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Using the philosophical lenses of revisionist ontology and the politics of personhood, this paper explores the notion of Black Founders of the United States. I introduce the concept critical intellectual agency to argue that Black Founders brought unique contributions to the American experience. Their efforts were twofold. First, Black Founders established separate Black institutions that would become staples in Black communities after emancipation. Second, Black Founders challenged the supposed egalitarian beliefs of White Founders through media outlets. To illustrate, I focus on one Black Founder, Benjamin Banneker and his letter to Thomas Jefferson to illustrate how Black Founders philosophically responded and challenged White Founders prejudicial beliefs about Blackness. This paper seeks to challenge social studies teachers’ curricular and pedagogical approaches to Black Americans during the colonial period by providing a heuristics and language to explore the voices of Black Americans in U.S. history.

African-American and Hispanic students are underrepresented in gifted education. In many cases, African-American and Hispanic students are underachieving in the classroom setting and lack interest in what is being taught. This chapter will discuss the underrepresentation of African-American and Hispanic students in gifted programs, curricula and program challenges within general and gifted classrooms, Bloom’s taxonomy and James Banks’ multicultural curriculum model. The chapter will also provide an overview of the Ford–Harris matrix, and introduce a color-coded layout of the matrix and provide pros and cons for each matrix level.

The purpose of this paper is to chronicle the efforts of a new White teacher in her first two years of teaching in an elementary school with a largely Hispanic population as she forged connections with her students’ families while drawing on continued, constructivist mentoring from her university professor. The case points to the need for new teacher mentoring programs to include some emphasis on family-teacher relationships.

The new teacher kept a weekly journal of her interactions with families over a two-year period. Notes were taken during and after mentoring sessions. Data analysis was conducted using the case analysis format designed by Miles et al. (2014).

The goal of fostering constructive family-teacher relationships was not fully realized for this teacher in her first year. Through reflections, readings, and discussions in mentoring sessions, she gradually learned to respect the wisdom and expertise of families.

As with all case studies, the results are not generalizable in a traditional sense (Hodkinson and Hodkinson, 2001); however, a larger issue can be addressed in a case (Stake, 1995). In this case, the larger issue is that White teachers working in high-poverty schools are likely to encounter differences between their cultural backgrounds and those of their students’ families. New teachers must determine how to respond in this situation, and mentoring offers support in helping them to act.

Action steps and guidelines developed by the teacher are included, along with a list of selected articles to spur discussions in constructivist mentoring sessions.

Coordinators of new teacher induction programs are encouraged to include a component in their curriculum for best practices in developing relationships with families.

The Common Core Standards (CCS) for English Language Arts and College, Career, and Civic Life Framework (C3) require social studies educators to reconsider connections between literacy and history teaching. In this article we examine three perspectives on literacy teaching: content area literacy, disciplinary literacy, and critical literacy. While some scholars see these perspectives as contradictory or in competition, we demonstrate how content, disciplinary, and critical literacy teaching can complement each other and facilitate teaching to and beyond the CCS standards and C3 framework in intermediate, middle school, and high school history instruction. Our article includes teaching examples as well as appendices of teacher resources.

The purpose of the chapter is to explore perceptions of the Obama presidency among a purposive sample of students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

The methodology involved structured focus groups (n = 20) and on-line questionnaires (n = 180).

A majority (72%) felt that the Obama presidency had increased their sense of racial pride and less than half (43%) reported that it had enhanced their confidence in the US political system. Most students rejected the idea of unconditional support for Obama and 45% disagreed that the presidency was “worth the price of the ticket,” that is, worth any cost just to have a black president in office. The majority also agreed that the President must serve all and not any particular racial group. Most of the undergraduates rated his two terms in office as “successful” and many cited racism as a cause of opposition to his initiatives. Most also rejected the notion of color blindness.

Regarding policy priorities, the majority of students felt that it was a good idea to pursue health care reform and most felt that the roll out debacle was “not his fault”; nearly half disagreed with the use of military drones to attack terrorists; 75% agreed with his approach to immigration reform; and 63% agreed with his stance on the same sex marriage.

Research limitations are that non-random sampling was used, which does not allow for generalizations regarding other HBCU or Atlanta University Center students. The study is original in that most research works on perceptions of this presidency have been based on party affiliation or age and ignored perspectives of HBCU students.

In this chapter, the authors interrogate the structures, natures, processes, and variables that shape globalized collegiate desegregation. The authors pay attention to the history of segregation in South African culture, then proceed to current efforts to dismantle and rebuild the country’s educational enterprise. Drawing parallels with segregation policy in the United States, the authors argue that both nations may draw from global lessons about systemic global anti-Black oppression and its structural forms (e.g., apartheid, inequities in higher education). More specifically, the authors ground arguments in an analysis of the linguistic hegemony that continues to inculcate the college-aspiring students of South Africa. Understanding fundamental desegregation characteristics of racial hegemonic nations (e.g., United States) vis-à-vis racial and linguistic hegemonic nations (e.g., South Africa) is imperative to increase understanding of democratization of educational systems throughout the world.

The influence of research on decisions concerning black consumers by mainstream marketers between 1920 and 1970 is to be examined. Market opportunity analysis provides a theoretical foundation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study is based on examination of rare books, archival and proprietary documents housed at the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History at Duke University; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library; the Museum of Public Relations and relevant literature concerning research on black consumers.

Mainstream companies were motivated to pursue black consumers on the basis of attractive consumption habits, demographic and psychographic characteristics revealed by informal and formal research available as early as the 1920s. During and after the Second World War, research on black consumers became widely available to corporate executives through the trade press, trade associations, academic literature and internal corporate efforts. White and black scholars, entrepreneurs and marketing professionals were instrumental in collecting, disseminating and interpreting information regarding African-American consumers. Research not only prompted corporate interest in the black consumer market by appealing to profit motives, but also encouraged ground-breaking change in the way that blacks were addressed and portrayed in marketing materials.

This examination expands the literature by introducing information from materials not previously analysed which explains interest in black consumers from marketers' perspectives. Analysis indicates that economic self-interest, more so than social pressures driven by civil rights efforts, prompted mainstream marketers' interest in black consumers. At the same time, socioeconomic gains associated with civil rights advancements transformed African-Americans into an attractive consumer segment widely recognized by mainstream marketers.

The underrepresentation of racial minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM disciplines) education and careers has had a very long tenure in America. For much of this nation's history, African-Americans, Latinos and American Indians, as well as women of all races, were considered to be members of sub-populations that had neither contributed nor were likely to contribute much to our national capabilities in science and technology and, consequently, little emphasis was placed on efforts to increase their participation. The truth is that all these groups have made significant contributions despite having to overcome monumental obstacles and difficulties.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the climate and practice of undergraduate research in selected Science and Engineering departments at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge (SUBR), Louisiana, from 1994 to 2014. We briefly recall the long tradition of undergraduate research participation and the accompanying mentoring at SUBR. The establishment of the Timbuktu Academy in 1990–1991, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), followed two years of review of the literature in teaching, mentoring, and learning. The paradigm and Ten Strand Systemic Mentoring model of the Academy, with a major funding by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (ONR), have sustained a research-based and practice-verified creation of a highly supportive and challenging research eco-system for selected science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate scholars, one that integrates seamlessly education and research.

This chapter draws on developmental intergroup theory, parental ethnic-racial socialization literature, anti-bias curricula, and prejudice intervention studies to address the appropriateness of discussing race and racism in early childhood settings. Existing literature about teacher discussions surrounding race and racism is reviewed, best practices are shared, and the need for more research in this area is highlighted. The construct of parental ethnic-racial socialization is mapped onto early childhood anti-bias classroom practices. The chapter also outlines racial ideologies of teachers, specifically anti-bias and colorblind attitudes, and discusses how these ideologies may manifest in classroom practices surrounding race and racism. Colorblind ideology is problematized and dissected to show that colorblind practices may harm children. Young children’s interpretations of race and racism, in light of children’s cognitive developmental level, are discussed. Additionally, findings from racial prejudice intervention studies are applied to teaching. Early literacy practices surrounding race and racism are outlined with practical suggestions for teachers and teacher educators. Moreover, implications of teacher practices surrounding race and racism for children’s development, professional development, and teacher education are discussed.