Five Facts about Black America
Ignoring these facts is an American tradition.
- Black people built their own grade schools. Over and above paying taxes, Black Americans had to raise their own money to afford the most basic education for their youth. One of the triumphs over decades of collective effort was the building of Rosenwald schools; churches also doubled as schools in many areas. Black Americans sometimes had to raise a part of teachers’ salaries, since the local education funding allocated for education for the grandchildren of slaves made for a far shorter school year than for other children.
- Black people built their own colleges. Despite stereotypes that black people don’t value education, no other minority ethnic group, by desire or necessity, produced as many colleges intended to serve its own community; some were founded before Emancipation. As late as the early 2000s, over 100 historically black colleges and universities were serving Black students.
- Black people built their own medical schools. In a time when we are running short on health professionals, and when racial disparities skew heavily against the health of Black America overall, it is ironic to know that black medical schools were founded as early as the late 1800s. As standards for medical training became more rigorous, national policy determined that fewer schools with better training would improve the quality of healthcare. Succumbing to this wave of closures, most Black medical schools were shut down rather than improved.
- Black people singularly shaped the American education system. During Reconstruction, Black legislators helped created the first system of free public education in the South. Before this time, education was a luxury good, available to paying families only; free schools were seen as charities and were little attended. During the 20 century, Black jurists painstakingly argued against segregation decade after a decade before judges across the nation, forcing the country’s highest court to elaborate again and again on the right of all citizens to have access to education on all levels. More than anyone else, black lawyers created the legal arguments that ended legal segregation for all Americans, including immigrants and resident foreign nationals.
- School desegregation ended in the 1970s. Though the Brown v. Board decision came down in 1954, children in school that year may not have actually gone to desegregated schools until much later, if at all. States that had practiced legal segregation tried for years to find ways of maintaining segregated schools, until they were forced to desegregate.
Bonus fact: School integration did not provide equal education and opportunity. Not only have schools been resegregated, with students who are the descendants of America’s enslaved getting the short end of the stick, but years of segregation means that historically Black students were sent home to communities that were less able to support them educationally. A Black parent alive today may have been watched after school in the late 20th century by an older relative who not only didn’t graduate from high school but couldn’t have if there was no black high school in their area. That parent’s ability to support their own child will be affected and shaped by their own experience of family education support. Generations of calculated policies to undereducate one particular community were not erased by school integration, despite assumptions to the contrary.
Peace and healing, fam. ✌🏿
