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African American Education Historiography

Suggested Books

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Black Women's Intellectual Traditions

An astonishing wealth of literary and intellectual work by nineteenth-century black women is being rediscovered and restored to print. In Kristin B. Waters's and Carol B. Conaway's landmark edited collection, Black Women's Intellectual Traditions, sophisticated commentary on this rich body of work chronicles a powerful and interwoven legacy of activism based on social and political theories that helped shape the history of North America. Black Women's Intellectual Traditions meticulously reclaims this American legacy, providing a collection of critical analyses of the primary sources and their vital traditions.

Fugitive Pedagogy

The story of Black education is about more than desegregation and inclusion in mainstream schooling. Jarvis Givens returns to the classrooms of Jim Crow to highlight the forgotten work of Carter G. Woodson and his followers, who undertook the radical act of educating Black children. Their subversive methods continue to provide a model today.

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The Black Intellectual Tradition

Considering the development and ongoing influence of Black thought From 1900 to the present, people of African descent living in the United States have drawn on homegrown and diasporic minds to create a Black intellectual tradition engaged with ideas on race, racial oppression, and the world. This volume presents essays on the diverse thought behind the fight for racial justice as developed by African American artists and intellectuals; performers and protest activists; institutions and organizations; and educators and religious leaders. By including both women's and men's perspectives from the U.S. and the Diaspora, the essays explore the full landscape of the Black intellectual tradition.

Black Education

An unprecedented critical challenge to orthodox thinking, this book makes an epistemological break with mainstream scholarship. Contributors present research on proven solutions--best practices--that prepare Black students and others to achieve at high levels of academic excellence and to be agents of their own socioeconomic and cultural transformation. These analyses and empirical findings also link the crisis in Black education to embedded ideological biases in research and the system of thought that often justifies the abject state of Black education.

Thinking about Black Education

Hilton Kelly and Heather Moore Roberson have curated essential readings for thinking about black education from slavery to the present day. The reading selections are timeless, with both historical and contemporary readings from educational anthropology, history, legal studies, literary studies, and sociology to document the foundations and development of Black education in the United States. In addition, the authors highlight scholarship offering historical, conceptual, and pedagogical gems that shine a light on Black people's enduring pursuit of liberatory education.

A Black Intellectual's Odyssey

Martin Kilson--the first tenured African American professor at Harvard--takes readers on a fascinating journey from his upbringing in a small Pennsylvania mill town to his experiences as an undergraduate to pursuing graduate study at Harvard before spending his entire career there as a faculty member.

Zora Neal Hurston -- Anthropologist, Sociologist, Intellectual


"Zora Neale Hurston has long been considered a literary giant of the Harlem Renaissance, but her anthropological and ethnographic endeavors were equally important and impactful. This is an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century."

Tracy Heather Strain, & Randall MacLowry (Producers), & Tracy, H. S. (Director). (2023). Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space. [Video/DVD] Public Broadcasting Service. https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/zora-neale-hurston-claiming-a-space