Course Info: CSI-0248

The fight for equity in education is one of the most critical and enduring themes in the African American struggle to fully exercise their citizenship rights. This course explored the ways in which local African American communities fought to create educational spaces for their children and for future generations. The class began with the dynamic struggle of Boston's African American community to desegregate public education during the pre-civil war decade and traced the varied strategies of educational leaders to broaden educational opportunities through the Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Civil Rights/Black Power eras. Readings explored hidden strategies for strengthening the academic programs in segregated Black schools, and increasing access to secondary and post secondary education available to Black students. In the second half of the course, we examined more overt strategies for educational advancement, such as the student led boycotts of the 1950s and 1960s and local campaigns to shape the desegregation process. By exploring a range of critical perspectives on black educational history as well as primary sources, students identified specific research questions and developed their own research agendas. Students were required to develop analtycial essays based upon primary and secondary research, including at least one paper based on the Horace Mann Bond Collection located at the UMASS Special Collections and University Archives.