African American Education

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?

Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 Americans have viewed school integration as a central tenet of the Black civil rights movement. Yet, school integration was not the only - or even always the dominant - civil rights strategy. At times, African Americans also fought for separate, Black-controlled schools dedicated to racial uplift and community empowerment.

In March of 1827 the nation's first black newspaper appeared in New York City - to counter attacks on blacks by the city's other papers. From this signal event, The African American Newspaper traces the evolution of the black newspaper - and its ultimate decline - for more than 160 years until the end of the 20th century.

In 2003, the book Nigger started an intense conversation about the uses and implications of that epithet. The N Word moves beyond that short, provocative book by revealing how the word has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America.

Explore some of the most important events and people in black history! Two captivating manuscripts in one book: African American History: A Captivating Guide to the People and Events That Shaped the History of the United States; and Haitian Revolution: A Captivating Guide to the Abolition of Slavery.

Do you want to know how to take good care of your black hair? Black hair can be prone to dryness, which makes it frizzy and rough. You end up with hair that is difficult to detangle and style. Most people with black afro-type ethnic hair find it difficult to manage their hair, and they don't know how to take proper care of it. It may be tough, but it is not impossible. There is no need to spend thousands of dollars on salons trying to make sure that your black hair is healthy, clean, and stylish.

Regardless of how wealthy or poor their parents are, all black boys must confront and surmount the "achievement gap": a divide that shows up not only in our sons' test scores, but in their social and emotional development, their physical well-being, and their outlook on life. As children, they score as high on cognitive tests as their peers, but at some point, the gap emerges. Why? This is the question Joe Brewster, M.D., and Michele Stephenson asked when their own son, Idris, began struggling in a new school.

Everything that we have and get to experience today came from the minds of brilliant men and women throughout history, whether we know their names or not. In the past, the African American community hasn't been given recognition for these inventions and new ways of life, especially here in America. Some of the biggest changes we've faced have come from African Americans. From the brave and selfless efforts of Harriet Tubman in the Underground Railroad to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement, Black men and women have changed the course of history.

This recently rediscovered and critically acclaimed 1937 novel tells the story of Janie Crawford, a long-legged, articulate, and fiercely independent African-American woman of the 1930s. Janie's quest for identity includes three marriages and a return to her roots. Despite her struggles, Janie never defines herself by regret, fear, or unrealistic dreams, and refuses to be anything but her own person.

A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution's complex and contested involvement in slavery - setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown's troubling past was far from unique. In Ebony and Ivy, Craig Steven Wilder, a rising star in the profession of history, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy.

From her first days at Virginia’s Hampton University, impressionable, creative Nia falls smitten with Chris Eidos Alleyne, an athlete and a scholar. “Love is sweet nothings and beautiful promises”, Nia writes in her journal. What her girlfriends know, and her mother doesn’t, is that Chris’s expression of love is deeply physical. Wielding powerful charisma, Chris soon has Nia abandoning innocence for experience.

In Teaching White Supremacy, Donald Yacovone shows us the clear and damning evidence of white supremacy’s deep-seated roots in our nation’s education system in a fascinating, in-depth examination of America’s wide assortment of texts, from primary readers to college textbooks and other higher-ed course materials. Sifting through a wealth of materials, from the colonial era to today, Yacovone reveals the systematic ways in which white supremacist ideology has infiltrated American culture and how it has been at the heart of our collective national identity.

Bearing Witness While Black tells the story of this century's most powerful Black social movement through the eyes of fifteen activists who documented it. At the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, African Americans filmed and tweeted evidence of fatal police encounters in dozens of US cities - using little more than the device in their pockets. Their urgent dispatches from the frontlines spurred a global debate on excessive police force, which claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children at disproportionate rates.

Black women are heading to college in record numbers, and more and more Black women are teaching in higher education. But these statistics don’t guarantee our safety there. Willpower and grit may improve achievement for Black people in school, but they don’t secure our belonging. In fact, the very structure of higher education ensures that we’re treated as guests, outsiders to the institutional family—outnumbered and unwelcome.

In 2020, heartsick from constant assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into the historical archive for help navigating the “din of human division and strife.” With lyricism and urgency, Smith draws on several avenues of thinking—personal, documentary, and spiritual—to understand who we are as a nation and what we might hope to mean to one another.

Kendrick “Perk” Perkins is known for his blunt, opinionated, “carry the hell on” commentary on ESPN’s most popular shows. As a fourteen-year NBA player and starting center for the 2008 NBA champion Boston Celtics, Perk earned a reputation as an enforcer, a fierce defender, and a great teammate. Now, In The Education of Kendrick Perkins, he opens a different side of himself: a powerful and intimate memoir that goes beyond basketball to discuss the reality of being Black in America.

The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson (1933), addresses important economic and social issues that were faced by African Americans. Woodson criticises education in American schools and the emphasis on the history of the Greeks, Romans, and British. He explores the legacy of slavery and the economic situation of Blacks in the time of depression. In each chapter, he considers the results of miseducation on the church, business, politics, and leadership.

When Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males appeared in 1998, it was hailed as "a crucial book" (Baltimore Sun) and "undoubtedly one of the most important tools the African American parent can possess" (Kweisi Mfume, President NAACP). Now, in response to enormous demand, the authors turn their attention to African American young women. Statistics indicate that African American females, as a group, fare poorly in the United States.

Showcasing the work of literary giants like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and authors whom listeners may be surprised to learn were "in the life", Black Like Us is the most comprehensive collection of fiction by African American lesbian, gay, and bisexual writers ever published.

Black education was a subversive act from its inception. African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. They developed what Jarvis Givens calls a tradition of "fugitive pedagogy"—a theory and practice of Black education in America. The enslaved learned to read in spite of widespread prohibitions; newly emancipated people braved the dangers of integrating all-White schools and the hardships of building Black schools.