Synopses & Reviews
This book explores a profoundly negative narrative about legally segregated schools in the United States being inherently inferior compared to their white counterparts. However, there are overwhelmingly positive counter-memories of these schools as good and valued among former students, teachers, and community members. Using interview data with 44 former teachers in three North Carolina counties, college and university archival materials, and secondary historical sources, the author argues that Jim Crow's teachers remember from hidden transcripts?latent reports of the social world created and lived in all-black schools and communities?which reveal hidden social relations and practices that were constructed away from powerful white educational authorities. The author concludes that the national memory of inherently inferior all-black schools does not tell the whole story about legally segregated education; the collective remembering of Jim Crow's teachers reveal a critique of power and a fight for respectability that shaped teachers? work in the Age of Segregation.
Synopsis
Using oral history interviews with 44 former teachers from the Jim Crow era, local and state archival materials, and secondary historical sources, Hilton Kelly examines the surprising counter-memories of students, teachers, and community members who recall these schools not as being inferior, but as being of sufficient quality.
Synopsis
There is a profoundly negative narrative about legally segregated schools in the United States being inherently inferior compared to their white counterparts. Using oral history interviews with 44 former teachers, local and state archival materials, and secondary historical sources, Hilton Kelly examines the surprising counter-memories of students, teachers, and community members who recall these schools not as being inferior, but as being of good quality. Despite the well-documented inequalities linked to the geopolitics of race and racism in the Jim Crow South, Kelly demonstrates how, from the perspective of former teachers, the quality and character of teaching in the all-black school before federally-mandated desegregation in the South was strong. Indeed, the national memory of inherently inferior all-black public schools does not tell the whole story about legally segregated education. Ultimately, the narratives of the teachers reveal a critique of power and a fight for respectability that shaped teachers' work in the Age of Jim Crow.