Black Milwaukee’s Challenge to the Cycle of Urban Miseducation

Milwaukee’s two African American Immersion schools—public schools that infused African and African American themes into the state’s prescribed curriculum—officially opened in 1990 and 1991. Inner-city African American residents and school officials in Milwaukee prompted the call for their establishment. It was hoped that these African-centered schools would serve as a model for the city’s public school system to effectively combat the disparaging statistics associated with African American students. Needless to say, the proposition was controversial but at the same time historically significant. Black Milwaukee’s call for schools, reflective of their culture and educational expectations, was not a spur-of-the-moment proposal; it was a response to the city’s continued inability to effectively educate African American children. Arguably, it was an initiative more than 40 years in the making. Accordingly, Milwaukee’s African American Immersion schools can be seen as a beginning and an end for inner-city Black Milwaukeeans. The schools were a beginning because they signified a new direction of educational reform in the city, one specific to the educational needs of inner-city African American children. Concomitantly, the establishment of these two African American Immersion schools can be seen as an end result of more than two generations of struggle for equitable opportunities and school reform in Milwaukee.