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Desegregating Teachers: Contesting the Meaning of Equality of Educational Opportunity in the South post Brown explores the battle to desegregate public school teachers in the South. It also considers the implications of linking racially balanced school faculties to equal educational opportunities for African American students. This book demonstrates that the legal struggle to desegregate teachers and other school personnel is critical to understanding the politics of school desegregation in the South and perhaps elsewhere. Its premise is that the status of educators - far from being at the margins of the desegregation story - was central in shaping the desegregation process and outcomes. This is important today as student populations became largely resegregated. To capture the dynamics of faculty desegregation at the district level, this book explores the process in two distinct southern metropolitan areas: Jackson, Mississippi and Tampa, Florida. This is an important book for researchers, professors, and pre-service teachers.
About the author
Barbara J. Shircliffe has a PhD in social foundations and is a faculty member at the University of South Florida. Her scholarship focuses on the history of segregation and desegregation, oral history, and school policy.
Summary
Explores the battle to desegregate public school teachers in the South. This book demonstrates that the legal struggle to desegregate teachers and other school personnel is critical to understanding the politics of school desegregation in the South and perhaps elsewhere.
Report
«During the struggle to integrate southern schools, did activists' demands to racially balance school faculties help or hinder the interests of African American educators? Desegregating Teachers uncovers this hidden chapter of our civil rights history with thoughtfully textured local case studies. By tracing the systematic protection of white privilege across three eras of teacher desegregation - equalization, displacement, and affirmative action - Barbara J. Shircliffe provocatively argues against interpreting recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings solely as a conservative retreat from Brown.» (Jack Dougherty, Associate Professor and Director of Educational Studies Program, Trinity College)
