Abolitionist-feminist Angelina Grimke's "Pennsylvania Hall" address in 1838 is more than an important early feminist document. Through the use of rhetorical techniques (such as those known to contemporary feminists as elements of "consciousness raising"), Grimke empowers herself and her women listeners through the act of…

Early political struggles over principles of governance culminated in our "commercially competitive civil society" in which numbers equate with power, resulting in disempowerment of rural people, decreasing rural influence on public policy, and consequent irrelevant education in rural communities. Education can provide the basis for a…

Reviews the literature attesting to the strengths of African-American families and explores ways in which those strengths can be affirmed in the infrastructure of the family system. Explores a conceptualization of empowerment that involves rejecting a structural functionalist perspective in favor of a sociocultural framework. Discusses…

The Southern Paiute Indians embraced English and realized that letter writing was a good way to communicate with distant people. They welcomed and attended schools. Excerpts from letters demonstrate that Paiute Indians wrote often to White officials advancing their issues or protesting mistreatment, as well as to each other to maintain their…

In 1932, Myles Horton founded the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. Horton created an adult education center dedicated to helping groups of primarily poor and uneducated people strive together to solve their social, economic, and political problems and conflicts by mining their own experiences and awareness. In this book, Horton…