Abstract
African American scholar activists inform us that despite their experiences, African Americans viewed education as “the key for black freedom” (Williams & Ashley, 2007, p. xiii). Through education, African Americans were educated to advance their freedom and develop better churches, businesses, institutions of education, and political and social groups. Beginning with enslavement, enslaved Africans risked their lives to learn how to read and write, while free Blacks in the north sought to establish their own schools. From the Civil War till today, African Americans have fought and challenged segregation, fought for the right for their story to be told in schools, and fought to make sure their children from K-12 to college received equal education.
Black Intellectual Thought in Education brings into light the scholar activist work of Anna Julia Cooper, Carter G. Woodson, and Alain LeRoy Locke, who have been left out of mainstream literature but discussed widely in Black/African American Studies. Copper, Woodson, and Locke are only three of the many African Americans who sought to provide children with an equal education, who believed that African American children could succeed. They are joined by scholar activists such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Charles L. Reason, Fanny Jackson Coppin, Mordecai Johnson, Benjamin Mays, W. E. B. DuBois, Horace Mann Bond, George Washington Carver, Hallie Quinn Brown, Virginia Randolph, Patrick Headly, Marva Collins, and Barbara Sizemore. Each of these contributions has been missing from the discussion of education. I applaud the authors for opening the door for a discussion on Black intellectual thought in education.
Grant, Brown, and Brown address how courage, oppression, and resistance lead African American scholar activists to focus on education and how they sought to make sure children in the community received the best education they could. They address how these African American scholar activists’ works relate to what is happening in education today.
In providing a discussion on Copper, Woodson, and Locke, the authors offer us an overview of their lived experiences, involvement in the community, and how these experiences had an effect on their philosophy of education and their contributions to education. Both Copper and Woodson’s parents had been slaved, they each attended school at an early age, pursued a college education, taught at higher education institutions, traveled to/or studied in Europe, and all received doctorate degrees. Likewise, they all have written books that are classics within the field of Black/African Studies.
As the authors state, the absence of the work of Cooper, Woodson, Locke, and other scholar activists of color has left a “vacuous hole” that must be filled. The work of Cooper, Woodson, and Locke demonstrated their commitment to humanity, understanding the function and capacity of democracy and citizenship, the African American civic consciousness, and racial uplift. Through their work, they acknowledge that as African Americans obtain education and knowledge they would be able to “function and redress the race problem” (p. 174). Exploring their work today is related to discussion currently going on within the field of education regarding curriculum and pedagogy. Their work addresses and offers some understanding to the Black Lives Matter movement today, and the need for a truly inclusive curriculum.
Black Intellectual Thought is a timely book and one that should be required reading for adult education, higher education, teacher education, philosophy of education, history of education, and leadership in education. Grant, Brown, and Brown have opened the door for faculty to include more work about African American scholar activists. Not only should we include their work but we should also encourage students to explore the discipline of African American Studies, integrate some of the concepts in African American Studies into their research, and continue to build on the research foundation laid by Cooper, Woodson, and Locke.