Publications
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Legacy of Action
Legacy of Action celebrates the transformative nature of Dr. Geneva Gay's work in multicultural education across disciplines, careers, classrooms, and communities. This book contains a preface, an introduction, and 10 essays about Dr. Geneva Gay's culturally responsive teaching framework. The authors in this edited volume write about how Dr. Gay's words have helped shape scholar identities, influenced educational thought and practice, and contributed to excellence in education. This book is a resource for anyone interested in sparking the genius of all students.
Edited by La Vonne I. Neal, Ph.D., Sarah Militz-Frielink, Ph.D., Mar铆a T. Colompos-Tohtsonie, Ph.D., Regina A. Lewis, Ph.D. and Alicia L. Moore, Ph.D.
Letters to My Black Sons
"I want you to be fully present in your own life, a change agent who is not afraid to dare to be who you are.
I wonder though, my dear sweet child, how I can mother you when I have not been able to mother myself?
How can I give you the tools to survive this brutal world when I have not been able to craft these tools to save myself?
How can I stand up for you when my whole life has been spent trying so hard to stand up for myself? I am not perfect. I am flawed. I am pregnant.
And in nine months, I will be your mother."
And so begins Karsonya Wise Whitehead's first letter to her oldest son.
For the past 14 years, she has written letters, poems, notes, and words of inspiration
to her two boys, Kofi Elijah and Amir Elisha. She has documented everything from their
first steps to their first encounter with racism; from their questions about race
to their questions about falling in love.
She has borne witness to their tears of joy and pain, their cries of frustration and discovery, and the difficulties that they have encountered growing up black and male.
Since this is her love for them poured out onto the page, she chose to publish them exactly as they were written-without any edits or corrections.
"Letters to My Black Sons" traces her (and her husband's) journey to try and raise happy and healthy black boys in a post-racial America.
Rethinking Emilie Frances Davis
The Rethinking Emilie Frances Davis companion reader is a supplemental curriculum guide that expands the work on Emilie Davis that was started in the award-winning book Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis (USC Press, May 2014) written by Karsonya Wise Whitehead.
Curriculum designers from a range of content areas and grade levels offer common core
aligned lesson plan sets for middle, high school, and college students that outline
the scope and sequence and frame the organization of activities and assignments in
a coherent fashion.
Edited by Whitehead and Conra Gist, the reader includes Whitehead's article-Forensic
Herstor-ical Investigation: Redefining Emilie-which analyzes Whitehead's method of
active engagement, close reading, and archival research; and, Gist's article-A Black
Feminist Interpretation: Reading Life, Pedagogy, and Emilie-that uses a black feminist
lens to explore the life of Emilie Davis.
The user-friendly design of the book allows Davis's life to be viewed through a transdisciplinary
lens enabling teachers to work both across disciplines and beyond their own discipline
to help students connect to the life of a 19th century free black woman.
Race Brave
RaceBrave: new and selected works provides another glimpse into Karsonya Wise Whitehead's work to document her experience raising two black boys in a post-racial America.
On July 7, 2014, the day Eric Garner was murdered, Whitehead set out to write about
what was happening across America to unarmed black people, in doing so she explores
the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness that resonate with parents around the
country-sometimes with humor, sometimes with sadness, but always with an ear that
bends toward the truth.
In marking these moments, Whitehead also reached back into her childhood diaries to
examine how life has changed for her, as a writer, a poet, and a mother over the years.
RaceBrave is a masterwork that covers multiple topics and captures every mood: today,
my heart stopped is both dolorous and heartbreaking as it examines what happens when
black men demand the right to be seen and to be able to breathe, while the birth of
your activism examines the days leading up the Baltimore Uprising as Whitehead's sons
chose to march for ten days straight for justice, for Freddie Grey, and ultimately
in search of the world that they are hoping to co-create.
Going back into her archives, comfedderate flag memories highlights Whitehead's feelings
about the confederate flag in both 1980 and in 2015 while speaking my truth, finally
reveals a story that she has been trying to write about for twenty-five years.
my mother's tomorrow: dispatches through the lens of Baltimore's Black Butterfly
By Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead
In 2017, Dr. Kaye, a local award-winning radio host, began a three-year in-depth ethnographic
study within Baltimore鈥檚 Black Butterfly neighborhoods that were originally published
in a monthly column in the Afro newspaper. She used to ride the bus through the communities
to find ways to deeply engage with the residents. She spent time talking and listening
to them and documenting and recording their stories. In 鈥測ou tell them that we鈥檙e
not invisible, you tell them that we matter,鈥� she met a woman from the Poe Homes community
who was filling her pots and pans, after the community had gone four days without
running water. The woman looked at Dr. Kaye and said, "The Mayor, our Councilman,
they don't see us. Baltimore City is a big place, so I think they just forgot about
us. Is there any way that you can make us unforgotten?" This book is for her. It is
also for the veterans that Dr. Kaye met and profiled in her 鈥渂altimore is my beirut,鈥�
column who said, 鈥淵ou commit your life to fight for this country, then you come back
home and where you live is worse than where you were fighting. It鈥檚 like the war never
ended.鈥� It is also for the ninth grader student who told Dr. Kaye in 鈥渋鈥檓 from baltimore,
i鈥檓 already dead,鈥� when she asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, 鈥淢y father
is dead. My brother is dead. I had two cousins, they got shot. My uncles are locked
up. What do I want to be when I grow up? Nothing. I鈥檓 from Baltimore, I鈥檓 already
dead.鈥� It also for her parents who grew up in Jim Crow South Carolina and chose every
day to survive and then when they raised her, taught her how to thrive.
This is both a love letter to Baltimore, a way of reminding them that even if the
world does not see them, Dr. Kaye did, and she does; and a love letter to her sons,
a way of reminding them that even though they were born with wings, Baltimore taught
them how to fly.
Legacy of Action: How Dr. Geneva Gay Transformed Teaching
Legacy of Action celebrates the transformative nature of Dr. Geneva Gay's work in multicultural education across disciplines, careers, classrooms, and communities. This book contains a preface, an introduction, and 10 essays about Dr. Geneva Gay's culturally responsive teaching framework. The authors in this edited volume write about how Dr. Gay's words have helped shape scholar identities, influenced educational thought and practice, and contributed to excellence in education. This book is a resource for anyone interested in sparking the genius of all students.
Spring 2023 Loyola Magazine Cover
Women's History Month "20 Seminal Moments from American Women鈥檚 History" on WorldCat.org
2023 marks a number of milestones within feminist history, including the 175th anniversary
of the Seneca Falls Convention, the 160th anniversary of Harriet Tubman鈥檚 Combahee
Ferry Raid, and the 50th anniversary of Roe. v. Wade. Women's history is an essential
part of the American historical narrative. Our stories and experiences, from every
racial and ethnic community, have helped shape America鈥檚 national identity. As we
celebrate Women鈥檚 History Month and think deeply about the 2023 theme: Celebrating
Women Who Tell Our Stories, the and the Karson Institute for Race, Peace, & Social Justice selected 20 seminal moments
in women鈥檚 history to highlight. "Although there are so many moments and women that
could have been selected,鈥� said Karsonya Wise Whitehead, 鈥渨e chose to spotlight and
amplify the names and stories of women, from all different races and ethnicities,
who personally inspire us, challenge us, and motivate us."
Black History Bulletin 2022
Within the Karson Institute, Dr. Karsonya "Kaye" Wise Whitehead, Mar铆a Colompos-Tohtsonie, MPPA, & Dr. Walter Greason [guest co-edited] the Black History Bulletin (BHB) Volume 85, Number 1. The theme for this issue is, 鈥淗istorical Trauma: Past Pains, Future Promise."
In 1937, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, at the urging of Mary McLeod Bethune, founded The Black History Bulletin (n茅e The Negro History Bulletin) aimed at providing teachers, students, and the general reader with a foundation in Black history. Since then, the BHB has become one of the academic lighthouses publishing articles and lesson plans that are designed to provide truth, historical knowledge, and insight into many of the critical issues facing the African American community.
Readings and Lesson Plans:
About the BHB
is one of the oldest journals of Black History. The BHB is dedicated to enhancing teaching and learning in the areas of history. Its aim is to publish, generate, and disseminate peer-颅reviewed information about African Americans in U.S. history, the African Diaspora generally, and the peoples of Africa. Its purpose is to inform the knowledge base for the professional praxis of educators and scholars through articles that are grounded in theory yet supported by practice.
