Alton Hornsby
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813032825
- eISBN:
- 9780813038537
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813032825.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on the quest for education by black Atlantans. Like other African Americans who were awarded greater freedoms after the civil war, the black Atlantans recognized the significance ...
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This chapter focuses on the quest for education by black Atlantans. Like other African Americans who were awarded greater freedoms after the civil war, the black Atlantans recognized the significance of education. Recognizing the potent power of education, black leaders made education and learning the top priority of their racial agenda. However, despite these efforts, in the middle of the twentieth century, the black writings, essays, and studies revealed that black education was still separated and unequal. By 1950, the black leaders of Atlanta decided to sue for equality, but not for the elimination of the system of dual schooling. This action was amended in 1952, when African Americans argued that segregated schools were inherently unequal. They asked for a unitary school system but their case was later dismissed for lack of prosecution. After 1954, the Atlanta Board of Education passed a case for abolishing the dual school system but the case was treated by the board with laxity. On January 1958, a lawsuit known as Calhoun v. Latimer was filed, it was decided that the segregation schemes in schools were unlawful. The most significant result of the white reaction to desegregation was white flight. These reactions provided an unintended opportunity for African Americans to become the majority population in the city and for black elected officials to control the government of the city for generations to come.Less
This chapter focuses on the quest for education by black Atlantans. Like other African Americans who were awarded greater freedoms after the civil war, the black Atlantans recognized the significance of education. Recognizing the potent power of education, black leaders made education and learning the top priority of their racial agenda. However, despite these efforts, in the middle of the twentieth century, the black writings, essays, and studies revealed that black education was still separated and unequal. By 1950, the black leaders of Atlanta decided to sue for equality, but not for the elimination of the system of dual schooling. This action was amended in 1952, when African Americans argued that segregated schools were inherently unequal. They asked for a unitary school system but their case was later dismissed for lack of prosecution. After 1954, the Atlanta Board of Education passed a case for abolishing the dual school system but the case was treated by the board with laxity. On January 1958, a lawsuit known as Calhoun v. Latimer was filed, it was decided that the segregation schemes in schools were unlawful. The most significant result of the white reaction to desegregation was white flight. These reactions provided an unintended opportunity for African Americans to become the majority population in the city and for black elected officials to control the government of the city for generations to come.
Serge Tcherkézoff
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833664
- eISBN:
- 9780824870355
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833664.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores the various meanings the idea of “Polynesia” has acquired in changing scientific contexts. It is usually assumed that the naming of the Pacific regions, at least for Melanesia, ...
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This chapter explores the various meanings the idea of “Polynesia” has acquired in changing scientific contexts. It is usually assumed that the naming of the Pacific regions, at least for Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, was invented by the French navigator Dumont d'Urville in the early nineteenth century, as the expanded knowledge of the Pacific, or Oceania as it began to be called at the same time in France, required more detailed maps and hence new names for subdividing a vast expanse that appeared to be composed of so many different islands. However, such a view, found in most textbooks and school manuals, is oblivious to two historical dimensions. First, d'Urville's proposal was not so much a cartographic progress, a simple addition to universal geography with new maps, but was the outcome of a racial agenda. Second, the word “Polynesia” had already been in existence for seventy-five years, with a different geographical extension.Less
This chapter explores the various meanings the idea of “Polynesia” has acquired in changing scientific contexts. It is usually assumed that the naming of the Pacific regions, at least for Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, was invented by the French navigator Dumont d'Urville in the early nineteenth century, as the expanded knowledge of the Pacific, or Oceania as it began to be called at the same time in France, required more detailed maps and hence new names for subdividing a vast expanse that appeared to be composed of so many different islands. However, such a view, found in most textbooks and school manuals, is oblivious to two historical dimensions. First, d'Urville's proposal was not so much a cartographic progress, a simple addition to universal geography with new maps, but was the outcome of a racial agenda. Second, the word “Polynesia” had already been in existence for seventy-five years, with a different geographical extension.