This article is an attempt to reconstruct the culture of an historically African-American school and to describe the impact of school closure on that cultural narrative. The authors do this by looking at the history of an African-American school closed in the mid-1970s and its relationship with the community in which it was located. The authors argue that decisions of school desegregation were culturally ignorant of what made African-American schools good and what was culturally and educationally constructive about them. This cultural ignorance led to a loss of important narratives and the lessons about education we might have learned from them.
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