Educating Harlem
A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community
Ernest Morrell editor Ansley T Erickson editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:8th Nov '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This insightful collection highlights the educational struggles and triumphs in Harlem, illustrating the community's quest for justice and opportunity across the decades in Educating Harlem.
The book Educating Harlem brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to explore the rich history of education in one of the nation's most iconic Black communities. It delves into the various ways that Harlem residents sought educational justice for their children and community, despite facing systemic neglect and oppression. Throughout the twentieth century, education served as a critical platform for African Americans to envision and pursue opportunities, even as the schools they attended often posed significant barriers to their success.
Contributors to Educating Harlem investigate the individuals, organizations, and initiatives that have shaped educational visions within the community. Their essays span significant historical events, from the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance to the fiscal crisis of the 1970s and beyond. This collection highlights the diverse experiences of Harlem residents, encompassing young children, dedicated researchers, community mothers, and ambitious advocates who dreamed of a wide range of possibilities, from incremental improvements to radical transformations of their educational landscape.
The chapters in Educating Harlem represent various disciplinary perspectives, examining topics such as architecture, literature, film, and community organizing. By challenging traditional narratives that depict a linear rise and fall of urban education, the book offers a nuanced portrayal of persistent struggle and resilience throughout the twentieth century, providing essential historical context for understanding one of today's most contested educational environments.
An outstanding collection of cutting-edge essays, Educating Harlem rewrites the narrative of twentieth-century urban education. Eschewing a single thesis or grand narrative, this groundbreaking volume shows the creativity, debate, fierce love, and impassioned determination of a community to make education a human right amid the ever-changing but always inequitable landscape of New York City. -- Martha Biondi, author of To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City
Read this book to understand how education has long been a source of pride and value in one of America’s most historic black communities. Read it to understand how systems of racial bias have been used to interrupt black life and threaten black lives. -- David Kirkland, executive director of the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools at New York University
These impressive essays provide a multifaceted look at the educational battles in Harlem. Not only was Harlem a cultural mecca, it was a place of hope and frustration, of opportunity and racism. At its core were residents who disagreed on aims and tactics but remained committed to educational excellence and black equality. -- Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, author of Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order
Educating Harlem epitomizes the power and potential of interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration. I could not imagine a more comprehensive and impressive assembly of scholars contained in one collection. Both experienced and emerging researchers will appreciate the varied sources and disciplinary approaches contributors utilize to recover and recount one urban community's struggle to secure educational opportunity in the twentieth century. -- Hilary Moss, Amherst College
Educating Harlem is a comprehensive treatment that reveals the continued role of hope in shaping the activism of a community. The assembled scholars demonstrate Harlem’s ongoing efforts to use education as a tool for citizenship and socioeconomic mobility. -- Hilary Green, University of Alabama
Engaging. * H-Soz-Kult *
ISBN: 9780231182201
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
376 pages