The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools - Hardcover

Walker, Vanessa Siddle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1620971054 ISBN 13: 9781620971055

Publisher: The New Press, 2018

Synopsis

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018

An important contribution to our understanding of how ordinary people found the strength to fight for equality for schoolchildren and their teachers.”
Wall Street Journal

In the epic tradition of Eyes on the Prize and with the cultural significance of John Lewis’s March trilogy, an ambitious and harrowing account of the devoted black educators who battled southern school segregation and inequality

For two years an aging Dr. Horace Tate—a former teacher, principal, and state senator—told Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker about his clandestine travels on unpaved roads under the cover of night, meeting with other educators and with Dr. King, Georgia politicians, and even U.S. presidents. Sometimes he and Walker spoke by phone, sometimes in his office, sometimes in his home; always Tate shared fascinating stories of the times leading up to and following Brown v. Board of Education. Dramatically, on his deathbed, he asked Walker to return to his office in Atlanta, in a building that was once the headquarters of another kind of southern strategy, one driven by integrity and equality.

Just days after Dr. Tate’s passing in 2002, Walker honored his wish. Up a dusty, rickety staircase, locked in a concealed attic, she found the collection: a massive archive documenting the underground actors and covert strategies behind the most significant era of the fight for educational justice. Thus began Walker’s sixteen-year project to uncover the network of educators behind countless battles—in courtrooms, schools, and communities—for the education of black children. Until now, the courageous story of how black Americans in the South won so much and subsequently fell so far has been incomplete. The Lost Education of Horace Tate is a monumental work that offers fresh insight into the southern struggle for human rights, revealing little-known accounts of leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, as well as hidden provocateurs like Horace Tate.

About this title

About the Author:

Vanessa Siddle Walker, a professor at Emory University, has studied the segregated schooling of African American children for more than twenty years. She is the president of the American Educational Research Association, a former National Academy of Education Post-Doctoral Spencer fellow, and a recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in education. She lives near Atlanta.

Review:

Praise for The Lost Education of Horace Tate:
As readers discover Tate’s place in history, they’ll also enjoy reading about Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. DuBois and other activists portrayed in rarely seen moments.”
BookPage

★ Walker’s extensively documented work is a much-needed corrective contextualizing the landscape of school desegregation; required reading for those interested in the past, present, and future of education of African American children.”
Library Jounal (Starred Review)

Quotes, anecdotes, archival photos, and other primary sources document the relentless battle for equality for southern schools, resulting in victories that affected education across America. Historical background provides context, and personal insights underscore the realities, dangers, conflicts, and triumphs. Readers follow Tate as he progresses from observer to organizer to leader, eventually becoming an example for a new generation of activists. Both education and civil-rights scholars will appreciate Walker’s new insights.”
Booklist

★ This well-told and inspiring tale, with its rarely discussed angle on the school segregation fight, will draw in readers interested in meaningful work and activism, or just a well-told tale.”
Publisher Weekly (Starred Review)

[A] new perspective on segregated schooling and education reform in the South. . . . A fresh, well-documented study of the complex struggle for equality in education.”
Kirkus Reviews

A more conscientious torchbearer of the history of black educators in America you will not find. Vanessa Siddle Walker is a brilliant thinker, a teacher’s teacher, and a sage storyteller. Her words illuminate the passion, the tragedy, and the inventiveness behind the struggle for equality in the South.”
Lisa Delpit, bestselling author of Other People’s Children

Walker compels us to see that the main struggle for educational equality unfolds off stage. This subterranean process, reproduced over generations, transmitted advocacy that made, remade, and ultimately overturned Jim Crow from the bottom up. This is a passionate, original, and brilliant study of how black educators navigated racially segregated schooling.”
James D. Anderson, dean of the College of Education, University of Illinois

In an era when policymakers are quick to shutter urban public schools and fire their black teachers in the name of competition, Walker’s incisive scholarship on the brilliance and dedication of the black educators discarded during the school desegregation era requires us to confront the full cost to our nation of racialized policies that erase committed professionals because of the color of their skin.”
Amy Stuart Wells, professor of sociology and education, Teachers College, Columbia University

A beautiful story, a powerful life, and an essential read.”
Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor of urban education, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The DreamKeepers

African American teachers intentionally operated outside the public eye to achieve justice during Jim Crow; so much so, that their bravery has been forgotten. The writing is suspenseful. The story is tragic. Yet it provides practical lessons about the critical work of educators in times of civil unrest.”
Jarvis R. Givens, assistant professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Meticulous in its historical detail and compelling in its narrative. . . . It is both a tragic tale, and a cautionary one for those who continue the struggle today. Well worth reading!”
Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

Praise for Vanessa Siddle Walker's Their Highest Potential:
A compelling story.”
—Journal of American History

Excellent.”
—MultiCultural Review

This is a first-rate book and a very moving story.”
—James D. Anderson, author of The Education of Blacks in the South

[A] must read . . .”
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Praise for Vanessa Siddle Walker's Race-ing Moral Formation:
Groundbreaking and riveting . . . [A]n essential book.”
—Andrew Garrod, Dartmouth College

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1620971054
• ISBN 13: 9781620971055
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448