For historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), engagement is not an enhancement of their curriculum but part of their birthright. Founded in the Civil War/Reconstruction era, HBCUs had as their core mission educating freed slaves and other free black people to participate in the economy. Later, during the Jim Crow era, HBCUs educated…

The ideal of the proper family mealtime, originally devised by the Victorian middle class, gained cultural hegemony in modern America, but with the partial exception of the 1950s, only a minority of American families could ever live by it.

The purpose of this article is to report on findings from an exploratory study that examines the linkages among social work education programs, professional development, and school social workers' perceived level of cultural competence in urban public school systems that have a majority African American student enrollment. This study seeks to shed…

Despite some characterization as being uninvolved in the education of their children, African American parents have always valued education and recognized it as the key to economic and political freedom. Despite laws in the United States prohibiting the education of slaves, African Americans were the first southerners to campaign for universal,…

Young African Americans face several critical issues such as dire economic circumstances, peer pressure, random violence, and feelings of alienation from the cultural mainstream in America. Black popular culture for these youth creates a value system born out of these same issues. This analysis will address the influence of Black popular culture…

Black Culture Centers (BCCs) represent safe and welcoming spaces for Black students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Resulting from the Black Student Movement of the 1960s, BCCs have become institutional mainstays that provide services and programs to the entire campus community. This study examined Black students' perceptions of the…

Giving Back to the Community: African American Inner City Teens and Civic Engagement was an exercise in ethnographic research. Intentionally different from the more common quantitative studies conducted on civic engagement, this qualitative data gathering project was intended to focus solely on the patterns of civic engagement habits of low income…

This article presents a model of an effective unit of study in which music played a vital role. The unit of study was created and implemented in a New York City middle school, and students examined an African American community in the borough of Brooklyn. The unit enabled students to explore the history, heritage, and culture of a local community…

Adult education instructors and administrators, who typically are not members of the hip hop generation, often have little knowledge and understanding of rap music (also known as gangsta rap) and hip hop culture, and consequently do not take the black popular cultural phenomenon seriously as it relates to adult education. Adult educators,…

Adult education instructors and administrators, who typically are not members of the hip-hop generation, have little or no background, sensitivity, or understanding of the influence and significance of black popular culture and music for young African American and white adult learners. (Contains 1 note.)

Since the "Brown" decision of 1954, American society has moved from a position of seeing no redeeming value in black culture to acknowledging that African Americans have rich cultures worth celebrating. This article reports the case of Malcolm Moor, an African American teacher who believes it is his responsibility and obligation to nurture…

Teachers of social studies, foreign language, science, and journalism will find these learning activities useful in integrating "The New State of the World Atlas" (Simon and Schuster, 1984) into their curriculum. The book is organized into three sections. The first section uses an area studies approach. Activities focus on geopolitical…

As slavery ended, Black Georgians developed unique solutions to the many problems they faced in attaining literacy and other educational goals. In terms of some of their earlier efforts, we describe a pattern in which local Black communities in Georgia sought to create and fund their own schools at primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. In…

On July 16, 2004, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) convened a day-long forum of leaders in the African American museum community, as well as leaders in the museum community at large, to explore the evolving role of African American museums, their contributions, and their challenges. This report provides a synthesis of the July…

Success and failure in school is contingent upon one's ability to regulate and situate identities, utilise culturally-developed semiotic tools and negotiate models of meaning in shared social activity. However, many language minority students lack such success, struggling with conflicts between their primary-and community-based identities, and…