Giving Compass' Take:

• The author interviews Emory professor Vanessa Siddle Walker about the role of black educators, particularly Horace Tate, and their fight to desegregate school systems before Brown v Board of Education.

• In the interview, Walker points out that "schools encouraging black students to aspire are very rare". Why is it that after years of fighting for integration, freedom, and access to education, we find that black students still do not have the same opportunities as white students?

• Read about what diversity in schools looks like today.

For 25 years, the Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker has studied and written about the segregated schooling of black children. In her latest book, The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools, Walker tells the little-known story of how black educators in the South—courageously and covertly—laid the groundwork for 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education and weathered its aftermath.

The tale is told primarily through the life of Horace Tate, an acclaimed Georgia classroom teacher, principal, and one-time executive director of the Georgia Teachers and Education Association (GTEA), an organization for black educators founded in 1878.

Walker first met Tate in 2000. Over the course of the next two years, he told her about clandestine meetings among and outreach to influential black educators, lawyers, and community members tracing back to the 1940s. He also revealed black teachers’ secret and skillful organizing to demand equality and justice for African American children in Southern schools.

The resulting account, which features anecdotes about and cites wisdom from prominent black leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois, offers an intriguing look at black education and helps inform the ongoing discourse on school desegregation. I recently spoke with Walker about the crucial role black educators played in the evolution of public education in the South.

Read the interview with Vanessa Siddle Walker about the role of black educators for desegregation in education by Melinda D. Anderson at The Atlantic