Curricularizing Social Movements: The Election of Chicago’s First Black Mayor as Content, Pedagogy, and Futurities

The election of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, was monumental in its ability to galvanize masses of people in a city governed historically by machine-style politics. However, social movement organizing was the mechanism that led to Washington’s victory. Using surveillance data collected by the Chicago Police Department, and other historical artifacts, the author of this article calls for the curricularization of social movements from the past. As the paper details social movements of the past can offer curricular insight through content and pedagogy, reconceptualizing the ways in which educational spaces might be better bound to the communities and legacies of resistance that contextualize them.