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Education in the Segregated South: A Determined African American Culture

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “The long struggle over the development of education in the postbellum South occurred in large part because no dominant class could convince the freed people that its conception of education reflected a natural and proper social order,” Anderson wrote in “The Education of Blacks in the South,” James Anderson is the author of The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935.

Published

6 years ago

September 2, 2019

Oakland Post

Washington DC, USA, 1951. Student traffic controllers are waiting to be deployment at an intersection in Washinton DC. (Photo iStockphoto / NNPA)

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

During segregation, Black schools in the South focused on building an environment of success for community children.

Educator, activist and youth worker Derrick R. Brooms said black schools served multiple purposes – particularly during the Jim Crow era.

“There are ways in which some Black schools during that era served as both fugitive and liberation spaces and opportunities,” Brooms wrote on Twitter.

“It was in these spaces that many black communities saw, supported, and invested in multiple possibilities,” Brooms said.

The conversation started on social media last month when Imani Perry, a Hughes Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, urged her more than 60,000 Twitter followers to not believe the myth that the schools were terrible pre-desegregation.

“There’s an extraordinary body of black education history that tells otherwise,” Perry said. As examples, Perry provided James Anderson, Vanessa Siddle Walker, Michael Fultz, Heater Williams and Valinda Littlefield.

Anderson is the author of, “The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935” which received the Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association.

He is also co-editor of New Perspectives on Black Educational History and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the history of education.

“The long struggle over the development of education in the postbellum South occurred in large part because no dominant class could convince the freed people that its conception of education reflected a natural and proper social order,” Anderson wrote in “The Education of Blacks in the South.”

“There was nothing inevitable about the former slaves’ ability to resist these competing ideologies of education and society and pursue their own course. They had spent much time preparing themselves for the moment when they could act in ways more consonant with beliefs sacred to them that could not be expressed before emancipation. Blacks soon made it apparent that they were committed to training their young for futures that prefigured full equality and autonomy,” Anderson said.

Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies.

For 25 years, she has explored the segregated schooling of African American children.

Walker considered the climate that permeated segregated schools, the network of professional collaborations that explains the similarity across schools, and the hidden systems of advocacy that demanded equality and justice for the children in the schools.

“Although Black schools were indeed commonly lacking in facilities and funding, some evidence suggests that the environment of the segregated school had affective traits, institutional policies, and community support that helped Black children learn in spite of the neglect their schools received from white school boards,” Walker wrote in her 1996 book, “Their Highest Potential.”

“Most notably, in one of the earliest accountings by Thomas Sowell, the schools are remembered as having atmospheres where support, encouragement, and rigid standards, combined to enhance students’ self-worth and increase their aspirations to achieve,” Walker said.

Fultz is an emeritus professor with the Department of Educational Policy Studies. He received his Ed.M. and Ed.D. at Harvard Graduate School of Education and taught there in the Administration, Planning and Social Policy program for three years before moving to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990.

His teaching and research interests focus on the history of American Education, the history of African American education, and Urban Education.

“From the 1880s through the 1920s, the adage, ‘As is the teacher, so is the school,’ was commonplace in the rhetorical repertoire of African American educators in the South,” Fultz wrote in a 2008 article titled, “As is the Teacher, So is the School: Future Directions in the Historiography of African American Teachers.”

“The essence of its meaning lingered throughout de jure segregation. Its expression encompassed vital themes related to the need and demand for a ‘sound professionalism’ among the expanding number of African American teachers in the region,” he wrote.

“Its significance flowed from a self-evident logic, implicitly understood and fundamentally contested, by both black and white southerners: the ‘fate of the race’ depended on its schools; the quality of those schools depended on the quality of the teachers they had; and the quality of the teachers depended upon their character, dedication, and professional training,” Fultz wrote.

“Ambrose Caliver, the first African American research specialist, hired by the U.S. Office of Education, reduced the issues to a single sentence, ‘In the hands of the Negro teachers rests the destiny of the race.’”

In her book, “Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom,” Williams said she “moves across time to examine African Americans’ relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom.”

The book traces the historical antecedents to freed people’s intense desire to become literate. It demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended.

Littlefield works at the University of South Carolina. She’s a scholar of the history of women, African Americans, and education with an emphasis on southern African American women and African American history from 1877 to the present.

The University of Illinois Press will publish her book on southern African American women schoolteachers during the Jim Crow era.

“Read Black memoirs or talk to your grandparents,” Perry said.

“One of the reasons I’ve written about Black formalism is that even scholars circulate the myth that Black people had nothing and built nothing in the segregated South,” she said.

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COMMENTARY: The National Protest Must Be Accompanied with Our Votes

Just as Trump is gathering election data like having the FBI take all the election data in Georgia from the 2020 election, so must we organize in preparation for the coming primary season to have the right people on ballots in each Republican district, so that we can regain control of the House of Representatives and by doing so, restore the separation of powers and balance that our democracy is being deprived of.

Published

5 days ago

February 10, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper. File photo..

By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper

As thousands of Americans march every week in cities across this great nation, it must be remembered that the protest without the vote is of no concern to Donald Trump and his administration.

In every city, there is a personal connection to the U.S. Congress. In too many cases, the member of Congress representing the people of that city and the congressional district in which it sits, is a Republican. It is the Republicans who are giving silent support to the destructive actions of those persons like the U.S. Attorney General, the Director of Homeland Security, and the National Intelligence Director, who are carrying out the revenge campaign of the President rather than upholding the oath of office each of them took “to Defend The Constitution of the United States.”

In California, the primary comes in June 2026. The congressional races must be a priority just as much as the local election of people has been so important in keeping ICE from acquiring facilities to build more prisons around the country.

“We the People” are winning this battle, even though it might not look like it. Each of us must get involved now, right where we are.

In this Black History month, it is important to remember that all we have accomplished in this nation has been “in spite of” and not “because of.” Frederick Douglas said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”

Today, the struggle is to maintain our very institutions and history. Our strength in this struggle rests in our “collectiveness.” Our newspapers and journalists are at the greatest risk. We must not personally add to the attack by ignoring those who have been our very foundation, our Black press.

Are you spending your dollars this Black History Month with those who salute and honor contributions by supporting those who tell our stories? Remember that silence is the same as consent and support for the opposition. Where do you stand and where will your dollars go?

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Why Black Parents Should Consider Montessori

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — I have found that there are some educational approaches that consistently provide a safer, more enriching, and more affirmative environment for Black children. The Montessori method, developed by Italian physician Maria Montessori and introduced to the U.S. in the early 20th century, is one such approach.

Published

7 days ago

February 9, 2026

Oakland Post

By Laura Turner-Essel, PhD

As a mother of four children, I’ve done A LOT of school shopping. I don’t mean the autumn ritual of purchasing school supplies. I mean shopping for schools – pouring over promotional materials, combing through websites, asking friends and community members for referrals to their favorite schools, attending open houses and orientations, comparing curriculums and educational philosophies, meeting teachers and principals, and students who all claim that their school is the best.

But keep in mind – I’m not just a mom of four children. I’m a mom of four Black children, and I’m also a psychologist who is very interested in protecting my little ones from the traumatic experience that school can too often become.

For Black children in the United States, school can sometimes feel more like a prison than an educational institution. Research shows that Black students experience school as more hostile and demoralizing than other students do, that they are disciplined more frequently and more harshly for typical childhood offenses (such as running in the halls or chewing gum in class), that they are often labeled as deviant or viewed as deficient more quickly than other children, that teachers have lower academic expectations of Black students (which, in turn, lowers those students’ expectations of themselves), and that Black parents feel less respected and less engaged by their children’s teachers and school administrators. Perhaps these are some of the underlying reasons that Black students tend to underperform in most schools across the country.

The truth is that schools are more than academic institutions. They are places where children go to gain a sense of who they are, how they relate to others, and where they fit into the world. The best schools are places that answer these questions positively – ‘you are a valuable human being, you are a person who will grow up to contribute great things to your community, and you belong here, with us, exploring the world and learning how to use your gifts.’ Unfortunately, Black children looking for answers to these universal questions of childhood will often hit a brick wall once they walk into the classroom. If the curriculum does not reflect their cultural experiences, the teachers don’t appear to value them, and they spend most of their time being shamed into compliance rather than guided towards their highest potential, well…what can we really expect? How are they supposed to master basic academic skills if their spirits have been crushed?

Here’s the good news. In my years of school shopping, and in the research of Black education specialists such as Jawanza Kunjufu and Amos Wilson, I have found that there are some educational approaches that consistently provide a safer, more enriching, and more affirmative environment for Black children. The Montessori method, developed by Italian physician Maria Montessori and introduced to the U.S. in the early 20th century, is one such approach.

The key feature of Montessori schooling is that children decide (for the most part) what they want to do each day. Led by their own interests and skill levels, children in a Montessori classroom move around freely and work independently or with others on tasks of their own

choosing. The classroom is intentionally stocked with materials tailored to the developmental needs of children, including the need to learn through different senses (sight, touch/texture, movement, etc.). The teacher in a Montessori classroom is less like a boss and more like a caring guide who works with each child individually, demonstrating various activities and then giving them space to try it on their own. The idea is that over time, students learn to master even the toughest tasks and concepts, and they feel an intense sense of pride and accomplishment because they did it by themselves, without pressure or pushing.

I think that this aspect of the Montessori method is good for all kids. Do you remember the feeling of having your creativity or motivation crushed by being told exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why? The truth is that when presented with a new challenge and then given space, children actually accomplish a lot! They are born with a natural desire to learn. It is that spirit of curiosity, sense of wonder, and excitement to explore that Montessori helps to keep alive in a child. But that’s not the only reason that I think Black parents need to consider Montessori.

Fostering a love of learning is great. But more importantly, I think that Montessori students excel at learning to love. It begins with Montessori’s acknowledgement that all children are precious because childhood is a precious time. In many school systems, Black children are treated like miniature adults (at best) or miniature criminals (at worst), and are subjected to stressful situations that no kids are equipped to handle – expectations to be still and silent for long periods, competitive and high-stakes testing, and punitive classroom discipline. It’s easy to get the sense that rather than being prepared for college or careers, our children are being prepared to fail. Couple this with the aforementioned bias against Black children that seems to run rampant within the U.S. school system, and you end up with children who feel burned out and bitter about school by the time they hit 3rd grade.

In my experience, Montessori does a better job of protecting the space that is childhood – and all the joy of discovery and learning that should come along with that. Without the requirement that students “sit down and shut up,” behavioral issues in Montessori classrooms tend to be non-existent (or at least, the Montessori method doesn’t harp on them; children are gently redirected rather than shamed in front of the class). Montessori students don’t learn for the sake of tests; they demonstrate what they’ve learned by sharing with their teacher or classmates how they solve real-world problems using the skills they’ve gained through reading, math, or science activities. And by allowing children a choice of what to focus on throughout the day, Montessori teachers demonstrate that they honor and trust children’s natural intelligence. The individualized, careful attention they provide indicates to children that they are each seen, heard, and valued for who they are, and who they might become. Now that’s love (and good education).

As a parent, I’ve come to realize that many schools offer high-quality academics. Montessori is no different. Students in Montessori schools gain exposure to advanced concepts and the materials to work with these concepts hands-on. Across the nation, Montessori schools emphasize early literacy development, an especially important indicator of life success for young Black boys and men. Montessori students are provided with the opportunity to be

successful every day, and the chance to develop a sense of competence and self-worth based on completing tasks at their own pace.

But I have also learned that the important questions to ask when school shopping are often not about academics at all. I now ask, ‘Will my children be treated kindly? Will they be listened to? Protected from bias and bullying? Will they feel safe? Will this precious time in their lives be honored as a space for growth, development, awe, and excitement? Will they get to see people like them included in the curriculum? Will they be seen as valuable even if they don’t always ‘measure up’ to other kids on a task? Will they get extra support if they need it? Will the school include me in major decisions? Will the school leaders help to make sure that my children reach their fullest potential? Will the teacher care about my children almost as much as I do?’

Consistently, it’s been the Montessori schools that have answered with a loud, resounding ‘Yes!’ That is why my children ended up in Montessori schools, and I couldn’t be happier with that decision. If you’re a parent like me, shopping for schools with the same questions in mind, I’d urge you to consider Montessori education as a viable option for your precious little ones. Today more than ever, getting it right for our children is priceless.

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LIVE from the NMA Convention Raheem DeVaughn Says The Time Is Now: Let’s End HIV in Our Communities #2

Set against the backdrop of the NMA conference, Executive Officers from the National Medical Association, Grammy Award Winning Artist and Advocate Raheem DeVaughn, and Gilead Sciences experts, are holding today an important conversation on HIV prevention and health equity. Black women continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV despite advances in prevention options. Today’s event […]

Published

2 weeks ago

February 3, 2026

Oakland Post

Black women continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV despite advances in prevention options. Today’s event is designed to uplift voices, explore barriers to access, and increase awareness and key updates about PrEP, a proven prevention method that remains underutilized among Black women. This timely gathering will feature voices from across health, media, and advocacy as we break stigma and center equity in HIV prevention.

Additional stats and information to know:

● Black women continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, with Black women representing more than 50% of new HIV diagnoses among women in the U.S. in 2022, despite comprising just 13% of women in the U.S.

● Women made up only 8% of PrEP users despite representing 19% of all new HIV diagnoses in 2022.

● Gilead Sciences is increasing awareness and addressing stigma by encouraging regular HIV testing and having judgment-free conversations with your healthcare provider about prevention options, including oral PrEP and long-acting injectable PrEP options.