William Frantz Public School: A Social Historical Case Study in American Education

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Race(d) Time: Race, History, and Educational Memory

Abstract

This paper examines seminal events across the history of William Frantz Public School (WFPS), an elementary school situated in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans with historical significance to the desegregation of P-12 public schools. The story of desegregation, although the most widely recognized, is only one chapter in a century-long saga of WFPS. Within this historical, place-based examination, researchers uncover how phenomena such as poverty, race, market economies, and natural disasters, have impacted WFPS. Researchers address two research questions (a) How have issues of segregation, equity, and capitalistic influences in the public sector been manifested in WFPS? (b) In what ways might these issues be reflected in broader purposes and values of U.S. public education?

Authors

• Cori Meredith Brown, Rowan University

• Connie Lynn Schaffer, University of Nebraska - Omaha

• Meg White, Stockton University