George Washington Carver Senior High School: A Legacy That Can't Be Chartered

• In Event: Roots, Realities, Refusals, Reinventions: Critical Reflections on the Histories and Futures of Liberation Education

Abstract

In this paper, Kristen Buras tells the story of G. W. Carver Senior High School in New Orleans, a historic black public school in the city's 9th Ward, by drawing on the oral history testimony of past students, teachers, and principals as well as archival material on the school's history. Opening its doors in 1958-1959 near the Desire Housing Project, also home to New Orleans' Black Panther Party, Carver educated generations of youth, fostering a remarkably strong sense of identity among community members; to be a "Carver Ram" meant lifelong access to forms of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006) through a network of comrades. Veteran teachers— many with histories in civil rights activism and union organizing—worked intimately with students, some attaining near-legendary reputations for their skill and mentorship (e.g., Kennedy, 2010). Notably, despite a long history of inequitable treatment of black public schools by white policymakers, Carver developed an extensive array of curricular and extracurricular offerings, catapulting many graduates into technical and professional arenas across the city. In sum, Carver evidenced an intergenerational tradition of educational excellence rooted in New Orleans' culture and history, particularly the Creole-inflected struggle for black self-determination (Buras, 2017). Much can be learned, argues Buras, from the traditions of Carver Senior High School, especially at this critical moment.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city's veteran teachers were fired and Carver was reopened under the state-run Recovery School District and ultimately closed (Buras, 2015). At the same time, “No Excuses” charter schools opened across the city and failed to adopt the fundamental elements of liberation education that historic schools such as Carver embodied. Using past practices of education for liberation to shed light on current reforms, Buras briefly compares the historic Carver tradition with the climate of "No Excuses" charter schools that feature prominently across the city. Ultimately, she concludes that charter school expansion has resulted in the effacement of culturally specific traditions of excellence and self-determination by a zero-tolerance approach that violates students' educational, civil, and human rights, a glaring betrayal of the legacy nurtured and built by the teachers and students of Carver Senior High School (Buras, 2017). How, she asks, can that legacy be recovered and used to reinvent public schools in New Orleans?

Author

• Kristen L. Buras, Georgia State University