Food for Starved Minds: The Mobilization of African-Americans for Education

Abstract

From the days of their enslavement to the present, African-Americans have expressed the belief that education could and would play a key role in their eventual liberation. While various definitions of liberation have been espoused over time and across ideological groupings, the idea that education wields great power in the ongoing struggle to overcome oppressive conditions has been surprisingly consistent. The intensity of this belief has been illustrated by the enslaved African-Americans who risked their lives to learn to read, the impoverished communities that pooled their resources to build schools, the parents who organized to reform public schools, and even the black revolutionary groups that established their own schools. Mobilization for education has been an ever-present element of African-American political action.