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This review has been accessed  times since January 6, 1998
Foster, Michele. (1997). Black Teachers on Teaching.
New York: The New Press.
188pp. $23.00.
Reviewed by V.P. Franklin
Drexel University
January 6, 1998
The American public was recently exposed to the trials and
tribulations of the African American female educators during the first
half of twentieth century in the immensely popular dual-autobiography
Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
(1993).
Both Sadie and Bessie Delany spent some time teaching in the segregated
public schools in the South, and Sadie Delany described her career as
an
educator in the New York City public schools as well. Much of the sage
advice and pithy nostrums found in the work by the Delany sisters is
also found in the interviews with twenty African American educators
recorded by Michele Foster. Although none matched the Delany sisters in
longevity, "the Elders" recorded in Black Teachers on
Teaching present ideals and advice based on years of experience
on the public educational front lines.
Lawrence Lovelace, who taught for years at Wendell Phillips High
School on Chicago's South Side, declared that "the one thing that
black students don't need is teachers who let them get away with
saying,
'I can't do this, I can't do that'--teachers who feel sympathetic
because the students are black, or they are from the inner city,
teachers who let them get away with doing nothing." Lovelace
recalled that in the past, "black teachers demanded more of their
students and didn't care whether there was anything in it for
them." Unfortunately, things have changed and now Lovelace feels
particularly disturbed "when I see black teachers letting black
students get away with doing nothing" (pp. 47-48).
The twenty educators were asked to describe the social and
cultural
environment they grew up in, the schools they attended, and the
educators who most affected them and their decision to enter the
teaching profession. The elders commented on the impact of the
Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision on
them,
their schools, and their students, while the veterans and novices
focused on the current social and economic conditions that have an
impact on their ability to make a difference in black children's lives.
While hundreds of African American teachers in the separate black
public
schools in the southern states lost their positions as a result of
school integration, Bernadine B. Morris was one of a handful of African
Americans allowed to teach in formally all-white schools in Hampton,
Virginia. Morris was forced to leave the Union School and work at the
Booker Elementary School under a white principal, "a real
redneck" who did not want the black teachers there. "The
principal treated the black students unfairly and often paddled them,
but I've never heard where he hit a white kid with a paddle" (pp.
59-60). Black parents complained and after a few years, the principal
resigned "but he had managed to do a lot of damage by then"
(p. 60).
Etta Joan Marks was forcably transferred from an all-black to an
all-white school in Linsdale, Texas, but recalled that "in spite
of
all the problems I encountered, I was more fortunate tha[n] many black
teachers. Most of those who worked with me in the segregated schools
didn't have jobs." Marks was not allowed to teach a regular class
for the first two years she was there. It was only after she went and
complained to the district superintendent that she was given a regular
third grade class. "Afterward, I began to get a lot of parental
requests to have their children placed in my classes. That's when I
realized that at least some parents had some confidence in my teaching
ability" (p. 86).
The significant decline in the number of African Americans going
into
the field of elementary and secondary school teaching became apparent
in
some places as early as the 1970s. For example, English teacher
Lorraine
Lawrence mentioned that "when I came to Orlando [Florida] in 1975,
I got a position in a junior high school and later a high school
because
the schools had been desegregated and the principals needed a certain
percentage of black teachers" (p. 96). But what she found at the
desegregated schools was that "the black students don't get pushed
enough." The few in the honors classes participate in school
activities, however, "the majority of black
students . . . are generally left out" (p. 98).
Lawrence grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and attended the all-black
school, where "our teachers could see our potential even when we
couldn't, and they were able to draw out our potential." She has
been accused of "romanticizing segregation" and the
conditions
in the all-black schools. But Lawrence was clear about what she was
suggesting: "I don't want to go back to those days. But there are
lessons that can be learned from my experiences and thousands of black
people like me" (p. 99).
Edouard Plummer has taught junior high school in Harlem, New York
City, since the early 1960s and he had witnessed the changes in the
teachers there over the years. In the early years the teachers were
dedicated. Now, "they come with this 'I don't care' attitude about
the children: 'I've got mine, you get yours' . . . Too
many teachers let the children do as they please. They let them sit up
there, laugh, talk, and play" (p. 108). As a result the children
do
not learn to read, write, or do mathematics, and thus cannot compete in
the larger society. Plummer had a very concrete plan for changing these
conditions.If I had the power to reconstruct schools, I
would change them from the top to bottom. First, everyone would be
accountable, starting from the principal on down. You start at the top.
If you have a good top, then you can go on down. If the teachers cannot
pull their weight, they should be out. Those who aren't teaching should
be given the support to learn how to teach effectively, but if they
didn't improve within a year or two, then they would be out (p.
109).
This is the kind of perceptive counsel and advice that is liberally
spread throughout these interviews. However, in order to get to these
statements, the student or researcher would have to read through all
the
interviews and take extensive notes because the book has no index. The
introduction by Michele Foster is not much help either because there is
so little background information provided on African American
educators.
Foster is clearly unfamiliar with the literature and did not bother to
search out information, while claiming that "there was never a
book—until this one—devoted entirely to a narrative rendering of [black
teachers'] experiences" (p. xix). She does not define what she
means by "narrative rendering," but there certainly have been
numerous narratives that attempted to render the experiences of African
Americans educators. For example, Foster ignored (or did not know
about)
Nathan Wright, Jr.'s What Black Educators Are Saying,
published in 1970, which included narrative renderings "by some of
the leading black educators" who were "striving not for the
lesser good of human betterment but for nothing short of the greatest
good of complete human liberation and fulfillment" (p. v). Among
the voices included in the impressive volume was that of John
Churchville who opened an independent, Afrocentric school in
Philadelphia in the 1970s. In her sample Foster included no "life
histories" of black educators who opened independent elementary or
secondary schools.
Foster failed to mention or even cite the important information on
African American educators historically found in the works by James D.
Anderson, Linda M. Perkins, Michael Fultz, and others. Even worse, when
Foster does mention the findings on the conditions for African American
educators in the past, she fails to cite the source for the
information.
Thus she has an extended discussion of the conditions for black
teachers
in the Philadelphia public schools up to the 1950s using the
information
found in my book, The Education of Black Philadelphia: The
Social
and Educational History of A Minority Community, 1900-1950
(1979), but this work is nowhere cited in the notes. There are
discussions of the American Teachers Association, and its branches in
the South, but Thelma Perry's History of the American Teachers
Association (1975) and the numerous articles on the black
national and state teachers organizations are not cited. She discusses
the problems for African American educators in urban school systems
(even in Washington, D.C), but seems to be unaware of Catherine B.
Silver's Black Teachers in Urban Schools: The Case of Washington,
D.C. (1973).
The numerous spelling and typographical errors found throughout the
book and the absence of a bibliography suggests that this volume was
hurriedly put together by Foster with little editorial supervision from
the New Press. However, the African American educators who agreed to be
interviewed and to share their experiences and professional lives with
the interviewer deserve better. Perhaps in future editions of the work,
Foster and her publisher will "do the right thing."
References
Delany, S. L., Delany, A. E., & Hearth, A. H. (1993).
Having our say: The Delany sisters' first 100 years. New
York: Dell Publishers.
Franklin, V. P. (1979). The education of Black Philadelphia:
The social and educational history of a minority community,
1900-1950. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Perry, T. D. (1975). History of the American Teachers
Association. Washington, DC: National Education Association.
Silver, C. B. (1973). Black teachers in urban schools: The
case of Washington, D.C.. New York: Praeger.
Wright, N. (ed.) (1970). What Black educators are
saying. New York: Hawthorn Books.
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