Within the last five years, Black Education researchers have moved from the pervasiveness of Black suffering in academic spaces towards centering Black life in educational narratives (Warren, Coles, Jenkins, 2024). In the current sociopolitical climate, with the potential dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, growing book bans, and increasing classroom censorship, English classrooms and educators are at risk of perpetuating the same narrative of Black suffering instead of Black humanity. Although the Review of Educational Research (RER) has both articles chronicling the nuances of Black educational experiences (redlining, racial identity development, etc.) and exploring Black humanity across multiple disciplines (math, history, and STEM education), there are no systematic reviews on nurturing Black humanity in modern high school English classrooms. All RER Black English Education references are niche (children’s literature) or outdated (1970s). This article aims to answer the question: “How do high school English classroom settings tend to Black students’ humanity?” Five databases and eight journals were searched to conduct a rigorous literature review of Black student experiences in high school ELA classrooms (N= 20). Utilizing theoretical frameworks from Black + Humanity (Warren et al., 2024) and the four proposed modalities, the author explores the BlackCentric-Refusals quadrant to find the main codes/themes: interpersonal opportunity, instructional opportunity, and institutional opportunity (Gray et al., 2018). The significance of this study is to explore how English education can better center unapologetic Black educational futures.

Keywords: Black Humanity, Black Educational Futures, Black Education, English Education, Black literacy, High School English.