Christina Research Seminar (SKY Advanced Research Seminar) on Tuesday 11 February at 16-18. You are warmly welcome!

Venue: Lecture hall C120, Unioninkatu 38 (Topelia)

11.2. Associate Professor Kris Clarke (University of Helsinki):
Black Feminist Trailblazers In Community Organizing: What Social Workers Can Learn From The Life Stories Of Maggie Lena Walker And Mattie B. Meyers

Life story research centers how individual experiences interact with, relate to, challenge and resist broader social historical narratives. My talk explores the life stories of African American community leaders, Maggie Lena Walker and Mattie B. Meyers, as exemplars of Black feminist community social work. While the field of western social work generally traces its origin to the work of Mary Richmond and Jane Addams, there has been little recognition of the contributions of Black feminist intersectional community leadership to collective social justice and community organizing theory and practice. Maggie Lena Walker was an African American teacher and businesswoman who organized the Independent Order of St Luke, a mutual benefit society that focused on supporting financial independence during the Jim Crow era in Richmond, Virginia. Mattie B. Meyers was a teacher and NAACP organizer who fought to enhance racial equity in Fresno, California schools. In examining the context of their life stories, I trace how Walker and Meyers’s organizing approaches and techniques reflect Black feminist principles of relationality and intersectionality that provide an important conceptual and practical insight into structural social work.

Bio

Kris Clarke is an associate professor of social work in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. Originally from Fresno, California, she has lived in Finland for over 20 years. Clarke’s research interests center on decolonization, critical social work, and the significance of place and social memory.