"We Had Made History": Black Texas Girls, School Desegregation, and the Expansion of Femininity in 1970s America.

Historians studying the implementation of school desegregation have largely examined it as a racial issue with little relationship to gender or socioeconomic status, rendering monolithic the experiences of Black students. The experiences of Black girls who desegregated, I contend, stand to nuance these narratives. Drawing on original oral history interviews and extensive archival research, I consider which Black girls became homecoming court members, homecoming queens, cheerleaders, pregnant students, and young mothers across the 1970s in majority-non-Black, desegregating schools in Waco, Texas. I highlight the marked determination of Black Waco girls in newly desegregated schools, asserting that they were visionaries who expanded white notions of femininity and capability. This part of a larger project demonstrates how these Black girls employed tenacity to achieve their goals and audacity in believing they could hold titles routinely reserved for their white girl counterparts. Experimenting with and consequently redefining femininity on their terms, Black Waco girls, I argue, destabilized hegemonic notions of femininity to craft a more holistic, representative, and assertive brand that could recognize their labor and significance; they did so by defiantly envisioning themselves as capable, beautiful, and feminine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]