Kenneth B. Clark

Over the course of the past century the struggle against racism took many forms, from petitions and lawsuits to sit-ins and marches. This book records the testimony of eleven scholar-activists who challenged prevailing racial beliefs and practices while engaging in resistance and reform. Included in this group are nine African Americans (Kenneth B. Clark, John Henrik Clarke, St. Clair Drake, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin, John Glover Jackson, Hylan Lewis, Frank Snowden Jr., and Robert C. Weaver); one Sri Lankan who lives and works in Britain (A. Sivanandan); and one white American (Herbert Aptheker).

Most of these men began their careers before World War II, in a time when biological conceptions of race dominated public policy and severely limited the opportunities available to people of color. By struggling with these impediments in their personal and professional lives, each in his own way helped redefine race as the social and cultural construct it has always been.

To highlight both the similarities and the differences in their experiences, the editors asked each of the subjects the same set of general questions about formative influences, major obstacles, and principal accomplishments. These were followed by more narrowly focused queries about specific writings. Most of the responses were recorded on tape as interviews; several were submitted as written reminiscences; and one, the essay on Du Bois, as the shared recollection of two associates who had worked closely with him for many years.

The result is a singular collection of autobiographical accounts that not only testify to the personal courage of these individuals in overcoming the ravages of racism but also documenttheir contributions to the establishment of a vital antiracist tradition in American thought and culture.

Throughout the nation's history, from before the Civil War through Reconstruction, across the years of lynchings and segregation to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the battles over busing, no issue has divided the American people more than race, and at the heart of the race issue has been the conflict over school segregation and desegregation. This comprehensive reference book includes more than 260 entries describing the persons, court decisions, terms and concepts, reports and books, types of plans, legislation, and organizations central to the struggle for equality in America's schools. The volume spans topics ranging from emotionally laden topics such as busing to complex legal concepts such as de jure segregation. Each entry includes a brief bibliography, and the volume closes with a chronology and extensive bibliographic material.

Widely praised, Greenwood's Biographical Dictionary of American Educators (Greenwood, 1978) quickly became a standard reference work for students and scholars of American education. This new volume includes biographical sketches of more than 400 notable researchers, leaders, reformers, critics, and practitioners from all major fields of education and extends the coverage of its predecessor to the mid-20th century. Its topical range encompasses such diverse areas as psychology, music, health, measurement and evaluation, science, special education, history, and administration. It treats education at all levels, including early childhood, elementary and secondary, higher, and adult. Most of the educators profiled were active in the 20th century, but several dozen have been included from the 19th century. A special effort has been made to include women and educators of color whose contributions have often been overlooked in the past.

A groundbreaking exploration of the social construction of race that has much to teach both liberals and conservatives

For over a century, the idea that African Americans are psychologically damaged has played an important role in discussions of race. In this provocative work, Daryl Michael Scott argues that damage imagery has been the product of liberals and conservatives, of racists and antiracists. While racial conservatives, often playing on white contempt for blacks, have sought to use findings of black pathology to justify exclusionary policies, racial liberals have used damage imagery primarily to promote policies of inclusion and rehabilitation.

In advancing his argument, Scott challenges some long-held beliefs about the history of damage imagery. He rediscovers the liberal impulses behind Stanley Elkins's Sambo hypothesis and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Negro Family and exposes the damage imagery in the work of Ralph Ellison, the leading anti-pathologist. He also corrects the view thatthe Chicago School depicted blacks as pathological products of matriarchy. New Negro experts such as Charles Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, he says, disdained sympathy-seeking and refrained from exploring individual pathology. Scott's reassessment of social science sheds new light on Brown v. Board of Education, revealing how experts reversed four decades of theory in order to represent segregation as inherently damaging to blacks.

In this controversial work, Scott warns the Left of the dangers in their recent rediscovery of damage imagery in an age of conservative reform.

Davis argues that African American authors have established a tradition of recurring images of whites in their literature and that they use these images to critique white racism. The book constructs a typology of white images in the black imagination. These images include such stereotypes as the overt bigot, the hypocrite, the liberal, and the good-hearted weakling. While black authors often explicitly reveal the racism of the overt bigot, Davis shows that black writers are much more subtle in their expositions of other forms of bigotry. The volume provides extensive discussions of such writers as Charles Chesnutt, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin and surveys a number of other African American authors.

Over the course of the past century the struggle against racism took many forms, from petitions and lawsuits to sit-ins and marches. This book records the testimony of eleven scholar-activists who challenged prevailing racial beliefs and practices while engaging in resistance and reform. Included in this group are nine African Americans (Kenneth B. Clark, John Henrik Clarke, St. Clair Drake, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin, John Glover Jackson, Hylan Lewis, Frank Snowden Jr., and Robert C. Weaver); one Sri Lankan who lives and works in Britain (A. Sivanandan); and one white American (Herbert Aptheker).

Most of these men began their careers before World War II, in a time when biological conceptions of race dominated public policy and severely limited the opportunities available to people of color. By struggling with these impediments in their personal and professional lives, each in his own way helped redefine race as the social and cultural construct it has always been.

To highlight both the similarities and the differences in their experiences, the editors asked each of the subjects the same set of general questions about formative influences, major obstacles, and principal accomplishments. These were followed by more narrowly focused queries about specific writings. Most of the responses were recorded on tape as interviews; several were submitted as written reminiscences; and one, the essay on Du Bois, as the shared recollection of two associates who had worked closely with him for many years.

The result is a singular collection of autobiographical accounts that not only testify to the personal courage of these individuals in overcoming the ravages of racism but also documenttheir contributions to the establishment of a vital antiracist tradition in American thought and culture.