Abstract
For blacks in America, no single issue has greater salience than that of education. At the same time, no goal has been more fractious and recalcitrant than that of educational equality in America. In a country that prides itself on concepts of opportunity, uplift through education has proved particularly thorny. If you are a person of color and/or poor, the odds for inequality increase. Equal educational opportunity provided through government-funded schools is more a myth than a reality, and in the twenty-first century, the solutions seem increasingly intractable. Our public schools are still segregated and unequal, more than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education declared this unconstitutional. We know that quality education is fundamental to success, but we seem unable to provide it as a basic societal good across race and class.
BOND: Have you any idea of how we as a whole society, how can we foster, create and nurture leaders for the future? What can we do we’re not doing now?
BRAUN: Education, education, education, education. … The whole ideal of quality universal public education is… very much at risk now.1—Carol Moseley Braun
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Notes
William Raspberry, Explorations in Black Leadership, Biographical Details of Leadership, Discovering a Personal Career Path; “William Raspberry,” in ContemporaryAuthors Online (Farmington Mills, MI: The Gale Group, 2002).
Johnnetta B. Cole, Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 6–7, 10.
Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989), 43–44; Cole, Conversations, 12.
Mary Hatwood Futrell, “Mama and Miss Jordan,” Reader’s Digest 135 (Jul. 1989). 75.
Jean Hunter, “For the VEA President Opportunity Comes Wearing Overalls,” Virginia Journal of Education. Vol. 70, No. 1 (Sept. 1976). 14.
Geoffrey Canada, Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995) is Canada’s first-hand account of his early life experiences in the South Bronx.
Henry Allen Bullock, A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619 to the Present (New York: Praeger, 1967), 3.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilmma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Vol. II (New York: Harper Brothers, 1944), 887; Bullock, Negro Education in the South, 11–12. See also http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/expe rience/education/history.html
V. P. Franklin, Black Self-Determination: A Cultural History of African American Resistance (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992), 164.
Adam Fairclough, “‘Being in the Field of Education and also Being a Negro… Seems … Tragic’: Black Education in the Jim Crow South,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 1 (June 2000), 67. See also V. P. Franklin, Black Self-Determination, 147–185.
Adam Fairclough, Teaching Equality: Black Schools in theAge of Jim Crow (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 3. The famous educational philosopher Paulo Freire argued that educational pedagogies in the United States and elsewhere around the globe, structured around capitalist values, continue to treat the underclasses as disposable and expendable, thereby perpetuating inequality.
See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra B. Ramos (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970).
V. P. Franklin, “Introduction,” in V. P. Franklin and Carter Julian Savage, eds., Cultural Capital and Black Education (Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2004), xii.
Carter Julian Savage, “Cultural Capital and African-American Agency: The Economic Struggle for Effective Education for African Americans in Franklin, Tennessee, 1890–1967,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 88 (Spring 2002), 208.
See also Paul David Phillips, “Education of Blacks in Tennessee during Reconstruction, 1865–1870” and Dorothy Granberry, “Origins of an African American School in Haywood County,” in Carroll Van West, ed., Trial and Triumph: Essays in Tennessee’s African American History (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 145–183; Franklin, Black Self-Determination, 147–185; Franklin, “Introduction,” Cultural Capital and Black Education, xiv.
Horace Mann Bond, “The Negro Elementary School and the Cultural Pattern,” Journal of Educational Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 8 (Apr. 1940), 480;
Adam Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 14.
For further discussion of this issue, see Michael Fultz, “Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation,” Libraries and the Cultural Record, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Summer 2006), 338–359
and Michael Fultz, “Teacher Training and African American Education in the South, 1900–1940,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Spring 1995), 196–210.
William H. Watkins, “Reclaiming Historical Visions of Quality Schooling: The Legacy of Early 20th-Century Black Intellectuals,” in Mwalimu Shujaa, ed., Beyond Desegregation: The Politics of Quality in African American Schooling (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc., 1996), 6–26. In 1895, Mary Church Terrell became the first African American and one of two women to serve on the Board of Education in the District of Columbia.
See Beverly Washington Jones, Quest for Equality: The Life and Writings of Mary Eliza Church Terrell, 1864–1954 (New York: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1990), 48.
In his famous 1895 Atlanta speech, Washington said: “To those of my race … who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man.… I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are,—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions….Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands. … No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.” See Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1965), 98; 139–40 [quote]; Myrdal, American Dilemma, II, 889.
Vanessa Siddle-Walker, “Valued Segregated Schools for African-American Children in the South, 1935–1969: A Review of Common Themes and Characteristics,” Review of Educational Research, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Autumn 2000), 259.
See, for example, Vivian Gunn Morris and Curtis L. Morris, The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002);
Vivian Gunn Morris and Curtis L. Morris, Creating Caring and Nurturing Educational Environments for African American Children (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2000);
David S. Cecelski, Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black Schools in the South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994);
Siddle Walker, “Valued Segregated Schools for African American Children in the South, 1935–1969,” Review of Educational Research, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000), 253–285;
Lauri Johnson, “A Generation of Women Activists: African American Female Educators in Harlem, 1930–1950,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 89. No. 3 (Summer 2004). 223–240.
Ibid., 271–274. See also Van Dempsey and George Noblit, “Cultural Ignorance and School Desegregation, A Community Narrative,” in Mwalimu J. Shujaa, ed., Beyond Desegregation: The Politics of Quality in African American Schooling (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1996), 115 ff; Morris, The Price They Paid, 94–109; Morris, Creating Caring and Nurturing Cultural Environments.
Paulo Freire, the Brazilian Marxist philosopher, argued for a “pedagogy of love” as a means to overcome capitalist oppressive systems of education. Such a pedagogy could lead to liberation and societal transformation if networks of parents, teachers, and community members came together to reinforce a set of common values. The human values he stressed for effective learning included humility, courage, self-confidence, self-respect, and respect for others. In effect, he was describing what occurred in many of these segregated communities. See Antonia Darder, Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002), 45–49.
Steven E Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1968 (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 117–119.
Fairclough, A Class of Their Own, 309–353. Fairclough contends that some of the teachers were bullied into silence, as the NAACP launched their judicial strategies. See Adam Fairclough, “The Costs of Brown: Black Teachers and School Integration,” Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 1 (June 2004), 51 ff.
Aldon Morris and Naomi Braine, “Social Movements and Consciousness,” in Jane Mansbridge and Aldon Morris, eds., Oppositional Consciousness: The Subjective Roots of Social Protest (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 25.
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 2.
Sabrina Hope King, “The Limited Presence of African-American Teachers,” Review of Educational Research, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer 1993), 119.
For discussions of resistance practices, see Myrdal, American Dilemma, II, 750ff; Johnson, “A Generation of Women Activists: African American Female Educators in Harlem, 1930–1950,” The Journal of African American History, 223–240; Vanessa Siddle Walker, “Organized Resistance and Black Educators’ Quest for School Equality, 1878–1938,” Teachers College Record, Vol. 107, No. 3 (Mar. 2005), 355–388; Fairclough, Teaching Equality, 46 ff.
Mary Futrell, Explorations in Black Leadership, Historical Focus on Race, Social Consciousness: Segregation. See also Darrell Laurant, A City Unto Itself: Lynchburg, Virginia in the 20th Century (Lynchburg, VA: Laurant and the News and Advance, 1977), 91–92.
For a fuller treatment of culturally relevant teaching, see Gloria Ladson-Billings, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (San Francisco, CA: Tossev-Bass. 1994).
Patricia A. Edwards, “Before and after School Desegregation: African American Parents’ Involvement in Schools, ” in Shujaa, Beyond Desegregation, 145; see also Michelle Foster, “Education and Socialization: A Review of the Literature,” in William Watkins, James Lewis, and Victoria Chou, Race and Education: The Roles of History and Society in Educating African American Students (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), 200–224; A. Wade Boykin, “Comment: The Challenges of Cultural Socialization in the Schooling of African American Elementary School Children: Exposing the Hidden Curriculum,” in ibid., 190–199; Fairclough, A Class of Their Own. 12.
Edwards, “Before and after School Desegregation, ” in Shujaa, ed., Beyond Desegregation, 142. Kathy Ann Jordan, “Discourses of Difference and the Overrepresentation of Black Students in Special Education,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 90, No. 1/2 (Winter/Spring 2005), 128 ff. As late as 2005, African American children continue to be overrepresented in all 13 legally sanctioned disability categories. Teacher referrals account for more than 80 percent of such placements, leading Jordan to believe that “historical constructions of racial inferiority still seem to prevail.” (p. 131)
Harvey Kantor and Barbara Brenzel, “Urban Education and the ‘Truly Disadvantaged’: The Historical Roots of the Contemporary Crisis, 1945–1990,” Teachers College Record. Vol. 94. No. 2 (Winter 1992). 281–284.
Sheryll Cashin, The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream (New York! public Affairs Press, 2004), 96.
Cathy Cohen and Claire Nee, “Educational Attainment and Sex Differentials in African American Communities,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 43, No. 7 (Apr. 2000), 1196.
Charles Payne, “‘The Whole United States is Southern!’ Brown v. Board and the Mystification of Race,” Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 1 (June 2004), 83–84.
Hrabowski, W. Augustus Low Lecture, May 5, 2004, citing study by R. Roach, “Remediation Reform,” Blacklssues in Higher Education, Vol. 17, No. 12 (August 2000), 16–23
Nancy Feyl Chavkin, “Introduction: Families and the Schools,” in Families and Schools in a Pluralistic Society, ed. Nancy F. Chavkin (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 2.
Horace Mann Bond, “The Present Status of Racial Integration in the United States, with Especial Reference to Education,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer 1952), 246, 249.
There are multiple studies of school system success. See, for example, Tabbye M. Chavous et al., “Racial Identity and Academic Attainment among African American Adolescents,” Child Development, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Jul.–Aug. 2003), 1076–1090; Christine J. Faltz and Donald O. Leake, “The All-Black School: Inherently Unequal or a Culture-Based Alternative?,” in Shujaa, Beyond Desegregation, 227–252; Nancy Feyl Chavkin, “Introduction: Families and the Schools,” in Chavkin, ed., Families and Schools in a Pluralistic Society, 1–17; Dorothy Rich, “Building the Bridge to Reach Minority Parents: Education Infrastructure Supporting Success for All Children,” in Chavkin, ed., Families and Schools in a Pluralistic Society, 235–244.
Paul Tough, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008), 19.
Mary Hatwood Futrell, “Missing, Presumed Lost: The Exodus of Black Teachers,” The Black Collegian, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Mar.-Apr. 1989), 77.
George W. Noblit and Van O. Dempsey, The Social Construction of virtue: The Moral Life of Schools (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), 14, 73–75;
Lani Guinier, The Social Construction of virtue: The Moral Life of Schools (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), 14, 73–75;
Lani Guinier, “From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy,” Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 1 (June 2004), 114.
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© 2014 Phyllis Leffler
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Leffler, P. (2014). Education: Caring Communities. In: Black Leaders on Leadership. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342515_4
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