#NNPA BlackPress

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

7 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.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

IN MEMORIAM: Baxter Leach, a Soldier for Labor

Don't Miss

National Congress of Black Women to Honor Shirley Chisholm at Annual Brunch

Oakland Post

Click to comment

#NNPA BlackPress

NFL: Week Two Recap | Jalen Hurts did not fold; Caleb Williams exits game with injury

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts found Darius Cooper with nine seconds left for the game winning touchdown as his team beat the Tennessee Titans 24-20 in Nashville. Hurts finished the day 26/37 for 264 yards. He threw for two touchdowns and two interceptions. Prior to the final drive, the Eagles ran 25 plays for 45 […]
The post NFL: Week Two Recap | Jalen Hurts did not fold; Caleb Williams exits game with injury appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 weeks ago

September 20, 2026

Oakland Post

Prior to the final drive, the Eagles ran 25 plays for 45 yards. During the final drive Hurts went 6-8 with 61 passing yards and the touchdown. Titans defensive tackle — and team captain — Jeffery Simmons said this week that the way to defend Jalen Hurts is to make him “play quarterback.”

Hurts said to Simmons after today’s game: “You started that sh**. I had to finish it.”

Running back Saquon Barkley suffered a stinger in the first half but he ultimately finished the game. He had four carries and nine yards and one catch for eleven yards. He will get an MRI for his injury, but admitted to Cameron Wolfe of the NFL Network he was fine.

Caleb Williams leaves game against Vikings with apparent lower-body injury

Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams was helped off the field with a right leg injury with 7:42 remaining in the fourth quarter. Williams was down, writhing in pain after scrambling to his left. After departing the injury tent, Williams raised his right fist, acknowledging the crowd while expressing his frustration. Testing will commence on Monday to find out more details about his injury.

“We’ll know tomorrow,” Johnson admitted regarding Williams’ injury. “He’s in good spirits. He’s a team player.”

Williams finished the day with 138 passing yards and one interception.

“I’m actually happy it’s nothing with the knee — that was my first inclination,” Johnson said. “But, a hamstring could be pretty damaging as well. So, we’ll see. We’ll see how bad it is tomorrow and we’ll go from there.”

Bryce Young once again dominated the Falcons

Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young is 5-1 against the Atlanta Falcons and is undefeated at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Today, Young threw for 287 yards and three touchdowns as he led the Panthers to a 34-3 dismembering of the Atlanta Falcons. Georgia Tech alumnus Darren Waller caught two touchdowns and linebacker Devin Lloyd returned one of his two interceptions for a touchdown.

Cooper Rush started his second straight game for the Falcons and it did not go well. The partisan crowd voiced their displeasure after Rush completed 10/17 passes for 86 yards and two interceptions. Jack Strand entered the game for Rush prompting cheers from the Falcons fans. The rookie threw a pick-six on his first career pass attempt. Strand was the first QB to accomplish that feat since Sam Darnold in 2018 and is the first Falcons player to do that since Brett Favre in 1991. Strand finished the day with 59 passing yards and 16 rushing yards.

According to reports, quarterback Michael Penix, Jr. is expected to make his season debut this Thursday at the Green Bay Packers. His return should help the Falcons. They are the first team since the 2008 Rams to not run any plays in the red zone after the first two games to open a season.

The bright spots for the Falcons today were the Spelman College Jaguarettes performing with the Falcons cheerleaders and Florida A&M’s marching band, The Marching 100, also performed during halftime!

Jayden Daniels gets carted off after apparent arm injury

Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels appeared to injure his left elbow on the final play of the first half in his game against the Dallas Cowboys. During the play, Daniels got stepped on, braced himself for the fall, and his elbow bent the wrong way. Daniels draped a towel over his head as he exited the field on the cart.

He was later ruled out.

Daniels suffered a dislocated elbow to the same arm during week nine of last season against the Washington Commanders, which led to him being shut down for the remainder of the season.

The post NFL: Week Two Recap | Jalen Hurts did not fold; Caleb Williams exits game with injury appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

The Complete Negotiation Framework — Every Stage, Every Tactic, Every Win

Master the complete vehicle-purchase negotiation framework with Roosevelt Gist and Roosevelt. Learn every stage, tactic, and win!
The post The Complete Negotiation Framework — Every Stage, Every Tactic, Every Win appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 weeks ago

September 20, 2026

Oakland Post

Negotiation framework stages, tactics, and winning strategies from AutoNetwork

Roosevelt Gist and Roosevelt deliver the complete vehicle-purchase negotiation framework in Episode 8 of The Color of Our Money Is Green. This episode covers the three foundations of every effective negotiation, the full seven-stage negotiation sequence with exact language for every stage, and five of the most common dealership tactics with the specific response each one requires.
What You Learn in This Episode:
The three foundations that make every negotiation tactic work
The complete seven-stage car-buying negotiation sequence
Exact language for every stage of the dealership conversation
Five common dealership tactics — the turnover, the four-square, the packed payment, spot delivery, and forced add-ons — and how to counter each one
Why signing preliminary paperwork isn’t the same as signing the final contract
___________________________________________________________________
“The Color of Our Money Is Green: A Buyer’s Guide to What Cars Actually Cost” — stan.store/RGist
____________________________________________________________________
AutoNetwork helps serious car shoppers inspect any new vehicle online before walking into a dealership. I’m Roosevelt — I’ve been reviewing cars and shaping digital car buying and credit union auto leasing since before YouTube car reviews existed.
You’ll find detailed walkaround reviews, POV test drives, and buyer-focused breakdowns covering comfort, space, features, and real-world value.

How to use the channel:
Watch the walkaround of the car you’re considering
Visit AutoNetwork.com for the full review
Check CouponsOffersAndDeals.com for current dealer specials
Walk in already knowing what you want — and what it should cost

AutoNetwork.com
CouponsOffersAndDeals.com
Affiliate disclosure: some links earn a small commission at no cost to you and help support the channel. Insta360 is one of those partners.

The post The Complete Negotiation Framework — Every Stage, Every Tactic, Every Win appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Mazda CX-90 Luxury: Heated Seats & Premium Comfort! #shorts

Stay toasty in the CX-90! Plush Nappa leather, heated/ventilated seats, and a memory-equipped heated steering wheel deliver ultimate luxury.
The post Mazda CX-90 Luxury: Heated Seats & Premium Comfort! #shorts appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 weeks ago

September 20, 2026

Oakland Post

Mazda CX-90 interior with heated seats offering premium comfort.

Experience ultimate comfort in the CX-90. Nappa leather, heated/ventilated seats, 8-way power adjustments, and memory settings for both front passengers. The heated steering wheel with memory tilt/telescope adds premium convenience.

Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/EH5A4eQ4ipY