RACE, POWER, MULTIPOSITIONALITY.

To understand the relationship between social position and social change, this essay examines the multipositionality of the black schoolteacher, and through it the relationship between race and power. The autobiographical writings of black teachers who worked in the American South between 1890 and 1950 uniquely reveal the complex relationship between power and culture in this phase of American history, and illustrate the ways in which subordinated people used varied tools in order to shift the vectors of power, and thus the limits of their social status as subaltern citizens. The result is a more textured view of black teachers, which rejects simple constructions of teachers as uni-dimensional individuals capable of a 'single' consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]