Using Past as Prologue: Contemporary Perspectives on African American

A volume in Research on African American Education
Series Editors: Carol Camp Yeakey, Washington University in St. Louis
and Ronald D. Henderson, National Education Association
In 1978, V. P. Franklin and James D. Anderson co-edited New Perspectives on Black Educational History. For
Franklin, Anderson, and their contributors, there were glaring gaps in the historiography of Black education
that each of the essays began to fill with new information or fresh perspectives. There have been a number of important studies on the history of
African American education in the more than three decades since Franklin and Anderson published their volume that has pushed the field forward.
Scholars have redefined the views of Black southern schools as simply inferior, demonstrated the active role Blacks had in creating and sustaining their
schools, sharpened our understanding of Black teachers' and educational leaders' role in educating Black students and themselves with professional
development, provided a better understanding and recognition of the struggles in the North (particularly in urban and metropolitan areas), expanded
our thinking about school desegregation and community control, and broadened our understanding of Black experiences and activism in higher
education and private schools.
Our volume will highlight and expand upon the changes to the field over the last three and a half decades. In the shadow of 60th anniversary of Brown
v. Board of Education and the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, contributors expand on the way African Americans viewed and
experienced a variety of educational policies including segregation and desegregation, and the varied options they chose beyond desegregation. The
volume covers both the North and South in the 19th and 20th centuries. Contributors explore how educators, administrators, students, and
communities responded to educational policies in various settings including K-12 public and private schooling and higher education. A significant
contribution of the book is showcasing the growing and concentrated work in the era immediately
following the Brown decision. Finally, scholars consider the historian's engagement with recent
history, contemporary issues, future directions, methodology, and teaching.