In 1996, Dr. Timuel D. Black collected and archived 36 oral histories with alumni and current students and staff from DuSable and Phillips high schools, Chicago's first two all-Black high schools. Several of those interviews were with alumni who returned to their alma mater as teachers. In this study, I drew on analyses of the interview…

Restorative justice has the potential to re-frame schools as caring and politically conscious educational spaces. As it moves to the mainstream, however, it risks being co-opted by the carceral logics that undergird the schooling of Black students in the United States. This ethnographic analysis interrogates how restorative justice provides…

Departing from mainstream accounts of the post-Katrina New Orleans state takeover and the more recent "unification" of schools under local governance, this case study utilizes the plantation (Hartman, 1997; Woods, 1998, McKittrick, 2011) as a theoretical device and the silenced archive (Trouillot, 2015) as a method of inquiry to better…

In this historical examination, Amato Nocera, Kyle P. Steele, and John Hensley argue that the development of Black rural high schools in the decades leading up to the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision represented the dynamic between standardization, white supremacy, and Black self-definition that has shaped US education reform.…

In the early twentieth century St. Louis' public schools for Black children enjoyed a robust reputation, perhaps second only to those in the nation's capital. Herman H. Dreer, a "public school man," provided direction for those institutions similarly called to lead various segments and forces within the larger Black community…

A close look at segregated African American progressive high schools in the Southeast during the Jim Crow era offers insights into the "courageous willingness" of black educators to examine and modify their practices. This essay is part of the John Dewey Memorial Lecture series sponsored by the Daniel Tanner Foundation.

Extant research on the education of Black girls primarily focuses on urban settings, distances study participants from the outcomes of the research, and positions Black girls as problems to be solved, rather than as critical and sociopolitical actors and agents of change. This qualitative case study enacts a humanizing research approach in…

Segregated schooling in Florida was initially a concession to gain public acceptance of free public education. Its effects can be seen in the band programs of many high school bands. This study looks at the effects of segregation and integration on bands at black high schools in Jacksonville, Florida (Duval County Public Schools). Much of the…

When the New Orleans school board appointed E. J. Edmunds, a light-skinned Afro-Creole man, the mathematics teacher for the city's best high school in 1875, the senior students walked out rather than have a "negro" as a teacher of "white youths." Edmunds's appointment was a final, bold act by the city's mixed-race intellectual…

Despite efforts of educators across the nation, African American students in the United States underperform their peers and experience graduation rates lower than any other ethnicity. The purpose of this case study was to gain an understanding, through the lenses of social learning theory (SLT) and critical race theory (CRT), of how a partnership…

The objective of this study was to investigate Black teachers' perceptions of their impact on Black student achievement. Study participants included teachers with 2-15 years of experience from neighboring school districts in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Data were collected during school-year 2011-2012. Methods included journal…

Despite the seeming progressiveness in moving from "Plessy v. Ferguson" to "Brown v. Board of Education," and from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights Movement, schools continue to exist that are racially homogenous and segregated at the core. Many of these schools were created in times of harsh legislation that mandated a…

This case was developed for use in courses on the principalship as well as school reform, with an emphasis on developing socially just, epistemologically and racially conscious school leaders. Data are presented about the principal, the school district, the school, the students, and the community. This case explores notions of White privilege to…

This article compares a White teacher's approach to authority with that of an African American warm demander. Ethnographic methods and discourse analysis illuminated how an African American teacher grounded her authority with African American students in shared culture, history, and frame of reference. A comparative analysis makes visible…

Effective history teaching includes ample opportunities for students to develop historical thinking skills and habits of mind which encourage them to learn content beyond simple acquisition of facts. Covering the profound topic of segregation by employing multiple perspectives and encouraging investigation beyond the traditional narrative provides…