations, youth opportunities, and pro-unification and voting initiatives.

Civic Engagement Model of Neighbors West-Northwest Coalition of Portland, OR

These opportunities are meaningful for our students holistically, but especially for our Black and African American students - as well as our other historically marginalized student populations - considering the decades of apathy shown towards our Black and African American communities by predominantly-white institutions and governing bodies. Lisa Jones (2016) of the University of Houston - Clear Lake notes that such opportunities help reverse disparities, fortify sense of belonging, align resources with student need, and support global understanding. They also resist ongoing decay and perpetuating baseless social class and racial identity stereotypes.

Bemidji State University Community Engagement Model

Finally, we have the definition of community engagement, we have a framework for activities and focus, and we have a charge. But how does such a broad outcome fit within institutional approaches? Easily within a holistic approach to service learning, in my humble opinion. Service learning unites textbook academics, practical skill development, and community engagement; interdependently amongst these three also falls internships and externships, volunteer opportunities, community service, civics, social awareness, and social justice. This is an incredibly important and useful approach for cocurricular program design by student affairs educators in any number of functional areas.

Highlighting Black & African American Histories & Experiences

Programming does not happen on an island; rather, comprehensive campus life departments construct cocurricular experiences to augment, extend, sustain, fortify, and respect learning, growth, development, and success beyond the classroom. To this end, student affairs educators must intentionally design holistic frameworks for Black and African American students, steeped in student development theory and best and high-impact practices, and centered on a growth-by-complexity perspective, much like Bloom's Taxonomy.

For example, at the College of Lake County, where I currently serve as the Director of Student Activities & Inclusion, we designed a framework of support and success for CLC's Black and African American students, featuring five domains of increasingly complex cognitive and psychosocial needs. The first domain is Being Black in College 101: Transitions into College Success, and deals with wayfinding and sense of belonging while shifting from high school to college. Programming and interventions include summer bridge programs, welcome events, dedicated navigator and advising staff, resource library, and first generation student networking. The second domain is Finding Supports: Maximizing Impact from the College Experience, and deals with building networks of support and showcasing success. Programming and interventions include staff mentoring, peer mentoring, student clubs, advocacy organizations, counseling resources, and affinity commencement celebrations. The third domain is Identifying What Works: Enriching Experiences and High Impact Practices, and deals with just what is referenced by the domain title. Programming and interventions include study abroad, transfer tours, networking, retreats and summits, critical issue events, and discussion groups. The fourth domain is Building Community: Collaborations, Outreach, and Partnerships, and deals with community outreach, high school empowerment, community leader roundtables and networking, Black-owned business support, and HBCU showcases. The fifth and final domain is Moving Beyond DEI: Embracing Identity, Advocating for Social Justice, and Engaging in Active Citizenship, and deals with voting rights, state of Black education, advocacy of Illinois Black Caucus, service learning, community engagement, and annual speaker series, named in honor of Chicago's own Margaret Burroughs.

In the spirit of this framework, it is paramount that our Black and African American students see their own histories, their own experiences, their own identities in these programs and these interventions. This becomes even more important during Black History Month programming, and student affairs educators must emphasize student-centeredness. For example, pairing an overview of the storied history of resistance within sports by Black athletes, with food and the "Big Game" on the big screen, unites Black history and recreation. Or perhaps, exploring how Black resistance influenced Black and African American cultural food, featuring cooking demonstrations by culinary experts and historians. Or maybe, emphasizing the importance on Valentine’s Day of resisting stereotypes of domestic and relationship violence through tabling with community partners and culturally-relevant film screenings. Or finally, exploring how trauma and its aftermath has impacted the educational experiences of Black students in higher education, inviting campus therapists and community advocates to help students resist ongoing sabotaging behaviors, practice better self-care, and access helpful resources.

Collaborating Far & Wide

Advocacy, community engagement, and holistic support and success frameworks for our Black and African American students are only effective if built up within a collaborative partnership lens, comprised of contributors across our campus communities. Student affairs educators must assemble these teams with student needs in mind, first and foremost, allowing artificial dividers that separate our campuses into silos to dissolve. For, you see, students don't recognize, don't understand, the ways institutions tend to insulate units, divisions, and departments. All that students see are vital programs, services, facilities, and interventions - they don't care about such structures. Additionally, as is fundamental to diversity, equity, inclusion, access, belonging, community, and social justice work, student affairs educators must also avoid relying solely on staff members from specific, historically minoritized and marginalized identities who are currently working alongside predominantly white campus colleagues to serve in these collaborative roles within such spaces as Black History Month planning, ongoing and comprehensive support for Black students, and interventions for all at-risk student populations.

Collaboration, unfortunately, has devolved into higher education's latest buzzword death. Quite tragically, today's institutions hardly recognize true collaboration anymore; oftentimes, practitioners erroneously define collaboration as one person or team doing the work, one person or team providing the financial support, and one person or team basking in the stress-free glory of being tagged with task accomplishment while expending zero effort. Yet, true collaboration means so, so much more. I cobbled together a humble infographic (below) to showcase the key benefits and skills related to true collaboration: support, trust, exchange, accountability, sharing, inspiration, connection, skill development, teamwork, goal attainment, communication, motivation and positivity, cooperation, mission-focus, efficiency, empathy, planning, brainstorming, clarifying focus, and team success.

Collaboration Infographic (Clark, 2023)

When we, at the College of Lake County, approached Black and African American support and success frameworks, including programming and interventions throughout Black History Month, we drew together talent from key stakeholders across the institution, including from within our student-facing student programming staff, our Black and African American student clubs and organizations, our Black and African American employee representative body, our Black and African American student-focused shared governance committee, our DEI-focused shared governance council, our student success-focused shared governance council, our Student Affairs leadership, and our overall institutional leadership. Intentionality was given to emphasizing Black and African American voices; however, our Black and African American colleagues and students were not abandoned to do such vitally important work alone, since Black History is American History; Black History does not start and stop with February each year.

Incorporating Theory from a Student-Centered Lens

Finally, when best serving our students, student affairs educators must meaningfully incorporate student development and DEI theory into our departmental, divisional, and institutional interventions. Why? Because it centers student learning and success as our core virtue. When we examine interventions for our Black and African American students specifically, the Cross and Fhagen-Smith Model of Black Identity Development (2001), the Schlossberg Definitions for Marginality & Mattering (1989), and the Smith Strategic Institutional Framework for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (2015) are most impactful.

Adapted from Cross & Fhagen-Smith, 2001

Cross and Fhagen-Smith (2001) based their work on revisions to Cross' original work in 1971 and 1991, positing three core concepts explored within the theory: 1.) personal identity (individual traits and characteristics that compose personality), 2.) reference group orientation (individual values, perspectives, and views versus peers or family), and 3.) race salience (how important one's race is to one's life lived). The theory identifies six phases of Black identity development: infancy & childhood, preadolescence, adolescence, early adulthood, adult Nigrescence, and refinement / recycling. Within these sequential phases, Black and African American individuals develop their own Black racial identity through five stages: 1.) preencounter (having Eurocentric or deracinated perspectives, oftentimes with anti-Blackness stereotypes or sentiment shared), 2.) encounter (an encounter or experience, either positive or negative, that causes disequilibrium and openness to new perspectives, triggering exploration of identity), 3.) immersion-emersion (discarding the old identity and committing to new personally affirming ways, beliefs, and projection, while transitioning through emotions and finding critical analysis of identity needed), 4.) internalization (the calming of outward and inward anger regarding old identity thoughts and anti-whiteness, opening space for self-confidence and inner security), and 5.) internalization-commitment (the newfound identity translates into meaningful and impactful action aimed at addressing problems and concerns within Black and African American communities). And within each of these stages, our Black and African American students can expect to experience a range of intense emotions tied to five functions: buffering, code-switching, bridging, bonding, and individualism. Why does Cross & Fhagen-Smith (2001) matter so much? This single theory introduced, for the first time, a dedicated developmental approach for our Black students, attempting to control for other variables and intersecting identities. It also attempted to examine differences based on salience of Black identity, ideology, social change, and oppositional defiance to cultural norms and mores.

Adapted from Schlossberg's Marginality & Mattering Definitions (1989)

Continuing in this exploration of application of theory, we turn to Schlossberg (1989) and her exploration of two key concepts in student development: marginality and mattering. Marginality refers to uncertainty of status or worth, not fitting in with those around oneself, and feelings of self-consciousness, irritability, anxiety, and depression. Sometimes, marginality can be temporary, such as when individuals find new jobs or take new roles; other times, marginality can be permanent, such as when experienced by minoritized student groups, like our Black and American American students. Schlossberg asserted that when individuals feel marginalized, they question their worth, whether or not they matter to anyone; this belief of mattering to at least one other person need not be foundationally true or false but individually-experienced. In this perspective, as well, there are five aspects of mattering. Attention refers to feeling like one is being noticed. Importance refers to feeling like one is cared about. Ego extension refers to feeling like someone else is proud of what one does or sympathizes with one's failures. Dependence refers to feeling like one is needed. Appreciation refers to feeling like one is appreciated by others and their efforts make valuable impacts. Why does it matter for our students? And more specifically, why does it matter for our Black and African American students? Schlossberg (1989) asserts that students who feel like they matter will form stronger bonds with the campus community and grow stronger interpersonal relationships; they will subsequently discover a strengthened sense of belonging, will engage in cocurricular programming, and will perform more competitively in their academic experiences. Additionally, institutional mattering can help address societal marginalization of our Black and African American students by reducing some of its negative impacts, especially those impacting the college experience and reinforcing equity gaps.

Adapted from Smith (2015) Strategic Institutional DEI Framework

Expanding from an individual lens to a systems lens, we now examine Smith (2015). Smith balances the need for DEI work to be generative and causal without being generic and bland, while also being approachable, inclusive, and, specific without being lofty and unattainable. To accomplish such, Smith emphasizes four broad and interrelated dimensions that are mission-centered, contextual to the institution, accounting for individual and group variance, broadly-focused, and mapped to institutional DEI capacity. The first dimension is Institutional Viability and Vitality, focusing on building capacity as an institution and community, noting mission, culture, capital, process, and commitment to DEI work and capacity-building. The second dimension is Access & Success, focusing on means and conditions of the environment to support ongoing success, noting various markers involved and disaggregating data to understand equity gaps and barriers. The third dimension is Education & Scholarship, focusing on the educational experiences of all students, noting curriculum, pedagogy, faculty expertise, and production of new knowledge, while maintaining space for culturally-relevant learning environments. The fourth dimension is Climate & Intergroup Relations, focusing on campus climate and how groups of different identities interact with one another, noting intersectionality, divergent experiences, common connections and affirmations, understanding differences, and impacts of being different. In the infographic above, I developed some key student affairs approaches and recommendations based on each dimension, adapted from Smith (2015). Through each one of these dimensions, one can more accurately pinpoint preparedness of an institution's responsiveness to our Black and African American students' needs. Smith (2015) also provides for an excellent self-evaluation tool.

Let Our Motto Be Resistance!

Student affairs educators, across these spaces and contexts, can offer incredibly immersive , impactful cocurricular experiences to all students, including our Black and African American students. As such, discomfort may occur; challenge will probably counter the student's worldview. Our students may encounter gaps in readiness and knowledge. Some may even question their values or identities as they pertain to their Black or African American identity; yet, we strive to consistently advocate, engage, highlight, collaborate, and theorize.

We. Won't. Be. Silent.

One final time: "Let your motto be resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!" My friends, it is 2023. We cannot exist as though our lives will continue forth free of any such resistance. Perhaps the most gut-wrenching facet of Black History Month this year is that we continue to see the murder of our Black and African American neighbors and students, simply for the color of their identity. Perhaps a secondary tragedy is that we continue to obfuscate the causal relationship between white supremacy or white fragility and ongoing racism. Finally, a tertiary tragedy is that we cannot move forward as a nation, as a people, without acknowledging our past, our history. We can attempt to overcome this darkness by stepping valiantly into the light, owning the harm that we as a people have done and never acknowledged, while grasping the hands of our siblings who only want equality under the law, equity in practice, diversity in thought, and inclusion in belonging. For this Black History Month, let us all light a candle that may never be extinguished.

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Zachary N. Clark, M.A., is a qualified, passionate, & driven student affairs educator; a student-centered change agent; a dedicated supervisor & team-oriented collaborator; a professional development & leadership whiz; an assessment, evaluation, & research expert; an advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, sense of belonging, access, social justice, & community; a talented event planner, project manager, & marketer; an innovator; a cocurricular learning architect; and a leader with a proven track record of achieving results, envisioning paths, building mission-oriented frameworks, synthesizing & mapping goals, showcasing involvement & engagement, & telling effective stories. He's been active in higher education and consulting for 15 years, is based out of Grayslake, IL, and is originally from Pittsburgh, PA. Connect with him here via LinkedIn.

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