Disintegration of Education Associations During the Civil Rights Movement

• In Event: Disrupting the Discourse on "Bad" Teachers and "Failing" Schools: Why the History of Black Educators Is Critical for School Reform

Abstract

The second paper examines the history and merger of southern teacher associations at the moment of their desegregation in 1964. Based upon oral histories with 15 former educators who enrolled in professional associations and the archival records of the National Education Association (NEA), the Palmetto Education Association, the Mississippi Education Association, and the Alabama State Teachers Association, this paper examines the civil rights agendas of black educators during desegregation. Moreover, it illuminates how the merger and racial integration of the teaching profession provided new avenues to institutionalize a modicum of support for civil rights gains and protection for black teachers during the desegregation of schools. As organizations linked to the principles of the Civil Rights Movement, black teacher associations used the merger to defend their right to teach after Brown and protect their due process as teachers of color were dismissed and demoted during the desegregation of public schools.

At the very moment of desegregation when professional teacher associations moved toward embracing a civil rights agenda, however, historian Vanessa Siddle Walker notes the AERA disassociated from the NEA, and therefore thousands of black southern educators. The association severed ties with key stakeholders in quality education. As legislatures across the nation resisted the demands of teachers of color and their civil rights allies, white and northern teacher associations – including national organizations like AERA - largely ignored the plight of black teachers. Examining in greater historical detail the schism between AERA and black southern teacher association revisits what AERA President Vanessa Siddle Walker called the “historic possibilities of connectivity and collaboration in educational problem solving.” By exploring the origins of racial disintegration in the teaching profession, the historic possibility of greater collaboration with integral stakeholders in the struggle for quality education is uncovered.

Author

• Jon Hale, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign