Policy. In Search of Black Teachers: The Irony of Recruitment and Hiring Policies Post-Brown

• In Event: AERA Teachers of Color Handbook Session 2

Abstract

This chapter centers on one evocative case study from the mid-1970s that reveals how policies intended to bring Black teachers into the public schools undermined those efforts. The evidence and argument presented in this chapter challenges the dominant narrative that African Americans lost interest in the field of education during the second half of the twentieth century. In addition, this chapter also shows that it was not just the Brown decision that led to the mass removal of Black teachers, but that specific and on-going formal and informal practices and policies created at the district level formed barriers that prevented Black individuals from entering the teaching profession.

Authors

• Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz, University of North Dakota

• Sonya Douglass, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Andrea Guiden-Pittman, Grovider