Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In 2012, Chicago’s school year began with the city’s first teachers’ strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in recent U.S. history. On one side, a union ...
More
In 2012, Chicago’s school year began with the city’s first teachers’ strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in recent U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran Black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from Black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party. This book recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. It tells the story of Black education reformers’ community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers’ challenges to a newly assertive teachers’ union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the corporate reorganization of the public sphere during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of Black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.Less
In 2012, Chicago’s school year began with the city’s first teachers’ strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in recent U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran Black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from Black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party. This book recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. It tells the story of Black education reformers’ community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers’ challenges to a newly assertive teachers’ union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the corporate reorganization of the public sphere during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of Black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.
Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban ...
More
The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban political and educational landscape from mid-twentieth century civil rights struggles through the recent corporate reorganization of the public sphere. Black women’s political and intellectual labor powered movements for racial justice and is centered in this discussion of Black politics, social movements, and education reform. The introduction explains how the book presents a different account of Black politics and urban communities in the period after the 1960s by challenging interpretations of urban decline and “urban crisis.” It also explains the historical and contemporary importance of education as a site of struggle that reveals the boundaries of U.S. democracy and changes in the relationship between citizens and the state. The introduction outlines how historical considerations of racial liberalism, the Great Migration, the New Deal, labor, Black protest, machine politics, deindustrialization, the politics of Black achievement, desegregation, self-determination, equity, and education reform inform subsequent chapters.Less
The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban political and educational landscape from mid-twentieth century civil rights struggles through the recent corporate reorganization of the public sphere. Black women’s political and intellectual labor powered movements for racial justice and is centered in this discussion of Black politics, social movements, and education reform. The introduction explains how the book presents a different account of Black politics and urban communities in the period after the 1960s by challenging interpretations of urban decline and “urban crisis.” It also explains the historical and contemporary importance of education as a site of struggle that reveals the boundaries of U.S. democracy and changes in the relationship between citizens and the state. The introduction outlines how historical considerations of racial liberalism, the Great Migration, the New Deal, labor, Black protest, machine politics, deindustrialization, the politics of Black achievement, desegregation, self-determination, equity, and education reform inform subsequent chapters.
Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s ...
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This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s election as the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983 was heralded by many as the ultimate attainment of Black Power and the success of the local Black Freedom Movement. His electoral victory was grounded in years of grassroots struggle by Black organizers fighting for integration, community control, and Black empowerment. While historians have largely considered the 1980s as a product of the political triumph of conservatism and the “Reagan revolution,” in Chicago a Black-led, urban, antimachine, progressive coalitional politics led to Washington’s electoral victory. The disparate programmatic and ideological camps detailed in previous chapters (desegregation activists, community control organizers, founders of independent Black institutions, Black educators) staked claims in Mayor Washington and his political organization. The politics of Washington’s education reform summits, however, exposed the fractures within this political coalition. The interracial and intraracial struggles over school reform in Chicago during the 1980s reveal the tensions between a politics of racial representation and a politics of progressive transformation and prefigure the increased privatization of public education in the decades that followed.Less
This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s election as the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983 was heralded by many as the ultimate attainment of Black Power and the success of the local Black Freedom Movement. His electoral victory was grounded in years of grassroots struggle by Black organizers fighting for integration, community control, and Black empowerment. While historians have largely considered the 1980s as a product of the political triumph of conservatism and the “Reagan revolution,” in Chicago a Black-led, urban, antimachine, progressive coalitional politics led to Washington’s electoral victory. The disparate programmatic and ideological camps detailed in previous chapters (desegregation activists, community control organizers, founders of independent Black institutions, Black educators) staked claims in Mayor Washington and his political organization. The politics of Washington’s education reform summits, however, exposed the fractures within this political coalition. The interracial and intraracial struggles over school reform in Chicago during the 1980s reveal the tensions between a politics of racial representation and a politics of progressive transformation and prefigure the increased privatization of public education in the decades that followed.
