Southern African-American Educators

Paper Summary:

This paper takes the stance that, while the issue of race is usually demarcated along segregationist/desegregationist lines, the history of Southern African-American educators focused on the freedom to choose and the corresponding empowerment of for the betterment of their communities. Although the main motivation for many teachers of past and current times may be empowerment of their fellow oppressed people, the author argues that the bar has always been set internally by educational virtues themselves. The main reason for this contention, the paper asserts, is that the characterization of African-American educators was motivated purely by political goals, which detract from their rightful place as individuals who first valued education as a worthy goal itself.

From the Paper:

"The fact was that teachers could hardly help any of the issues directly, especially legal ones like segregation. As noted by Fairclough, many sources have tried to paint a picture of the vices of desegregation as taking something away form the black community, namely a self-empowerment and internally-reinforcing respect for teachers that thrived in the segregated schools. But he also warns against taking these instances too seriously as they were mostly derived from testimony from African-American teachers who seem to disfavor the results, if not the idea, of desegregation."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Baker, Scott. (1995). "Testing Equality: The National Teacher Examination and the NAACP's Legal Campaign to Equalize Teachers' Salaries in the South, 1936-63". History of Education Quarterly Vol. 35 No. 1.
• Bond, Julian. (1991). "Reconstruction and the southern movement for civil rights--then and now." Teachers College Record; , Vol. 93 Issue 2, p221, 15p.
• Fairclough, Adam. (2000). "Being in the Field of Education and Also Being a Negro . . . Seems . . . Tragic": Black Teachers in the Jim Crow South" Journal of American History. Vol. 87, No. 1.
• Fairclough, Adam. (2004). "The Costs of Brown: Black Teachers and School Integration". Journal of American History. Vol. 91, No. 1.
• Fultz, Michael. (1995). "African American Teachers in the South, 1890-1940: Powerlessness and the Ironies of Expectations and Protest" History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 401-42.

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