African Americans and Education: A Contested History

Abstract

This essay traces the history of African resistance to Euro-subjugation in the United States. The author notes the important role of the Black church during slavery as central institution for the subversive work of liberation. However, the essay focuses primarily on the post civil-war era as it was this period when American capitalists began to construct an education for African Americans as a transition from chattel slavery to wage slavery. It is within this context that the critical traditions of Du Bois and others emerged offering a real challenge to America's racist domesticating education for capital. The piece concludes revisiting the role critical pedagogy can continue to play in carrying on the unfinished project of the Black church, Du Bois, and other African freedom fighters in America.

Keywords:

• black church
• civil rights
• civil war
• critical pedagogy
• leadership
• Manning Marable
• Mumia Abu Jamal
• slavery
• W. E. B. Du Bois

Notes

Mumia Abu-Jamal, Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the Spiritual Life of African and African American People (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2003); Joe L. Kincheloe, Critical Pedagogy Primer, 2nd ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 2008); Ahmed Shawki, Black Liberation and Socialism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006); William Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1954 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001).

Shawki, Black Liberation and Socialism, 54.

Aaron David Gresson III, America's Atonement: Racial Pain, Recovery Rhetoric, and the Pedagogy of Healing (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 13.

Curry Stephenson Malott, Lisa Waukau, and Lauren Villagomez-Waukau, Teaching Native America Across the Curriculum: A Critical Inquiry (New York: Peter Lang, 2009).

Alexander von Wuthenau, “Unexpected African Faces in Pre-Columbian America,” in African Presence in Early America, ed. Ivan Van Sertima (London: Transaction Publishers, 1992/2002), 82–83.

Legrand Clegg II, “The First Americans,” African Presence in Early America, in ibid., 231.

Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987); Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1955 [1974]); Malott, Waukau, and Villagomez-Waukau, Teaching Native America Across the Curriculum.

James Banks, Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies (New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2003), 187.

Wayne B. Chandler, “Trait-Influences in Meso-America: The Africa-Asian Connection,” in Sertima, African Presence in Early America, 251.

Malott, Waukau, and Villagomez-Waukau, Teaching Native America Across the Curriculum.

Noam Chomsky, On Nature and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Von Wuthenau, “Unexpected African Faces in Pre-Columbian America,” 82–101.

Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education, 14.

Ibid., 46.

W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin, 1989), 14.

Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education, 12.

Martha Menchaca, “Early Racist Discourses: The Roots of Deficit Thinking,” in The Evolution of Deficit Thinking: Educational Thought and Practice, ed. Richard Valencia (New York: Routledge, 1997), 36.

Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education, 14.

Ibid., 14–15.

Menchaca, “Early Racist Discourses,” 37.

Ibid.

Joe L. Kincheloe, Critical Constructivism Primer (New York: Peter Lang, 2005); Menchaca, “Early Racist Discourses”; Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education.

Eric C. Lincoln, Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), 64.

Ibid., 63.

James Cone, “Preface” to Abu-Jamal, Faith of Our Fathers, vii.

Curry Stephenson Malott, A Call to Action: An Introduction to Education, Philosophy, and Native North America (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

Bernal, Black Athena; Diop, The African Origin of Civilization; Malott, Waukau, and Villagomez-Waukau, Teaching Native America Across the Curriculum.

Kenneth O'Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994).

Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 121–122.

Abu-Jamal, Faith of Our Fathers, 53.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., 51.

Ibid.

Gary Orfield, “Schools More Separate: A Decade of Resegregation,” in Rethinking School Reform: Views from the Classroom, ed. Linda Christiansen and Stan Karp (Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools, 2003), 155.

Ibid.; Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education.

Orfield, “Schools More Separate.”.

Joe L. Kincheloe, Patrick Slattery, and Shirley Steinberg, Contextualizing Teaching: Introduction to Education and Educational Foundations (New York: Longman, 2000).

Malott, Waukau, and Villagomez-Waukau, Teaching Native America Across the Curriculum.

Ibid.

Malott, A Call to Action.

Alfie Kohn, “NCLB and the Effort to Privatize Public Education,” in Many Children Left Behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act Is Damaging Our Children and Our Schools, ed. Deborah Meier and George Wood (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 84.

Ibid.

Tondra L. Loder, “Dilemmas Confronting Urban Principals in the Post–Civil Rights Era,” in The Praeger Handbook of Urban Education: Volume 1, ed. Joe L. Kincheloe, kecia hayes, Karel Rose, and Philip M. Anderson (London: Greenwood Press, 2006), 70.

Ibid.

Ibid., 71.

Ibid.

Abu-Jamal, Faith of Our Fathers, 123–124.

Winthrop Holder, Classroom Calypso: Giving Voice to the Voiceless (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).

Joe L. Kincheloe, Critical Constructivism Primer (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 127.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, All Things Censored (New York: Seven Stories, 2000), 130.

Ibid.

Ibid., 131.

Manning Marable, Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race and Resistance (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 101.

Ibid.

Pepi Leistyna, Defining and Designing Multiculturalism: One School System's Efforts (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007).

Kincheloe, Critical Pedagogy Primer.

Kincheloe, Critical Constructivism Primer, 3.

Ibid.

Ibid., 4.

Ibid.