Schooling the Movement : The Activism of Southern Black Educators From Reconstruction Through the Civil Rights Era

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. By illuminating teachers' activism during the long civil rights movement, the editors and contributors connect the past with the present, contextualizing teachers' longstanding role as advocates for social justice. Schooling the Movement moves beyond the prevailing understanding that activism was defined solely by litigation and direct-action forms of protest. The contributors broaden our conceptions of what it meant to actively take part in or contribute to the civil rights movement. Cover Schooling the Movement Title Copyright CONTENTS List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: The Spectrum of Teacher Activism Teaching to “Undo Their Narratively Condemned Status”: Black Educators and the Problem of Curricular Violence Cynthia Plair Roddey: Carolina Activist and Teacher in the Movement “It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going”: Lois A. Simms and Pedagogical Activism during the Black Freedom Struggle, 1920–2015 “We Experienced Our Freedom”: The Impact of Valued Segregated Spaces on Teacher Practice and Activism “In the Face of Her Splendid Record”: Willa Cofield Johnson and Teacher Dismissal in the Civil Rights Era Part II: Activism Across the South and Beyond Planning, Persistence, and Pedagogy: How Elizabeth City State Colored Normal School Survived North Carolina’s White Supremacy Campaign, 1898–1905 “They Were Very Low Key, But They Spoke from Wisdom and Experience”: How Black Teachers Taught Self-Determination at Carver Senior High School in New Orleans “Dedication to the Highest of Callings”: Florence Coleman Bryant, School Desegregation, and the Black Freedom Struggle in Postwar Virginia, 1946–2004 Hidden in Plain Sight: Black Educators in the “Militant Middle” of Alabama’s Municipal Civil Rights Battlegrounds From Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement: The University of Missouri’s Black Faculty, Staff, and Student Organizations Fight Back! W. E. B. Du Bois and the University of Berlin: The Transnational Path to Educational Activism Afterword Notes Selected Bibliography Contributors Index "A fresh examination of an underexplored aspect of the civil rights movement--teacher activism. 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. By illuminating teachers' activism during the long civil rights movement, the editors and contributors connect the past with the present, contextualizing teachers' longstanding role as advocates for social justice. Schooling the Movement moves beyond the prevailing understanding that activism was defined solely by litigation and direct-action forms of protest. The authors in this volume broaden our conceptions of what it meant to actively take part in or contribute to the civil rights movement"-- Provided by publisher Drawing on oral history interviews and research, this book examines the pedagogical activism and vital contributions of Black teachers throughout the Black freedom struggle. By illuminating teachers’ activism during the long civil rights movement, contributors connect contextualize teachers longstanding role as advocates for social justice.