Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Date

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Education

Committee Chair

Beverly Cross

Committee Member

Brian Wright

Committee Member

Steven Nelson

Abstract

Abstract This qualitative study examined how three Black fathers in South Memphis's Foote Park/Foote Homes redevelopment area navigated school access for their children amid community displacement. Rooted in Community Cultural Wealth Theory (Yosso, 2005), which highlights the diverse forms of capital—aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant—that communities of color possess but are often overlooked by mainstream institutions, the research focused on three individuals: Mister Miles, Mister Otis, and Mister Langston. These pseudonyms honor Miles Davis, Otis Kaye, and Langston Hughes and position the fathers as holders of valuable community wealth whose educational navigation experiences constitute legitimate knowledge. Documentary sources included the South City Urban Renewal Plan (2016), Memphis Housing Authority Board minutes (November 2020), High Ground News/Faber reports (2017), and urban planning scholarship by Reardon and Raciti (2016). Arts-based artifacts—a song, a drawing, and a poem—were analyzed using the See Think Wonder protocol to access linguistic capital that traditional qualitative methods might miss. Guided by Community Cultural Wealth Theory, five key findings emerged: (1) institutional failure to recognize navigational and resistant capital led to a sense of structural erasure, making educational issues invisible in redevelopment discussions; (2) fathers used navigational and resistant capital by strategically choosing non-engagement as a rational response to superficial institutional participation; (3) dispossession was identified as the systematic destruction of community cultural wealth, transforming deliberate educational decision-making rooted in social and navigational capital into reactive processes lacking relational infrastructure; (4) Black fathers demonstrated a full range of community cultural wealth—aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant—challenging the epistemic hierarchy embedded in institutions; and (5) social capital within relational networks served as the main infrastructure for school choice, operating more reliably than institutional channels that failed to recognize community-based knowledge. The study reveals that institutional neglect and erasure of Black fathers’ community cultural wealth—not individual shortcomings—limit educational opportunities. It highlights how institutional documents systematically remove these forms of capital instead of engaging the expertise these fathers offer. The findings have important implications for educational and housing policies, qualitative research methods that utilize arts-based approaches to uncover community cultural wealth, and practitioner engagement with displaced communities whose assets remain intact despite adverse institutional conditions. Keywords: Black fatherhood, school access, community displacement, public housing, epistemic hierarchy, temporal dispossession, arts-based research, community epistemology, Community Cultural Wealth, South Memphis, Foote Homes

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest/Clarivate.

Notes

Open Access

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