The Effects of the Brown Decision on Black Educators

1978 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 88 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Haney
2004 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fultz

In 1951 three brief commentaries in the Journal of Negro Education drew public attention to the potentially tenuous job security of African-American educators in the South, Black professionals whose employment status was being called into question as southern educational institutions faced the prospect of desegregation. The specific incident which occasioned these commentaries was a December 1950 vote by the Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville to close the segregated, all-Black Louisville Municipal College, which it had administered since that college was founded in 1931, and to integrate the two institutions' student bodies. Fourteen African-American faculty and staff at Louisville Municipal College were informed that, despite tenure or contract status, they would be given two months' severance pay and summarily dismissed. With United States Supreme Court legal precedents from the 1938 Gaines case through the 1950 Sweatt and McLauren decisions already dramatically affecting the policy context of southern higher education, and with what would become known as the “Brown Decision” looming on the horizon, what might be the consequences for all Black educators throughout the South—if the high court overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyers urged?


2008 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Bernstein

For having helped to make disability a twentieth-century civil rights issue in the United States, our profession deserves much credit. Lawyers have written, codified, and enforced several progressive initiatives. Inspired by the struggle for racial justice through law that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education, the disability rights movement was itself a civil rights inspiration even before the Brown decision, earning important early legislative advances for rehabilitation, vocational training, and integration of disabled persons in public life. The first national organization to focus on disability as such rather than one particular condition, the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped, took an early interest in fostering legal change and lobbied for employment-discrimination laws and new statutes to advance the interests of disabled Americans. The Rehabilitation Act of 19733 made federal law out of the radical yet sensible idea that societies construct disability at least as much as they reflect it and that prejudices and stereotypes, which are as potent as purely medical or anatomical facts, impede persons with disabilities.


2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (12) ◽  
pp. 2777-2803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Baker

Background/Context Although the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement marginalizes the role of black educators, revisionist scholars have shown that a significant number of black teachers encouraged student protest and activism. There has, however, been little analysis of the work of black teachers inside segregated schools in the South. Purpose/Objective This study examines the courses that Southern African American teachers taught, the pedagogies they practiced, and the extracurricular programs they organized. Using Charleston's Burke Industrial School as a lens to illuminate pedagogies of protest that were practiced by activist educators in the South, this study explores how leading black educators created spaces within segregated schools where they bred dissatisfaction with white supremacy. Research Design This historical analysis draws upon archival sources, school board minutes, school newspapers and yearbooks, oral testimony, and autobiographies. Conclusions/Recommendations In Charleston, as elsewhere in the South, activist African American teachers made crucial contributions to the civil rights movement. Fusing an activist version of the African American uplift philosophy with John Dewey's democratic conception of progressive education, exemplary teachers created academic and extracurricular programs that encouraged student protest. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, students acted on lessons taught in classes and extracurricular clubs, organizing and leading strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations. The pedagogies that leading African American educators practiced, the aspirations they nurtured, and the student activism they encouraged helped make the civil rights movement possible.


Author(s):  
Patrice W. Glenn Jones ◽  
Rose B. Glenn ◽  
Lillian C. Haywood ◽  
Kevin A. Rolle

While the discourse on achievement among Black American students often includes the perspectives of researchers, teachers, and college/university faculty, retired educator views are often disregarded. Based on Du Bois's exertion about the Talented Tenth, who he recognized as “educational experts” and “seers” that serve as “leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people,” Black retired teachers and educational leaders are questioned about how to change Black student achievement trends, and included in this chapter are the recommendations offered by Black retired teachers and educational leaders—recommendations designed to bring about change in practice. Beyond adding to the discourse on Black student achievement, the chapter gives voice to retired Black educators whose years of professional experiences qualify them as “educational experts.”


Author(s):  
Martha Minow

Brown v. Board of Education established equality as a central commitment of American schools but launched more than a half century of debate over whether students from different racial, religious, gender, and ethnic backgrounds, and other lines of difference must be taught in the same classrooms. Brown explicitly rejected state-ordered racial segregation, yet neither law nor practice has produced a norm of racially integrated classrooms. Courts restrict modest voluntary efforts to achieve racially mixed schools. Schools in fact are now more racially segregated than they were at the height of the desegregation effort. Talk of this disappointing development dominated the events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision. Instead of looking at the composition of schools and classrooms, policy-makers measure racial equality in American schooling by efforts to reduce racial differentials in student performance on achievement tests, and those efforts have yielded minimal success. Historians question whether the lawyers litigating Brown undermined social changes already in the works or so narrowed reforms to the focus on schools that they turned away from the pursuit of economic justice. Commentators have even questioned whether the Court’s decision itself ever produced real civil rights reform. Although Brown focused on racial equality, it also inspired social movements to pursue equal schooling beyond racial differences, and it yielded successful legal and policy changes addressing the treatment of students’ language, gender, disability, immigration status, socioeconomic status, religion, and sexual orientation. These developments are themselves still news, inadequately acknowledged and appreciated as another key legacy of Brown. Yet here, too, judges, legislators, school officials, experts, and parents disagree over whether and when equality calls for teaching together, in the same classrooms, students who are or who are perceived to be different from one another. Parents and educators have at times pushed for separate instruction and at times for instructing different students side by side. As the twenty-first century proceeds, equality in law and policy in the United States increasingly calls for mixing English-language learners with English-speaking students and disabled with non-disabled students, but students’ residential segregation and school assignments often produce schools and classrooms divided along lines of race, ethnicity, and socio-economic class.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1476718X2094892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaddai Tembo

The participation of Black educators in the UK’s education system has been a source of much debate in recent years. Research indicates having a teaching force that better represents society is critical because of the character, ubiquity, pervasiveness, duration and importance of teaching as a social activity. However, to date, many of the existing studies have taken place in primary, secondary and higher education contexts. The primary purpose of this paper is to draw upon concepts of identity to make Black educator identity visible in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) context. Secondly, this paper aims to contribute to recent developments around mobilising Black studies as an academic discipline by seeking to explore how Black ECEC educators construct their identity through their professional practice. This paper draws on Critical Race Theory and narrative analysis methods to illustrate the experiences of Black ECEC educators. While this paper does not generalise to the experience of all Black educators, it does highlight a much under-researched area and advocates the need for counter-narratives to challenge normative unracialised experiences.


2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (10) ◽  
pp. 1403-1430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adah Ward Randolph ◽  
Dwan V. Robinson

This research explores the historical development of African American teacher and principal hiring and placement in Columbus, Ohio, from 1940 to 1980. In 1909, the Columbus Board of Education established Champion Avenue School creating a de facto segregated school to educate the majority of African American children and to employ Black educators. Over the next 50 years, Columbus created a de facto system of education where Black educators were hired and placed exclusively. This research illuminates how an unintended detriment such as de facto segregation actually developed Black leadership, and strengthened and empowered the community before and after Brown.


1991 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 342
Author(s):  
Cynthia G. Fleming ◽  
Arnold Cooper
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-21
Author(s):  
Stephanie R. Logan

School choice in the United States can be traced back to the start of civil society when wealthy families selected a school based on educational philosophy, location, or religious tradition. As common schools emerged, larger portions of the population were able to gain access to education. However, many discovered that quality public schools were not a reality for all students. In response, some looked to school choices within and outside of the public school sector. This literature review chronicles school choice efforts to emerge following the 1954 Brown decision and highlights liberal and conservative political heritages of school choice in the United States.


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