Black Educators in the Southern Freedom Struggle and Its Implication for the "Red for Ed" Reform Movement

• In Event: Walkout! Teacher Militancy, Activism, and School Reform: Bridging the Research-Practice Divide

Abstract

This author explores the historical intersection of race and teacher activism, finding that the white-dominated corps of teachers who constitute today’s Red for Ed movement unwittingly built their strategies and organizing approaches upon a foundation built by earlier Black teachers, even as the commitment to civil rights and racial equality that defined the work of those historical teachers is largely absent in the current movement. A historical intersection of race, teaching and activism deepens our understanding of modern teacher strikes in conservative states and reveals that the professional organization of educators’ labor constitutes a unique though overlooked aspect of labor and civil rights history as it provides a framework to situate a movement that has at times been framed outside the grasp of American history.

Author

• Jon Hale, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author