Using Past as Prologue

A volume in Research on African American EducationSeries Editors: Carol Camp Yeakey Washington University in St. Louisand Ronald D. Henderson National Education AssociationIn 1978 V. P. Franklin and James D. Anderson co-edited New Perspectives on Black Educational History. ForFranklin Anderson and their contributors there were glaring gaps in the historiography of Black educationthat each of the essays began to fill with new information or fresh perspectives. There have been a number of important studies on the history ofAfrican American education in the more than three decades since Franklin and Anderson published their volume that has pushed the field forward.Scholars have redefined the views of Black southern schools as simply inferior demonstrated the active role Blacks had in creating and sustaining theirschools sharpened our understanding of Black teachers' and educational leaders' role in educating Black students and themselves with professionaldevelopment provided a better understanding and recognition of the struggles in the North (particularly in urban and metropolitan areas) expandedour thinking about school desegregation and community control and broadened our understanding of Black experiences and activism in highereducation and private schools.Our volume will highlight and expand upon the changes to the field over the last three and a half decades. In the shadow of 60th anniversary of Brownv. Board of Education and the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act contributors expand on the way African Americans viewed andexperienced a variety of educational policies including segregation and desegregation and the varied options they chose beyond desegregation. Thevolume covers both the North and South in the 19th and 20th centuries. Contributors explore how educators administrators students andcommunities responded to educational policies in various settings including K-12 public and private schooling and higher education. A significantcontribution of the book is showcasing the growing and concentrated work in the era immediatelyfollowing the Brown decision. Finally scholars consider the historian's engagement with recenthistory contemporary issues future directions methodology and teaching.