Chapter 15: For Us This is Not New: Deliberate Black Educational Strategies in a Rhetorical Democracy During Jim Crow

For Black folks, education in the United States has historically and contemporarily been considered a liberatory enterprise designed to redress the legislated and social attempts to limit Black access to U.S. citizenship, education, and sociopolitical engagement. Indeed, Black educators have consistently turned to education to liberate the Black community by preparing their students to be agents of a more equitable, just, and inclusive society (Anderson, 1988; Baker, 2006; Loder-Jackson, 2015; Walker, 2009, 2018; Woodson, 1933/1990). Alongside the NAACP’s efforts to launch an offensive against inhumane treatment of Black people in the United States post-World War II (Anderson, 2003), Black educators performed the liberatory work of educating Black children for a nation that hypocritically espoused democratic, progressive, and humanitarian ideals.