College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Term of Award

Summer 2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

College of Education

Committee Chair

Ming Fang He

Committee Member 1

Peggy Shannon-Baker

Committee Member 2

Alma Stevenson

Committee Member 3

Delandrea Hall

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Black women demonstrate resilience, perseverance, and agency while navigating and resisting historically exclusionary systems through everyday acts of survival, meaning making, and community. Grounded in Womanist theoretical traditions as articulated by Layli Phillips/Maparyan (2006, 2012), Clenora Hudson-Weems (1993), Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi (1985), Alice Walker (1983), bell hooks (1990, 1993, 2014), Audre Lorde (1984), and the Combahee River Collective (1977), the study centers Black women’s lived experiences as vital sources of knowledge about resilience, persistence, and resistance to oppression. Black Womanist Testimony is my methodology, which builds on Chicana/o Latina/o Testimonio (Delgado & Villalpando, 2002; Brabeck, 2003), Black Feminist Testimony (Baszile, 2008), Black Feminist–Womanist storytelling (Baker-Bell, 2017), and Endarkened Storywork (Toliver, 2022) grounded in Endarkened Feminist Epistemology (Dillard, 2000, 2008, 2011). Six main findings have emerged from my dissertation inquiry: (1) Black women’s struggles for their identities, healings, and agencies, and their engagement in resilience and resistance strategies against oppression empower them to recognize, affirm, and uplift their lived realities and invigorate their existence. (2) Black women need more than survival mechanisms against racism and sexism; they need to engage in self-care and radical love as forms of resistance against emotional burdens and expectations of self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and caretaking of others at the expense of their personal well-being. (3) Womanism empowers Black women as they engage in communion praxes of healing, resistance, and resilience. (4) Employing testimony as a form of inquiry transgresses traditional methodological boundaries and empowers the voices of the silenced, marginalized, and neglected Black women. (5) It is extremely important to create spaces, places, and communions where Black women can still thrive despite their experience of discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion in their daily lives that undermine their intellect, confidence, sense of belonging, and mental health. (6) To cultivate their emancipatory sisterhoods and existence, Black women must critically examine their lives, heal their souls, and create possibilities to reimagine their futurities.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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