Urban South Grassroots Research Collective for Public Education (USGRC) is a New Orleans-based coalition melding research and grassroots organizing for racial-economic equity. Buras examines her involvement as a scholar activist working in solidarity with community groups to document the effects of the charter school takeover on black public…

"Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities" examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns…

The advent of critical race theory (CRT) in legal scholarship changed the way in which legal scholars think about race and racism in at least three ways. First, CRT scholars argue that the problem of racial justice is fundamental to American law, whereas the previous generation of civil rights scholars saw racial justice as a problem of…

More progress is needed to achieve equity in racial and gender representation in the push to diversify the physical sciences. In order to continue moving towards representation and equity, there is a need for more analytic tools that can help us understand where we are and how we got here. This may also enable meaningful systemic change. In this…

This article provides a history of Black southern teacher associations and the civil rights agenda they articulated from Reconstruction through the desegregation of public schools in the 1970s. Black teacher associations demonstrated historic agency by demanding a fundamental right to an education, equal salaries, and the right to work during the…

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court decided "Brown v. Board of Education" and ordered the desegregation of students by race in public schools. Many of the states as well as the federal executive branch of government expressed some level of opposition to this order. Over time, courts have taken alternative positions on the education…

This article examines the historical relationship between political power and the pursuit of education and social equality from the Reconstruction era to the present. The chief argument is that education equality is historically linked to and even predicated on equal political power, specifically, equal access to the franchise and instruments of…

In the period after the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson), "white" supremacy was codified and reinforced through law, custom, and mob violence. Despite this, African-descended women artists in the Western Hemisphere committed the revolutionary act of declaring, "I am; I am here; I am here remaking/reimagining the…

In this classroom simulation, students travel back in time to 1945, when racism was institutionalized in many states through segregation. Though students cannot literally travel back to the Jim Crow era, teachers can create a situation that brings home the point of injustice and the choices individuals are faced with in such situations. Suddenly,…

The 1947 President's Commission on Higher Education offers insight into higher education policy in the United States. This article reviews and assesses the adoption of its policy recommendations in two key areas: 1) improving college access and equity and 2) expanding the role of community colleges. (Contains 1 figure and 4 notes.)