Testimonios: A 21st-Century Colonial Project

• In Event: 16.019 - Counternarratives/Testimonios/Mestizaje Epistemologies

Abstract

Growing amounts of research have called into question the State of Louisiana’s Act No. 35 (2005), which enabled the Recovery School District (RSD) to assume the control of a total of 107 of the 128 Orleans Parish schools just shortly after Hurricane Katrina. An educator from New Orleans public schools designed this qualitative study to investigate various understandings and perspectives on how and why the majority of the historical black schools in New Orleans were destroyed. Primary data sources include in-depth interviews, testimonios and archival documents. The purpose of this oral history study is to offer future generations with a historical narrative that considers a mélange of first-hand accounts on what happened to black education in New Orleans.

Author

• Elizabeth K. Jeffers, University of New Orleans