Determinants of Resilenece: How Black Students in Greenville, South Carolina Navigated the School Desegregation Process

This replication study explores the oral histories of Black community members in Greenville County, focusing on the cultural capital Black students utilized to navigate school desegregation in Greenville, SC. Using oral history methodology, the research addresses the fol-lowing questions: What forms of capital existed in the segregated Black communities of Green-ville County? How did these forms of cultural capital support Black students during the school desegregation process? The study also incorporates literature on Black history, Black education, critical epistemologies, and community cultural wealth to challenge the notion that Black stu-dents enter educational institutions with a cultural deficit. By applying community cultural wealth as a theoretical framework, the study aims to ameliorate the traditional historical narra-tive of Black education and demonstrate that solutions to many of the educational challenges facing Black students can be found within oral histories in Black communities. The findings from this study reveal that Greenville’s Black students had access to di-verse forms of cultural capital as they navigated desegregation. Furthermore, these students were influenced by the high expectations set by Black teachers and community members, the strong guidance from their segregated Black teachers, and the unintended consequences of Jim Crow segregation. The dissertation concludes that the narrators possessed significant forms of cultural capital when they entered educational institutions. The implications of these findings are also discussed.