Jana Johnson-Davis, a 2024 alum of the PhD in Leadership and Change program at Antioch University, has written and published her dissertation titled, Homeplace: An Afterschool Club for Adolescent Black Girls at a Predominantly White Middle School.
Adolescent Black girls often experience marginalization in schools due to zero-tolerance policies, oppressive classroom curricula, and teachers who lack cultural competency. The literature on adolescent Black girls in school revealed that there are spaces within schools that can serve as homeplaces for Black girls. Johnson-Davis’s research expands on Bell Hooks’s 2001 theory of homeplace, from the home environment to school buildings. Through narrative and interview data Johnson-Davis analyzed used thematic analysis in her dissertation using a theoretical lens of Black feminist thought.
Her study explores how adolescent Black girls experience homeplace in an afterschool club at a predominantly white middle school in Decatur, Georgia. Powerful findings revealed that during their participation in the afterschool club, the study’s participants experienced homeplace through a sense of belonging, experiences that provided them the opportunity to grow and develop, and access to caring Black women who facilitated a safe space that the girls needed.
Johnson-Davis is a dedicated activist-educator and is currently in her second term as a school board member in Decatur, Georgia. She has committed over 14 years as a special education teacher, focusing on students who have traditionally been marginalized in school. Her passion for empowering young minds extends to her previous role as a co-sponsor of a middle school girls’ club, whose membership comprised African American girls and girls from the local African immigrant community. Among her many accolades, she has received the Outstanding Georgia Citizen Award from the State of Georgia, the Nikki T. Randall Servant Leader Award from the Women’s Caucus of the Georgia House of Representatives, the DeKalb Volunteer Lawyer’s Foundation Good Citizen Award, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s Phyllis Thomas Blake Excellence in Civic Engagement Award, and the 2024 Gideon’s Promise Community Impact Award.
In addition to her professional endeavors, Johnson-Davis is a co-founder of the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, the organization that played a key role in the movement to successfully remove the Confederate Monument from Decatur Square. Johnson-Davis was also a primary organizer of the Georgia Coalition 2 Save Lives, where she led the Loved Ones, Not Numbers campaign to humanize Georgia’s COVID-19 victims and organized protests that advocated for increased police accountability.
Her professional goal is to elevate the experiences of Black girls in schools and to educate school systems, educational policy leaders, educators, and parents on the critical need for Black girls to have access to a supportive and affirming “homeplace” within educational settings.
Read and download Johnson-Davis’ dissertation, Homeplace: An Afterschool Club for Adolescent Black Girls at a Predominantly White Middle School.
