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African American Education Historiography

Suggested Books

Black Teachers on Teaching

A portrait of the politics and philosophies involved in the education of black children during the last 50 years. The text brings to light the often controversial views of the first wave of educators to have lived through integration.

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"A Visible Company of Professionals": African Americans and the National Education Association during the civil rights movement

This book explores the relationship between the NEA, the nation's largest teacher organization, and the predominately black American Teachers Association, and illustrates how African American educators helped to redefine the NEA's core ideology to include the support of policies, practice, and politics that promoted educational equity for children and educators who have been historically marginalized.

Uncivil Rights: teachers, unions, and race in the battle for school equity

Almost fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, a wealth of research shows that minority students continue to receive an unequal education. At the heart of this inequality is a complex and often conflicted relationship between teachers and civil rights activists...brought about both by teachers who have come to see civil rights efforts as detracting from or competing with their own goals and by civil rights activists whose aims have de-professionalized the role of the educator.

Jim Crow's Pink Slip: the untold story of Black principal and teacher leadership

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.

A Class of Their Own

This narrative offers a bold new vision of black teachers, built from the stories of real men and women, from teachers in one-room shacks to professors in red brick universities. Fairclough explores how teachers inspired and motivated generations of children, instilling values and knowledge that nourished racial pride and a desire for equality. At the same time, he shows that they were not just educators, but also missionaries, politicians, community leaders, and racial diplomats.

A Worthy Piece of Work

The story of Madeline Morgan, the activist educator who brought Black history to one of the nation's largest and most segregated school systems A Worthy Piece of Work tells the story of Madeline Morgan (later Madeline Stratton Morris), a teacher and an activist in WWII-era Chicago, who fought her own battle on the home front, authoring curricula that bolstered Black claims for recognition and equal citizenship.

Schooling the Movement

A fresh examination of teacher activism during the civil rights movement Southern Black educators were central contributors and activists in the civil rights movement. They contributed to the movement through their classrooms, schools, universities, and communities. Drawing on oral history interviews and archival research, Schooling the Movement examines the pedagogical activism and vital contributions of Black teachers throughout the Black freedom struggle.

Teaching Equality

Teaching Equality provides an overview of the enormous contributions made by African American teachers to the black freedom movement in the United States. Beginning with the close of the Civil War, when "the efforts of the slave regime to prevent black literacy meant that blacks . . . associated education with liberation," Fairclough explores the development of educational ideals in the black community up through the years of the civil rights movement.

#BlackEducatorsMatter

A stirring testament to the realities of Black teaching and learning in the United States and to Black educators' visions for the future. The personal accounts, educator portraits, and research findings assembled by Darrius A. Stanley in #BlackEducatorsMatter constitute an unstinting exploration of the experiences of Black K-12 teachers in the United States. Spotlighting the invaluable work of Black educators, this volume reveals that although they are underrepresented in educational institutions, they have profound positive influence not only on students of color but also on school climate and ultimately on all of society.

Black Teacher Associations and Organizations

Historical

  • The Black Teacher Archive -- Collection of materials "created by professional organizations of African American educators, historically referred to as Colored Teachers Associations (CTAs).
  • American Teachers Association
    • formerly the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools
    • formerly the National Colored Teachers Association

Contemporary