Another Halloween has dawned upon us.
Depending on how you look at it, Halloween a time for children of all ages to dress up and have fun collecting candy on a crisp fall evening or it can be a time for parents to regular a child’s sugar intake at the conclusion of trick-or-treating. Halloween may be considered the unofficial start of the holiday season or just another day on the calendar.
At the very least, most Americans like Halloween. According to a 2021 poll, most Americans like Halloween and roughly a quarter of American citizens say that Halloween is their favorite “holiday.” What is most interesting about that poll is that Halloween is more beloved by white people versus Black people.
Considering the deep religiosity of Black people, and the roots of Halloween as the opened portal between the lands of the living and the dead, it’s no wonder that more Black people don’t celebrate Halloween when compared to the overall American public.
However, Halloween, being a time where people dress up as their favorite characters, heroes or foods even, offers educators an opportunity to teach Black resistance. Black resistance is the active work to prevent or subvert ongoing oppression of Black people in a systemically racist society. What does Black resistance have to do with Halloween? I am glad you asked.
Anytime is a great time to teach about Black history and specifically about Black resistance. When Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week, which would become Black History Month, it was his expectation that the observance would be a time where students would recount all the lessons they learned on Black history throughout the year.
Sadly, too many schools and educators relegate Black history to February. Depending on the policies of any given state, Black history may not even be taught at all, but I digress.
If fulfilling Woodson’s expectation is the goal—AND IT MUST BE—educators must use every opportunity on the calendar to teach Black history and Black resistance. Here is the connection to Halloween: Black people dressed up not to get candy, but to get their freedom—some in Philadelphia no less. You could say that they played a trick to get a treat.
There was Ellen Craft.
She and her husband William devised a plan to escape their enslavement. Ellen, who was fair skinned, dressed as a white man and William pretended to be her enslaved person. They escaped from Georgia, arriving to Philadelphia and sailing to London in 1850, where they lived happily and free the rest of their days.
There was also Anna Maria Weems.
She was enslaved in Maryland, although her father was a free Black man and experienced family separation as a result of her captors fledgling finances. At the age of 15, she escaped her master but was stuck at a stop on the Underground Railroad. Her only way to find freedom for good was to dress as “Mr. Joe Wright,” a stage coach driver and ride with her conductor out of Washington D.C. She did, arriving at the doorstep of Mr. William Still in Philadelphia in 1855.
Then, there was Robert Smalls.
An enslaved worker on a Confederate warship, Smalls took advantage of his family, and all the families of the enslaved workers, being on board while the ship’s captain and crew were in Charleston S.C. for a night on the town. Smalls dressed as the ship’s captain, mimicked his mannerisms and guided the ship overnight to union waters where he and all others aboard were liberated by Union soldiers.
These are just some of the stories of Black resistance where Black people had to dress up to secure their own freedom. These examples go to show that there is a way for educators to use a day like Halloween, or any day, to infuse Black history within their lesson plans.
In light of the politics, to do so is an act of resistance all its own.
