Release date: May 6, 2004
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or dhammac@emory.edu

Black Educators Forgotten in Brown v. Board Anniversary

Contact:
Deb Hammacher: 404-727-0644, dhammac@emory.edu
Elaine Justice: 404-727-0643, ejustic@emory.edu

Black educators are the forgotten heroes in the story of Brown v. Board of Education, says Vanessa Siddle Walker, professor of educational studies at Emory University. Siddle Walker, author of "Their Highest Potential" on the history of segregated black schools in the South, says that before the NAACP took up the cause of school desegregation that resulted in the Brown decision, black educators had spent decades organizing and advocating for education reform.

Siddle Walker's research on the archives of a black teachers' organization, the Georgia Teachers and Education Association, shows that it, along with counterparts in other states, "was the engine for the civil rights movement through desegregation."

But the quiet, mostly hidden advocacy of these all-black teacher organizations "was as lost as black schools" once desegregation came about and more than 31,000 highly trained black teachers across the South lost their jobs. "Teacher organizations were merged, and the black organizations' files literally were thrown away," says Siddle Walker. "It is important to celebrate Brown because it is an important story. But it isn't the whole story."

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