LAUSR

ABSTRACT While research has called attention to the phenomena of a link between school and prison for many Black students in the United States, there has been much less examination of the direct impact to Black families, in this case Black mothers. This paper seeks to center the stories of Black mothers to provide a specific type of sense making around Black children and school suspensions that often goes unheard in educational research and the broader terrains of schooling and society at-large. Through the experiences of five Black mothers, this paper sheds light on the overwhelming stress and trauma that comes from being a Black parent in an education system that is implicitly, and in some cases explicitly, pushing Black children out. The authors’ analysis of these experiences unearths the ways in which school discipline constructs, particularly out-of-school suspension, reproduce historical trauma as well as illustrate the ways that these Black mothers resist antiblackness and the suspension of their Black children.