James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators, and most southern school officials--conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires.
In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.
While white residents of antebellum Boston and New Haven forcefully opposed the education of black residents, their counterparts in slaveholding Baltimore did little to resist the establishment of African American schools. Such discrepancies, Hilary Moss argues, suggest that white opposition to black education was not a foregone conclusion. Through the comparative lenses of these three cities, she shows why opposition erupted where it did across the United States during the same period that gave rise to public education. As common schooling emerged in the 1830s, providing white children of all classes and ethnicities with the opportunity to become full-fledged citizens, it redefined citizenship as synonymous with whiteness. This link between school and American identity, Moss argues, increased white hostility to black education at the same time that it spurred African Americans to demand public schooling as a means of securing status as full and equal members of society. Shedding new light on the efforts of black Americans to learn independently in the face of white attempts to withhold opportunity, Schooling Citizens narrates a previously untold chapter in the thorny history of America’s educational inequality.
African American Males in Education: Researching the Convergence of Race and Identity addresses a number of research gaps. This book emerges at a time when new social dynamics of race and other identities are shaping, but also shaped by, education. Educational settings consistently perpetuate racial and other forms of privilege among students, personnel, and other participants in education. For instance, differential access to social networks still visibly cluster by race, continuing the work of systemic privilege by promoting outcome inequalities in education and society. The issues defining the relationship between African American males and education remain complex. Although there has been substantial discussion about the plight of African American male participants and personnel in education, only modest attempts have been made to center analysis of identity and identity intersections in the discourse. Additionally, more attention to African American male teachers and faculty is needed in light of their unique cultural experiences in educational settings and expectations to mentor and/or socialize other African Americans, particularly males.
The Encyclopedia of African American Education covers educational institutions at every level, from preschool through graduate and professional training, with special attention to historically black and predominantly black colleges and universities. Other entries cover individuals, organizations, associations, and publications that have had a significant impact on African American education. The Encyclopedia also presents information on public policy affecting the education of African Americans, including both court decisions and legislation. It includes a discussion of curriculum, concepts, theories, and alternative models of education, and addresses the topics of gender and sexual orientation, religion, and the media. The Encyclopedia also includes a Reader's Guide, provided to help readers find entries on related topics. It classifies entries in sixteen categories: " Alternative Educational Models " Associations and Organizations " Biographies " Collegiate Education " Curriculum " Economics " Gender " Graduate and Professional Education " Historically Black Colleges and Universities " Legal Cases " Pre-Collegiate Education " Psychology and Human Development " Public Policy " Publications " Religious Institutions " Segregation/Desegregation. Some entries appear in more than one category. This two-volume reference work will be an invaluable resource not only for educators and students but for all readers who seek an understanding of African American education both historically and in the 21st century.
In the years immediately following the Civil War_the formative years for an emerging society of freed African Americans in Mississippi_there was much debate over the general purpose of black schools and who would control them. From Cotton Field to Scho
Tracing the first two decades of state-funded African American schools, Educational Reconstruction addresses the ways in which black Richmonders, black Mobilians, and their white allies created, developed, and sustained a system of African American schools following the Civil War. Hilary Green proposes a new chronology in understanding postwar African American education, examining how urban African Americans demanded quality public schools from their new city and state partners. Revealing the significant gains made after the departure of the Freedmen’s Bureau, this study reevaluates African American higher education in terms of developing a cadre of public school educator-activists and highlights the centrality of urban African American protest in shaping educational decisions and policies in their respective cities and states.
This Handbook received an honorable mention at the 2009 PROSE Awards. The PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories. "This volume fills the tremendous void that currently exists in providing a much-needed lens for cultural leadership and proficiency. The approach provides a wide divergence of perspectives on African American forms of leadership in a variety of diverse leadership settings." —Len Foster, Washington State University The SAGE Handbook of African American Education is a unique, comprehensive collection of theoretical and empirical scholarship in six important areas: historical perspectives, teaching and learning, PK–12 school leadership, higher education, current issues, and education policy. The purpose of the Handbook is to articulate perspectives on issues affecting the participation and leadership of African Americans in PK–12 and postsecondary education. This volume also addresses historical and current issues affecting the education of African Americans and discusses current and future school reform efforts that directly affect this group. Key Features Promotes inquiry and development of questions, ideas, and dialogue about critical practice, theory, and research on African Americans in the United States educational system Makes significant contributions to the scholarship on African Americans in the broad context of U.S. education and society Addresses the central question—in what ways do African Americans in corporate, private, and public positions influence and shape educational policy that affects African Americans? "The SAGE Handbook of African American Education is a unique, comprehensive collection of theoretical and empirical scholarship in six important areas: historical perspectives, teaching and learning, Pre-K-12 school leadership, higher education, current issues, and education policy." —TEACHERS OF COLOR "A wise scientist once argued that to doubt everything or to believe everything often results in the same solution set; both eliminate the need for reflection. This handbook provides an intellectual space for those interested in true reflection on the human ecology of the African American experience in schools, communities, and society. The /Handbook of African American Education/ is a repository of information developed to advance the human service professional." —William F. Tate IV, Washington University in St. Louis "This handbook represents the most comprehensive collection of research on African Americans in education to date. Its breadth spans the historical, the political, institutional and community forces that have shaped educational opportunities and attainment among African Americans. The review of extant research on a range of topics from the role of culture and identity in learning, teacher preparation, educational leadership, to higher education and educational policy is far-reaching and cutting edge. This volume has historic significance and will become a classic collection on African American education for scholars and practitioners alike." —Carol D. Lee, Professor, Northwestern University Vice-President, Division G, American Educational Research Association "This handbook is needed as a basic reference for professors and graduate students conducting research on the education of Blacks in America." —Frank Brown, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A fresh portrayal of one of the architects of the African American intellectual tradition, whose faith in the subversive power of education will inspire teachers and learners today. Black education was a subversive act from its inception. African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. They developed what Jarvis Givens calls a tradition of “fugitive pedagogy”—a theory and practice of Black education in America. The enslaved learned to read in spite of widespread prohibitions; newly emancipated people braved the dangers of integrating all-White schools and the hardships of building Black schools. Teachers developed covert instructional strategies, creative responses to the persistence of White opposition. From slavery through the Jim Crow era, Black people passed down this educational heritage. There is perhaps no better exemplar of this heritage than Carter G. Woodson—groundbreaking historian, founder of Black History Month, and legendary educator under Jim Crow. Givens shows that Woodson succeeded because of the world of Black teachers to which he belonged: Woodson’s first teachers were his formerly enslaved uncles; he himself taught for nearly thirty years; and he spent his life partnering with educators to transform the lives of Black students. Fugitive Pedagogy chronicles Woodson’s efforts to fight against the “mis-education of the Negro” by helping teachers and students to see themselves and their mission as set apart from an anti-Black world. Teachers, students, families, and communities worked together, using Woodson’s materials and methods as they fought for power in schools and continued the work of fugitive pedagogy. Forged in slavery, embodied by Woodson, this tradition of escape remains essential for teachers and students today.
Education as Freedom is a groundbreaking edited text that documents and reexamines African-American empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions to knowledge-making, teaching, and learning and American education from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century, a dynamic period of African-American educational thought and activism. Education as Freedom is a long awaited text that historicizes the current racial achievement gap as well as illuminates the myriad of African American voices and actions to define the purpose of education and to push the limits of the democratic experiment in the United States.
