Chapter 3: The Way I See It: Segregation, Pre-Brown, and Desegregation, Post-Brown in an Atlanta School

This chapter traces the intersectional experiences of one Black woman through pre-Brown schooling, becoming a teacher under a post-Brown court order, hiring teachers as a school leader in a large metropolitan, southern city, to her current position as a leader-educator at a state university. Informed and contextualized by social, political, and historical events associated with the pre-Brown segregation, desegregation, and post-Brown eras, this chapter uses narrative autoethnographic reflectivity and storytelling to understand and analyze the nuances of educational hiring practices through the prism of one Black woman's educational journey. The story is significant because it not only provides evidence of the subtleties and nuances of racism but it also describes the changes in teaching, leadership, and hiring practices in southern public education over the last 60 years.