ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we primarily draw upon our field of study, African American educational history, to fully explicate the uses of and potential for critical history as both a theoretical framework and methodological practice. In doing so, we: (1) examine select critical histories that counter master narratives of racial progress and illuminate contemporary educational issues; (2) offer a conceptual framework using historian Michel Foucault’s concept of “history of the present” and Manning Marable’s concept of “living Black history” as temporal alternatives to linear historical master narratives; (3) reimagine the notion of the archive through various methods of “history as resistance”; and (4) discuss the educational possibilities of critical history in advancing and helping to achieve a truer democracy.
