Ever Widening the Circle: Southern Black Educator Professionalism, Interwar Through Postwar Jim Crow (1920–1949)

• In Event: 29.029 - Teacher Associations and Professionalism From Jim Crow to Desegregation

Abstract

AERA’s 2017 theme is a call for research that draws on history to inform present challenges. In this regard, studies of African American segregated schooling serve to illuminate the professionalism and resourcefulness that existed in historic African American institutions and within their regional, state, and national associations. Through this effort, scholars are recovering narratives of activism, leadership, and theorizing that reshape our understanding of history and extend the foundation by which we contemplate contemporary educational struggles. This study adds to that effort by describing strategies for teacher recruitment, retention, professional development and pedagogy used by black educators across the southern region, and in the local environment of Lincoln High School, an African American K-12 school in Gainesville, Florida.

Author

• Diedre Faith Houchen, Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations