This article focuses on the first African American students at two southern land-grant universities, North Carolina State University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech). Although these institutions integrated in the 1950s, most of the current desegregation scholarship focuses on other southern institutions in…

The article places current efforts to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the context of societal changes of the past 50 years. Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), describes key experiences that contributed to…

Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century, informal education existed in Ghana with the goal of introducing young people into the society. The traditions and values of the community, as well as the meaning of life, were taught to the child. By using postcolonial theory as a framework for analysis, it is evident that the Western formal…

Historically, education research and practice has failed to accentuate the factors that promote Black student success and, instead, produced deficit-centered narratives that focused on Black students' academic underachievement and challenges. These dominant narratives have negatively influenced Black students' experiences and there is a need for…

The author argues that the ascendance of individualistic, free market-oriented ideas about the education of Black people is best understood as the product of the decline of collective social movements. The careers of two of the most well-known American Black educators illustrate this pattern. Booker T. Washington and Geoffrey Canada rose to…

The purpose of this study was to explore and document the perspectives of the Black students who were the first to desegregate Roanoke, Virginia, schools during the 1960--1961 school year. The researcher conducted a qualitative case study incorporating interviews of the students, a review of newspaper articles and documents from the time period,…

Open Access, is often understood as referring to the free circulation of research outputs from and to all parts of the planet. It is argued that this definition is deceptive because it ignores the fact that the imposition of the epistemological paradigm of the hegemonic culture on the indigenous people of Africa translates to the partial…

This article presents findings from a larger on-going study examining the mathematics and science education of African Americans from 1854-1954. The overarching research question was "What type of mathematics education experiences did Blacks living in the South have during de jure segregation?" Archival materials from nine historically…

This article discusses Black teacher activism during Jim Crow through a case study of the Florida State Teachers Association. Few studies have examined the response of Black teacher associations to Jim Crow educational policies. This study examines inequities in school and teacher salaries and the FSTA's response by way of campaigns, rhetoric and…

What accounts for the variation in southern state colleges and universities responses to initial desegregation? This article analyzes southern state university responses to qualified Black students' applications to historically white public colleges. Furthermore, the study tests V.O. Key's hypothesis in Southern Politics in State and Nation--that…

This article takes a critical approach to unsettling the apathy around Black girls' and women's mathematics achievement and participation. I discuss how prevailing narratives about White girls and women, as well as Black boys and men, make the existence of coherent narratives of Black girls and women in mathematics essentially impossible. I argue…

Similar to W.E.B. Du Bois, we believe that access to educational opportunities is a fundamental right that should be provided to all Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, or national origin. Too often, however, the educational experiences for Black students are significantly uneven in comparison to other demographic groups. These students…

Despite claims that colleges and universities are isolated from ideological preferences, sociopolitical discourse regularly shapes policies and practices of postsecondary education. This article considers how national discourse on federal aid for postsecondary education during the 1970s reflected a monumental shift in higher education policy.…

The percentage of African American educators in the U.S. has declined over the past 65 years while the public school populations have become more diverse. Reasons for this decline are posited from a review of the literature, including "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas," and the expanded opportunities for African Americans…

There is growing need to showcase the agency and determination of African American parents seeking equitable educational opportunities for their children, given that their narratives defy mainstream stereotypes of passivity, disinterest, and lack of effort. In this article the authors investigate the early role of parents in fostering sustainable…