Reflecting on Their Highest Potential 20 Years Later: Implications for History, Policy, and Practice

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

To mark the 20th Anniversary of Vanessa Siddle Walker’s Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South, this symposium will offer vibrant and thoughtful reflections that extend our understanding of Their Highest Potential as it relates to educational history, policy, and practice. Participants will share interdisciplinary perspectives on the work’s historiographical significance; its import for considering desegregation, resegregation, and school choice; its relationship to literacy, social justice, teacher education, and black educational research; contemporary manifestations of theory, practice, and school leadership; and considerations of the work in light of what we know now about black educational history.

Sub Unit

• Division F - History and Historiography

Cosponsors

• Division J - Postsecondary Education

• Social Justice Action Committee

• SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chairs

• Michelle A. Purdy, Washington University in St. Louis

• Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, University of Washington

Presenters

• James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Maisha T. Winn, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Sheryl Jones Croft, Kennesaw

• Vanessa Siddle Walker, Emory University