By Vanessa Williams

…because Black stories deserve to be told. Period.

Walking into the front office of Hayfield Secondary School (FCPS), you’re greeted warmly by the office assistant and with cold-looking portraits of the past administrative staff at the school. Nestled in a classroom inconspicuously on the second floor, Ms. Ariel Alford is prepared to launch into a lesson on Black Lives Matter from an international perspective, focusing that day on Denmark. Current and former students start trickling into the room before class starts, greeting Alford with elation, wanting to know how the Black Student Union flower sale went the previous week. Every student I spoke with in this African American History elective course identifies as a part of the African diaspora – some say they’re African American, others identify as Black, while a few can pinpoint from where on the continent they hail. All of them have stories to tell and want them amplified. 

Enter Black@Hayfield.

Black@Hayfield, explained

The photojournalism project began in January 2022 as a way of participating in Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action held from Jan. 31 - Feb 4. Beginning with a study of Black photojournalists Gordon Parks and Andre D. Wagner, the class considered the place photography has in Black history and culture. They explored the idea that the camera could serve as a weapon and looked to exemplar photo collages to better understand how powerful photojournalism can be in exposing social injustice or reifying the humanity of people. 

We explored the importance of BLACK people, telling BLACK stories that center BLACK humanity.

Drawing from Humans of New York, Black@Hayfield is designed to get as intimate an understanding of the Black experience at Hayfield Secondary School as possible. Students interviewed one another, faculty, and staff at the school about their experiences at Hayfield, and imparted advice and offered up insight about how they navigate being a part of this school community. Stories ranged from uplifting the importance of supporting small Black businesses and greater Black liberation through economic reform to one student’s feelings of isolation on team sports, to another’s feeling embraced on team sports. There is uniqueness in all of their perspectives and universality in the common threads many of the students touched on.

13 guiding principles and national demands

In speaking with students about the inspiration behind their projects and reading through the final products, the necessity of the Black Lives Matter at School guiding principles and demands was increasingly evident. Students organically arrived at the conclusions that:

1. They want more Black teachers hired and to have a culture that retains them.

2. They recognize the role Black women in particular have in enriching their schooling and educational experience.

Yeah, I can count on one hand how many Black teachers there are at Hayfield. 
— An 11th grader at Hayfield

Students voiced that they’ve only had a few Black teachers, and none of them were Black women. They noted how much they appreciate the personal connection Black educators bring to studying all subject matters, but especially to history like the Harlem Renaissance, and the sensitivity they bring to learning about chattel enslavement. Students reflected how powerful it is to their self-confidence and place at Hayfield, explaining,

Not seeing enough people who resemble me in positions of power gives me a slight sense of doubt, and it doesn’t help keep me as motivated as I need to be in order to achieve higher goals.

Black Teachers at Hayfield Weigh In

This uplifting of Black educators by students is especially poignant (and telling) that they chose to better understand the perspectives of Black educators in their community. While the students are the center of this photojournalism project – often serving as the interviewers, interviewees, and photographers behind the posts – they learned more about and amplified the perspectives of Black educators at Hayfield because they, too, are community members of Black@Hayfield and are so crucial to Black culture at the school. Black educators at Hayfield discussed racist comments they’ve received about their hair from white colleagues, who may have felt emboldened to make racist remarks because they knew there likely wouldn’t be consequences. 

Cottoms, an English teacher at Hayfield, shared about how powerful it would be to her middle school self to have had someone like her as an English teacher:

The representation of being a young Black female goes a long way with the students being able to see somebody in this position. I wish I had ‘me’ when I was in middle school. Had I been able to see a teacher that looked like me, I would have felt like I could do what I’m doing now.

Realities exposed, realities imagined

The teacher behind the project offered up insightful reflections about her ultimate vision and confidence in realizing Black liberation.

Alford shared:

Black Liberation is inevitable - we have no choice but to win, you know what I’m saying? The reality that we want, this is something that Dr. Carr use to say to us: ‘The reality that we want, we can build… we just have to build it.’ So its like, if we start to get organized and start thinking about what liberation looks like for African people on this planet then we can build it, but it's gonna require us to do it. Nobody is going to do it for us because there are no incentives for anyone else to do it. We have to do it. Black Liberation is inevitable, at least I live like that. I walk around everyday as if Black Liberation is here already. I know we’re gonna win because we have no choice but to win.

Alford coaches her students to situate themselves in the fight for justice interpersonally, in the greater Hayfield community, and on a global scale. In Black@Hayfield, Alford orchestrated a project that honors Black student voices at the school as they learn about their unique perspectives and the interconnectedness of the African diaspora. While the perspectives and solutions of the subjects for Black@Hayfield varied, the real power in the project is rooted in how their stories were told. Students got to be both behind the camera and in front of it. They grabbed the mic and passed it to others. Alford invited – insisted – on students having their stories told how they wanted them to be told and exposed the complexity of the Black experience.

See this folder for Alford’s teaching resources for Black@Hayfield.

Check out more photos from the class visit.

Ariel Simone Alford is a high school social studies teacher at Hayfield Secondary School and a member of the DCAESJ secondary working group. You can follow her on Instagram at @educationandliberation

Vanessa Williams is a Program Manager for D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice.