Mirelsie Velázquez: Space, Place, and Schooling: Black and Indigenous Oklahoma, 1865-1925

“Space, Place, and Schooling: African American and Indigenous Oklahoma, 1865-1925” speaks to the need to place both Oklahoma and communities of color (African American and American Indian being central to this narrative), into a larger conversation within the history of American education and the U.S. more broadly. By centering and documenting schools and schooling, this panel challenges monolithic readings of schools as not only sites of oppression within Oklahoma and Indian Territories, but similarly speak to how both groups enacted agency to situate these spaces as sites of liberation prior to statehood.