Just Trying to Have School

Just Trying to Have School
Author: Natalie G. Adams
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1496819578

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, no state fought longer or harder to preserve segregated schools than Mississippi. This massive resistance came to a crashing halt in October 1969 when the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Holmes Board of Education that "the obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools." Thirty of the thirty-three Mississippi districts named in the case were ordered to open as desegregated schools after Christmas break. With little guidance from state officials and no formal training or experience in effective school desegregation processes, ordinary people were thrown into extraordinary circumstances. However, their stories have been largely ignored in desegregation literature. Based on meticulous archival research and oral history interviews with over one hundred parents, teachers, students, principals, superintendents, community leaders, and school board members, Natalie G. Adams and James H. Adams explore the arduous and complex task of implementing school desegregation. How were bus routes determined? Who lost their position as principal? Who was assigned to what classes? Without losing sight of the important macro forces in precipitating social change, the authors shift attention to how the daily work of "just trying to have school" helped shape the contours of school desegregation in communities still living with the decisions made fifty years ago.

From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse

From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse
Author: Christopher M. Span
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2009
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807832901

In the years immediately following the Civil War_the formative years for an emerging society of freed African Americans in Mississippi_there was much debate over the general purpose of black schools and who would control them. From Cotton Field to Scho

The Hardest Deal of All

The Hardest Deal of All
Author: Charles C. Bolton
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1604730609

Race has shaped public education in the Magnolia State, from Reconstruction through the Carter Administration. For The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 Charles C. Bolton mines newspaper accounts, interviews, journals, archival records, legal and financial documents, and other sources to uncover the complex story of one of Mississippi's most significant and vexing issues. This history closely examines specific events--the after-math of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the 1966 protests and counter-demonstrations in Grenada, and the efforts of particular organizations--and carefully considers the broader picture. Despite a separate but equal doctrine established in the late nineteenth century, the state's racially divided school systems quickly developed vast differences in terms of financing, academic resources, teacher salaries, and quality of education. As one of the nation's poorest states, Mississippi could not afford to finance one school system adequately, much less two. For much of the twentieth century, whites fought hard to preserve the dual school system, in which the maintenance of one-race schools became the most important measure of educational quality. Blacks fought equally hard to end segregated schooling, realizing that their schools would remain underfunded and understaffed as long as they were not integrated. Charles C. Bolton is professor and chair of history and co-director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. He is the coauthor of Mississippi: An Illustrated History and coeditor of The Confessions of Edward Isham: A Poor White Life of the Old South . Bolton's work has also appeared in the Journal of Southern History, Journal of Mississippi History, and Mississippi Folklife .

Schooling in the Antebellum South

Schooling in the Antebellum South
Author: Sarah L. Hyde
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807164208

In Schooling in the Antebellum South, Sarah L. Hyde analyzes educational development in the Gulf South before the Civil War, not only revealing a thriving private and public education system, but also offering insight into the worldview and aspirations of the people inhabiting the region. While historians have tended to emphasize that much of the antebellum South had no public school system and offered education only to elites in private institutions, Hyde’s work suggests a different pattern of development in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, where citizens actually worked to extend schooling across the region. As a result, students learned in a variety of settings—in their own homes with a family member or hired tutor, at private or parochial schools, and in public free schools. Regardless of the venue, Hyde shows that the ubiquity of learning in the region proves how highly southerners valued education. As early as the 1820s and 1830s, legislators in these states sought to increase access to education for less wealthy residents through financial assistance to private schools. Urban governments in the region were the first to acquiesce to voters’ demands, establishing public schools in New Orleans, Natchez, and Mobile. The success of these schools led residents in rural areas to lobby their local legislatures for similar opportunities. Despite an economic downturn in the late 1830s that limited legislative appropriations for education, the economic recovery of the 1840s ushered in a new era of educational progress. The return of prosperity, Hyde suggests, coincided with the maturation of Jacksonian democracy—a political philosophy that led southerners to demand access to privileges formerly reserved for the elite, including schooling. Hyde explains that while Jacksonian ideology inspired voters to lobby for schools, the value southerners placed on learning was rooted in republicanism: they believed a representative democracy needed an educated populace to survive. Consequently, by 1860 all three states had established statewide public school systems. Schooling in the Antebellum South successfully challenges the conventional wisdom that an elitist educational system prevailed in the South and adds historical depth to an understanding of the value placed on public schooling in the region.

Making Haste Slowly

Making Haste Slowly
Author: David G. Sansing
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2011-09-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1617035718

A comprehensive history that reveals the intrusion of culture and politics into higher education in Mississippi

The Freedom Schools

The Freedom Schools
Author: Jon N. Hale
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231541821

Created in 1964 as part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Schools were launched by educators and activists to provide an alternative education for African American students that would facilitate student activism and participatory democracy. The schools, as Jon N. Hale demonstrates, had a crucial role in the civil rights movement and a major impact on the development of progressive education throughout the nation. Designed and run by African American and white educators and activists, the Freedom Schools counteracted segregationist policies that inhibited opportunities for black youth. Providing high-quality, progressive education that addressed issues of social justice, the schools prepared African American students to fight for freedom on all fronts. Forming a political network, the Freedom Schools taught students how, when, and where to engage politically, shaping activists who trained others to challenge inequality. Based on dozens of first-time interviews with former Freedom School students and teachers and on rich archival materials, this remarkable social history of the Mississippi Freedom Schools is told from the perspective of those frequently left out of civil rights narratives that focus on national leadership or college protestors. Hale reveals the role that school-age students played in the civil rights movement and the crucial contribution made by grassroots activists on the local level. He also examines the challenges confronted by Freedom School activists and teachers, such as intimidation by racist Mississippians and race relations between blacks and whites within the schools. In tracing the stories of Freedom School students into adulthood, this book reveals the ways in which these individuals turned training into decades of activism. Former students and teachers speak eloquently about the principles that informed their practice and the influence that the Freedom School curriculum has had on education. They also offer key strategies for further integrating the American school system and politically engaging today's youth.

A Federal Right to Education

A Federal Right to Education
Author: Kimberly Jenkins Robinson
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2023-06-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1479825891

How the United States can provide equal educational opportunity to every child The United States Supreme Court closed the courthouse door to federal litigation to narrow educational funding and opportunity gaps in schools when it ruled in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez in 1973 that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to education. Rodriguez pushed reformers back to the state courts where they have had some success in securing reforms to school funding systems through education and equal protection clauses in state constitutions, but far less success in changing the basic structure of school funding in ways that would ensure access to equitable and adequate funding for schools. Given the limitations of state school funding litigation, education reformers continue to seek new avenues to remedy inequitable disparities in educational opportunity and achievement, including recently returning to federal court. This book is the first comprehensive examination of three issues regarding a federal right to education: why federal intervention is needed to close educational opportunity and achievement gaps; the constitutional and statutory legal avenues that could be employed to guarantee a federal right to education; and, the scope of what a federal right to education should guarantee. A Federal Right to Education provides a timely and thoughtful analysis of how the United States could fulfill its unmet promise to provide equal educational opportunity and the American Dream to every child, regardless of race, class, language proficiency, or neighborhood.

Mississippi: Conflict & Change

Mississippi: Conflict & Change
Author: James W. Loewen
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 368
Release: 1974-01-01
Genre: African Americans
ISBN: 9780394709291

SUMMARY: A textbook which traces the history of Mississippi from prehistoric times until today, covering all areas of social life and concentrating on recent developments, especially the civil rights struggle and the search for social justice.

Three Years in Mississippi

Three Years in Mississippi
Author: James Meredith
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2019-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496821025

On October 1, 1962, James Meredith was the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Preceded by violent rioting resulting in two deaths and a lengthy court battle that made it all the way to the Supreme Court, his admission was a pivotal moment in civil rights history. Citing his “divine responsibility” to end white supremacy, Meredith risked everything to attend Ole Miss. In doing so, he paved the way for integration across the country. Originally published in 1966, more than ten years after the Supreme Court ended segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education, Meredith describes his intense struggle to attend an all-white university and break down long-held race barriers in one of the most conservative states in the country. This first-person account offers a glimpse into a crucial point in civil rights history and the determination and courage of a man facing unfathomable odds. Reprinted for the first time, this volume features a new introduction by historian Aram Goudsouzian.

Teacher

Teacher
Author: Michael Copperman
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2016-08-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496805860

When Michael Copperman left Stanford University for the Mississippi Delta in 2002, he imagined he would lift underprivileged children from the narrow horizons of rural poverty. Well-meaning but naïve, the Asian American from the West Coast soon lost his bearings in a world divided between black and white. He had no idea how to manage a classroom or help children navigate the considerable challenges they faced. In trying to help students, he often found he couldn't afford to give what they required--sometimes with heartbreaking consequences. His desperate efforts to save child after child were misguided but sincere. He offered children the best invitations to success he could manage. But he still felt like an outsider who was failing the children and himself. Teach For America has for a decade been the nation's largest employer of recent college graduates but has come under increasing criticism in recent years even as it has grown exponentially. This memoir considers the distance between the idealism of the organization's creed that "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education and reach their full potential" and what it actually means to teach in America's poorest and most troubled public schools. Copperman's memoir vividly captures his disorientation in the divided world of the Delta, even as the author marvels at the wit and resilience of the children in his classroom. To them, he is at once an authority figure and a stranger minority than even they are--a lone Asian, an outsider among outsiders. His journey is of great relevance to teachers, administrators, and parents longing for quality education in America. His frank story shows that the solutions for impoverished schools are far from simple.