Aja Y. Martinez

Harmony and Harassment traces the headwaters of critical race theory (CRT) to the rural community of Harmony, Mississippi, at the height of the 1960s US civil rights movement. As Aja Y. Martinez and Robert O. Smith explore these headwaters, readers meet key community leaders like Behonor McDonald, Winson Hudson, and Dovie Hudson. These Black women's activism for civil rights, voting rights, and educational access transformed their community while also providing the foundations for Derrick Bell's legal theories, Alice Walker's womanist concept, and the enduring educational program now known as Head Start. Building on extensive archival research and a web of deeply human relationships, Martinez and Smith argue for renewed appreciation of the centrality of counterstories to CRT itself. Harmony and Harassment shows how CRT developed from the ground up; from this foundation, its insights continue to hold great potential for strengthening education, legal studies, and the humanities and social sciences.

Harmony and Harassment traces the headwaters of critical race theory (CRT) to the rural community of Harmony, Mississippi, at the height of the 1960s US civil rights movement. As Aja Y. Martinez and Robert O. Smith explore these headwaters, readers meet key community leaders like Behonor McDonald, Winson Hudson, and Dovie Hudson. These Black women's activism for civil rights, voting rights, and educational access transformed their community while also providing the foundations for Derrick Bell's legal theories, Alice Walker's womanist concept, and the enduring educational program now known as Head Start. Building on extensive archival research and a web of deeply human relationships, Martinez and Smith argue for renewed appreciation of the centrality of counterstories to CRT itself. Harmony and Harassment shows how CRT developed from the ground up; from this foundation, its insights continue to hold great potential for strengthening education, legal studies, and the humanities and social sciences.

The first edition of Counterstory was award-winning and pathbreaking. In 2020, mere months before President Trump's executive order banned critical race theory (CRT) nationally, Aja Y. Martinez made a case for counterstory as a central methodology of CRT. This second edition of Counterstory confirms Martinez's argument by engaging in new research from the archive of CRT founder Derrick Bell. In this edition, CRT's foundational method is established as an essential tool for marginalized voices. It features a new foreword and afterword (respectively) by CRT luminaries Daniel G. Sol rzano and Jean Stefancic, a post-2020 prologue and epilogue by the author, revised appendixes with lesson plans and syllabi, undergraduate student counterstory examples, and more. Martinez provides instructional and inspirational examples of how CRT theories and methods can inform teaching, research, and writing in challenging times. CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric Series.

Explores the lives and intellectual influences of the creators of Critical Race Theory Critical race theory (CRT), a vital movement and discipline in American legal scholarship, has transformed our understanding of systemic racism. Yet despite insightful analysis revealing the threads of racism embedded in American institutions and society, it has been demonized by opponents at every turn, with numerous state legislators now seeking to ban its use in the classroom. The Origins of Critical Race Theory weaves together the many sources of critical race theory, recounting the origin story for one of the most insightful and controversial academic movements in U. S. history. In addition to introducing readers to the tenets and key insights of critical race theory, Martinez and Smith explore the lives and intellectual influences of the movement's founders, shedding light on how the many components of critical race theory eventually formed into a movement. Through archival research and interviews with scholars like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and Jean Stefancic, Aja Y. Martinez and Robert O. Smith provide the personal side of critical race theory. They reveal that despite the Marxist menace it has recently been made out to be, critical race theory is an organic extension of the Civil Rights movement, a deeply human and deeply American response to ongoing systemic injustice and inequity. An insightful exploration into the story of a movement, The Origins of Critical Race Theory narrates the hidden influences, fascinating characters, and intellectual struggles that informed critical race theory's inception.