Why am I passionate about this?
I am a historian of education and twentieth-century U.S. history. Public schooling has been transformative for me, opening up a world of opportunities, but I know many others are not nearly so lucky. This has shaped my interest in the history of public schooling, including its promise of democracy and opportunity and the too-often reality of the way it replicates and deepens social and economic inequalities. I think history helps us understand our world, including to see the roots of inequality we live with today and to think about how we might build a more equitable system.
Tracy's book list on understanding the history of educational inequality
Why did Tracy love this book?
I love this book because it is such a groundbreaking, insightful, and comprehensive examination of the development of Southern public education systems and the fight over whether they would be instruments of domination or liberation. Every time I read it, I learn new things.
This book shows how Black Southerners' activism and support helped build public education in the South and how they tried to use education to claim and give meaning to freedom after the Civil War. At the same time, White Southerners fought (and in many ways) succeeded in using those systems for control and hierarchy.
I think the book explores this tension in education and offers profound insights about the history and ongoing effects of this history of discrimination and segregation.
2 authors picked The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators,…