Journal of American History · 2004 · 147 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesHistorySecondary EducationAfrican American EducationAfrican American HistoryBlack Intellectual HistoryAfrican American Education HistoryAfrican American TeachersBlack StudiesRace In EducationRace In SchoolingSegregated SchoolingBlack Schooling ExperiencesJim Crow CritiqueNaacp InSchool Integration Politics
Studies of post‑Brown desegregation in the South have documented the closure or loss of identity of African‑American schools, lamenting their disappearance while now recognizing them as proud institutions that fostered community cohesion and inspired generations of black students. This paper addresses the gap in the literature by examining the NAACP brief’s claim that segregated schools produced feelings of inferiority among their students, a central argument that was accepted by the Supreme Court.
Beginning with Vanessa Siddle Walker's 1996 history of a high school in Caswell County, North Carolina, a stream of studies have documented African American schools that were forced to close or lost their identities when desegregation engulfed the South. The dominant tone of those works is elegiac; far from celebrating the departure of segregated schools, they lament their loss. Once stigmatized as symbols of Jim Crow and engines of educational failure, the black schools of the era before Brown v. Board of Education (1954) are now portrayed as proud institutions that provided black communities with cohesion and leadership. Their teachers, it is argued, inspired and motivated generations of African American children. Virtually absent from this literature is the central assertion of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (naacp) brief in Brown—which was accepted by the Supreme Court and central to its judgment—that segregated schools generated feelings of inferiority in the children who attended them.1.