"Okay Ladies, Get In-formation!" Black Women Igniting Histories of Black Childhood and Education via Public Scholarship

Public scholarship has many meanings in higher education. Although, scholarly definitions identify key components of public scholarship, these definitions do not provide a window into how Black women define and practice public scholarship. Using ethnohistorical and ethnographic methods, this paper will examine and illuminate the public scholarship work of a group of Black women (i.e. researcher and informants) engaged in restoring histories of Black childhood and education by creating a local museum in a historic Rosenwald School in Pickens County, Alabama. Preliminary findings reveal Black women scholars and community actors use practices of two-way mentorship as they seek to interchangeably empower one another – across age, experiential knowledge, research, and lived experience – while they also aim to uplift community.