This chapter details how slavery, segregation, and racism impacted the educational experiences of African Americans from the colonial era to the present. It offers a historical overview of the African American educational experience and uses archival data and secondary source analysis to illustrate that America has yet to be a truly post-slavery and post-segregation society, let alone a post-racial society.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AndersonJ. D. (1988). The education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
2.
BerlinI. (1974). Slaves without masters: The free Negro in the Antebellum South. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
3.
BlackC. M. (2007). Richard M. Nixon: A life in full. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.
4.
CarterP. L., & WelnerK. G. (2013). Closing the opportunity gap: What America must do to give every child an even chance. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
5.
ChemerinskyE. (2003). The segregation and resegregation of American public education: The court's role. North Carolina Law Review, 81, 1598–1622).
Darling-HammondL. (2013). The flat world and education: How America's commitment to equity will determine our future. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
8.
DouglasD. M. (2005). Jim Crow moves north: The battle over northern school segregation, 1865-1954. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
9.
Du BoisW. E. B. (1964). Black reconstruction in America (Reprint). Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing Company.
10.
Du BoisW. E. B. (1999). Darkwater: Voices from within the veil (Reprint). New York, NY: Dover Press.
11.
Duitsman CorneliusJ. (1991). When I can read my title clear: Literacy, slavery, and religion in the antebellum South. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
12.
FeaginJ. R. (2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. New York, NY: Routledge.
13.
FiresideH. (2004). Separate and unequal: Homer Plessy and the Supreme Court decision that legalized racism. New York, NY: Basic Books.
FonerE. (1988). Reconstruction: America's unfinished revolution, 1863–1877. New York, NY: Harper and Row Press.
16.
FonerE. (1996). Freedom's lawmakers: A directory of Black officeholders during reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
17.
Fox-GenoveseE., & GenoveseE. D. (2005). The mind of the master class: History and faith in the southern slaveholders’ worldview. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
FraserJ. W. (2014). The school in the United States: A documentary history (3rd ed.) New York, NY: Routledge.
20.
GenoveseE. (1974). Roll, Jordan, roll: The world the slaves made. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
21.
GrayT. R. (1832). The confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late insurrection in Southampton, Va. Richmond, VA.
22.
IronsP. (2002). Jim Crow's children: The broken promise of the Brown decision. New York, NY: Penguin.
23.
JohnsonL. B. (1966). Public papers of the presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965. Volume II. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
24.
JonesJ. (1980). Soldiers of light and love: Northern teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
25.
KendrickS., & KendrickP. (2004). Sarah's long walk: The free Blacks of Boston and how their struggle for equality changed America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
26.
KlarmenM. J. (2004). From Jim Crow to civil rights: The Supreme Court and the struggle for racial equality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
27.
Ladson-BillingsG. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12).
28.
LassiterM. D., & LewisA. B. (1998). The moderates’ dilemma: Resistance to school desegregation in Virginia. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
29.
LemannN. (2007). Redemption: The last battle of the Civil War. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
30.
LinkW. A. (1992). The paradox of southern progressivism, 1880-1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
31.
LitwackL. F. (1961). North of slavery: The Negro in the free states, 1790–1860. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
32.
LoganR. W. (1997). The betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson. New York, NY: Da Capo Press.
RavitchD. (2014). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
37.
The Revised Code of the Laws of Virginia: Being A Collection of All Such Acts of the General Assembly, of a Public and Permanent Nature, As Are Now In Force; With A General Index, 1819. Richmond, VA: Printed by Thomas Ritchie, Printer to the Commonwealth.
ShapiroT. (2004). The hidden cost of being African American. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
40.
ShapiroT., MeschedeT., & OsoroS. (2013). The roots of the widening racial wealth gap: Explaining the Black-White economic divide. Waltham, MA: Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University.
41.
SpanC. M. (2009). From cotton field to schoolhouse: African American education in Mississippi, 1862-1875. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
42.
SpanC. M., & AndersonJ. D. (2005). The quest for book learning: African American education in slavery and freedom. In HornsbyA.Jr., AldridgeD.P., & HornsbyA. (Eds.), A companion to African American history (pp. 295–311). Malden, MA: Blackwell.6
43.
SpanC. M., & RiversI. D. (2012). Reassessing the achievement gap: An intergenerational comparison of African American student achievement before and after compensatory education and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Teachers College Record, 114(6), 1–17).
44.
SugrueT. (2009). Sweet land of liberty: The forgotten struggle for civil rights in the North. New York, NY: Random House.
45.
TaylorW. R. (1993). Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American national character (Reprint). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.