Black History Month

The life and accomplishments of an influential leader in the desegregated South   This biography of educational activist and Black studies forerunner Bertha Maxwell-Roddey examines a life of remarkable achievements and leadership in the desegregated South. Sonya Ramsey modernizes the nineteenth-century term "race woman" to describe how Maxwell-Roddey and her peers turned hard-won civil rights and feminist milestones into tangible accomplishments in North Carolina and nationwide from the late 1960s to the 1990s.  Born in 1930, Maxwell-Roddey became one of Charlotte's first Black women principals of a white elementary school; she was the founding director of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's Africana Studies Department; and she cofounded the Afro-American Cultural and Service Center, now the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture. Maxwell-Roddey founded the National Council for Black Studies, helping institutionalize the field with what is still its premier professional organization, and served as the 20th National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., one of the most influential Black women's organizations in the United States.  Using oral histories and primary sources that include private records from numerous Black women's home archives, Ramsey illuminates the intersectional leadership strategies used by Maxwell-Roddey and other modern race women to dismantle discriminatory barriers in the classroom and the boardroom. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey offers new insights into desegregation, urban renewal, and the rise of the Black middle class through the lens of a powerful leader's life story.   Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Almost all young children around the world come to formal schooling eager to learn even though this new educational milieu will challenge their intellectual, social, and emotional development. These children often come from a variety of cultural, ethnic, and economic backgrounds that create important differences among them at school entry. These differences have often been used as an excuse by educators for the poor performance of some of these children as they face the demands of school learning. This book traces the transition of a group of poor African-American children in semi-rural North Carolina, who, because of ethnicity and economic circumstances, were at risk for a poor transition to school. Half these children were part of an intensive early daycare intervention program to prepare them for formal schooling and half were not. Through an examination of talk and interviews within their home community and with teachers and peers in the classroom, a portrait is painted of the transition to school of these children and their families. Without purposeful malice from other children or teachers, the children became less successful and more marginalized in the classroom, creating a deceptively benign environment for their less optimal treatment there. This book aims to provide a better understanding of how the culture of the classroom may contribute to children's learning and perception about school, and suggests some helpful strategies for the successful engagement between classroom and child that might create more successful schooling for all children.

A meditation on freedom making in the academy for women scholars of color. Weaving personal narrative with political analysis, Community as Rebellion offers a meditation on creating liberatory spaces for students and faculty of color within academia.  Much like other women scholars of color, Lorgia García Peña has struggled against the colonizing, racializing, classist, and unequal structures that perpetuate systemic violence within universities. Through personal experiences and analytical reflections, the author invites readers--in particular Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian women--to engage in liberatory practices of boycott, abolition, and radical community-building to combat the academic world's tokenizing and exploitative structures. García Peña argues that the classroom is key to freedom-making in the university, urging teachers to consider activism and social justice as central to what she calls "teaching in freedom": a progressive form of collective learning that prioritizes the subjugated knowledge, silenced histories, and epistemologies from the Global South and Indigenous, Black, and brown communities. By teaching in and for freedom, we not only acknowledge the harm that the university has inflicted on our persons and our ways of knowing since its inception, but also create alternative ways to be, create, live, and succeed through our work.

Jim Crow's Pink Slip exposes the decades-long repercussions of a too-little-known result of resistance to the Brown v. Board of Education decision: the systematic dismissal of Black educators from public schools. In 1954, the Supreme Court's Brown decision ended segregated schooling in the United States, but regrettably, as documented in congressional testimony and transcripts, it also ended the careers of a generation of highly qualified and credentialed Black teachers and principals. In the Deep South and northern border states over the decades following Brown, Black schools were illegally closed and Black educators were displaced en masse. As educational policy and leadership expert Leslie T. Fenwick deftly demonstrates, the effects of these changes stand contrary to the democratic ideals of an integrated society and equal educational opportunity for all students. Jim Crow's Pink Slip provides a trenchant account of how tremendous the loss to the US educational system was and continues to be. Despite efforts of the NAACP and other civil rights organizations, congressional hearings during the Nixon administration, and antiracist activism of the 21st century, the problems fomented after Brown persist. The book draws the line from the past injustices to problems that the educational system grapples with today: not simply the underrepresentation of Black teachers and principals, but also salary reductions, teacher shortages, and systemic inequality. By engaging with the complicated legacy of the Brown decision, Fenwick illuminates a crucial chapter in education history. She also offers policy prescriptions aimed at correcting the course of US education, supporting educators, and improving workforce quality and diversity.

Liberation Pedagogy places the work of Elijah Muhammad in an educational context. Drawing from concepts in critical educational theory it introduces to readers the contributions that Elijah Muhammad made to the education of oppressed people. This book offers a liberation pedagogy that educators can use to inspire students.

The story of activist youth in America is usually framed around the Vietnam War, the counterculture, and college campuses, focusing primarily on college students in the 1960s and 1970s. But a remarkably effective tradition of Black high school student activism in the civil rights era has gone understudied. In 1951, students at R. R. Moton High School in rural Virginia led a student walkout and contacted the law firm of Hill, Martin, and Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, to file one of the five pivotal court cases that comprised the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 1960, twenty-four Burke High School students in Charleston, South Carolina, organized the first direct action, nonviolent protest in the city at the downtown S. H. Kress department store. Months later in the small town of McComb, Mississippi, an entire high school walked out in protest of the conviction of a student who sat-in on a local Woolworth lunch counter in 1961, guiding the agenda for the historic Freedom Summer campaign of 1964. A New Kind of Youth brings high school activism into greater focus, illustrating how Black youth supported liberatory social and political movements and inspired their elders across the South.

A timely reconsideration of the history of the profession, Outside Literary Studies investigates how midcentury Black writers built a critical practice tuned to the struggle against racism and colonialism.   This striking contribution to Black literary studies examines the practices of Black writers in the mid-twentieth century to revise our understanding of the institutionalization of literary studies in America. Andy Hines uncovers a vibrant history of interpretive resistance to university-based New Criticism by Black writers of the American left. These include well-known figures such as Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry as well as still underappreciated writers like Melvin B. Tolson and Doxey Wilkerson. In their critical practice, these and other Black writers levied their critique from "outside" venues: behind the closed doors of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in the classroom at a communist labor school under FBI surveillance, and in a host of journals. From these vantages, Black writers not only called out the racist assumptions of the New Criticism, but also defined Black literary and interpretive practices to support communist and other radical world-making efforts in the mid-twentieth century. Hines's book thus offers a number of urgent contributions to literary studies: it spotlights a canon of Black literary texts that belong to an important era of anti-racist struggle, and it fills in the pre-history of the rise of Black studies and of ongoing Black dissent against the neoliberal university.

Drawing from the lived experiences of Black parents as they engaged with their children's K-12 schools, this book brings a critical race theory (CRT) analysis to family-school partnerships. The author examines persistent racism and white supremacy at school, Black parents' resistance, and ways school communities can engage in more authentic partnerships with Black and Brown families. The children in this study attended schools with varying demographics and reputations. Their parents were engaged in these schools in the highly visible ways educators and policymakers traditionally say are important for children's education, such as proactively communicating with teachers, helping with homework, and joining PTOs. The author argues that, because of the relentless racism Black families experience in schools, educators must depart from race-evasive approaches and commit to more liberatory family-school partnerships. Book Features: Includes an introduction to CRT and explains how it informed this study. Draws from Derrick Bell's notion of racial realism to make sense of Black parent participants advocating for high-quality education in the context of persistent anti-Black racism. Examines how Black parents resisted individualism and were, instead, committed to improving the education of all marginalized children. Shows how white supremacy operated in shared school governance despite schools having inclusive practices. Explores how anxiety and stress caused by the Trump presidency impacted parents' school engagement. Describes three ways any school community can develop family-school partnerships for collective educational justice.

Sister Resisters advances a robust model of mentorship in support of young Black women on campus. The book offers a multifaceted approach to cross-racial mentoring in higher education that promises growth and change for both mentees and their mentors. Janie Victoria Ward and Tracy L. Robinson-Wood, experts in the developmental and identity challenges of young people of color, provide guidance for the faculty, advisors, and administrators (typically white women) who invest in the success of this historically underserved student group. Through case studies, student narratives, and research findings, the authors document the specific deterrents young Black women face daily on campus, from cultural pressures and class bias to racist and misogynistic microaggressions. Ward and Robinson-Wood call on campus mentors to increase their own cultural competencies so that they may better support, work with, and advocate for their student mentees. This Sister Resister mentorship model emphasizes the acquisition of cultural knowledge, the power of intersectionality, and the critical role of resistance in the lives of Black (and white) women as they navigate interpersonal and institutional bias and discrimination. Sister Resisters highlights the dual and interactive developmental processes that transpire in both halves of the mentor-mentee relationship. The book provides anti-racist, consciousness-raising self-assessments, and other growth-enhancing recommendations for women who endeavor to mentor as staunch supporters. Suggesting evidence-based strategies that promote healthy resistance to negative social and political experiences, Sister Resisters equips both mentors and mentees with thoughtfully designed, culturally informed skills that can further educational, racial, and gender equality on campus.

The battle for equality in education during the civil rights era came at a cost to Black Americans on the frontlines. In 1964 when fourteen-year-old June Manning Thomas walked into Orangeburg High School as one of thirteen Black students selected to integrate the all-White school, her classmates mocked, shunned, and yelled racial epithets at her. The trauma she experienced made her wonder if the slow-moving progress was worth the emotional sacrifice. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas, revisits her life growing up in the midst of the civil rights movement before, during, and after desegregation and offers an intimate look at what she and other members of her community endured as they worked to achieve equality for Black students in K-12 schools and higher education. Through poignant personal narrative, supported by meticulous research, Thomas retraces the history of Black education in South Carolina from the post-Civil War era to the present. Focusing largely on events that took place in Orangeburg, South Carolina, during the 1950s and 1960s, Thomas reveals how local leaders, educators, parents, and the NAACP joined forces to improve the quality of education for Black children in the face of resistance from White South Carolinians. Thomas's experiences and the efforts of local activists offer relevant insight because Orangeburg was home to two Black colleges--South Carolina State University and Claflin University--that cultivated a community of highly educated and engaged Black citizens. With help from the NAACP, residents filed several lawsuits to push for equality. In the notable Briggs v. Elliott, Black parents in neighboring Clarendon County sued the school board to challenge segregation after the county ignored their petitions requesting a school bus for their children. That court case became one of five that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the landmark 1954 decision that declared school segregation illegal. Despite the ruling, South Carolina officials did not integrate any public schools until 1963 and the majority of them refused to admit Black students until subsequent court cases, and ultimately the intervention of the federal government, forced all schools to start desegregating in the fall of 1970. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas reflects on the educational gains made by Black South Carolinians during the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, how they were achieved, and why Black people persisted despite opposition and hostility from White citizens. In the final chapters, she explores the current state of education for Black children and young adults in South Carolina and assesses what has been improved and learned through this collective struggle.

The untold story of a dynamic student movement on one of the nation's most important historically Black campuses The Tuskegee Institute, one of the nation's most important historically Black colleges, is primarily known for its World War II pilot training program, a fateful syphilis experiment, and the work of its founder, Booker T. Washington. In The Tuskegee Student Uprising, Brian Jones explores an important yet understudied aspect of the campus's history: its radical student activism. Drawing upon years of archival research and interviews with former students, professors, and administrators, Brian Jones provides an in-depth account of one of the most dynamic student movements in United States history. The book takes the reader through Tuskegee students' process of transformation and intellectual awakening as they stepped off campus to make unique contributions to southern movements for democracy and civil rights in the 1960s. In 1966, when one of their classmates was murdered by a white man in an off-campus incident, Tuskegee students began organizing under the banner of Black Power and fought for sweeping curricular and administrative reforms on campus. In 1968, hundreds of students took the Board of Trustees hostage and presented them with demands to transform Tuskegee Institute into a "Black University." This explosive movement was thwarted by the arrival of the Alabama National Guard and the school's temporary closure, but the students nevertheless claimed an impressive array of victories. Jones retells these and other events in relation to the broader landscape of social movements in those pivotal years, as well as in connection to the long pattern of dissent and protest within the Tuskegee Institute community, stretching back to the 19th century. A compelling work of scholarship, The Tuskegee Student Uprising is a must-read for anyone interested in student activism and the Black freedom movement.

How special education used disability labels to marginalize Black students in public schools The Unteachables examines the overrepresentation of Black students in special education over the course of the twentieth century. As African American children integrated predominantly white schools, many were disproportionately labeled educable mentally retarded (EMR), learning disabled (LD), and emotionally behavioral disordered (EBD). Keith A. Mayes charts the evolution of disability categories and how these labels kept Black learners segregated in American classrooms. The civil rights and the educational disability rights movements, Mayes shows, have both collaborated and worked at cross-purposes since the beginning of school desegregation. Disability rights advocates built upon the opportunity provided by the civil rights movement to make claims about student invisibility at the level of intellectual and cognitive disabilities. Although special education ostensibly included children from all racial groups, educational disability rights advocates focused on the needs of white disabled students, while school systems used disability discourses to malign and marginalize Black students. From the 1940s to the present, social science researchers, policymakers, school administrators, and teachers have each contributed to the overrepresentation of Black students in special education. Excavating the deep-seated racism embedded in both the public school system and public policy, The Unteachables explores the discriminatory labeling of Black students, and how it indelibly contributed to special education disproportionality, to student discipline and push-out practices, and to the school-to-prison pipeline effect.

In the United States, only 6% of the 1.5 million faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions is Black. Research shows that, while many institutions tout the idea of diversity recruitment, not much progress has been made to diversify faculty ranks, especially at research-intensive institutions. We're Not Ok shares the experiences of Black faculty to take the reader on a journey, from the obstacles of landing a full-time faculty position through the unique struggles of being a Black educator at a predominantly white institution, along with how these deterrents impact inclusion, retention, and mental health. The book provides practical strategies and recommendations for graduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators, along with changemakers, to make strides in diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than a presentation of statistics and anecdotes, it is the start of a dialogue with the intent of ushering actual change that can benefit Black faculty, their students, and their institutions.

The story of how Black and Brown parents, students and members of low-income communities of color organized to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in their local schools and built a movement that spread across the country. In Willful Defiance, Mark R. Warren documents how Black and Brown parents, students, and low-income communities of color organized to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in their local schools and built an intersectional movement that spread across the country. Examining organizing processes in Mississippi, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other localities, he shows how relatively small groups of community members built the power to win policy changes to reduce suspensions and expulsions by combining deep local organizing with resources from the national movement. As a result, over the course of twenty years, the movement to combat the school-to-prison pipeline resulted in falling suspension rates across the country and began to make gains in reducing police presence in schools, especially in places where there have been sustained organizing and advocacy efforts. In documenting the struggle organizers waged to build national alliances led by community groups and people most impacted by injustice rather than Washington-based professional advocates, Warren offers a new model for movements that operate simultaneously at local, state and national levels, while primarily oriented to support and spread local organizing. In doing so, he argues for the need to rethink national social justice movements as interconnected local struggles whose victories are lifted and spread, In the end, the book highlights lessons from the school-to-prison pipeline movement for organizers, educators, policymakers and a broader public seeking to transform deep-seated and systemic racism in public schools and the broader society.