A Black Girl's Coming of Age in Jim Crow Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT In the late twentieth century, Geraldine L. Wilson emerged as one of the leading voices in early Black childhood education, grounding her pedagogy in Black history and culture. This article traces the origins of her intellectual thought to her girlhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Using historian Jarvis R. Givens' framework of ‘Black student witness’ it examines what Wilson experienced in the city's integrated yet segregated public school system during the 1930s and 1940s, exploring how these educational spaces birthed a Black woman educator and thinker who reimagined a new educational future for Black children.