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Using the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System Completion Survey by Race (1980–2009), we seek to redirect the conversation about African-American females as single mothers, welfare recipients, and victims of the AIDS epidemic to one that highlights their exceptional school enrollment levels and postsecondary degree attainment. We examine separately the educational trends for black women by citizenship status and identify institutions that have been successful at conferring degrees to each group of black women. We find that the percentage of black women enrolled as first-time freshmen was greater than the percentage of any other non-white group, the growth in the total number of black women enrolled at for-profit institutions as first-time freshmen more than double and HBCUs were institutions most successful at conferring degrees to black women.

This introductory chapter frames the discussion of Black female teachers, and centers their experiences as the sole site for discussion and analysis. In addition, this chapter provides an overview of the three sections of the book and the corresponding chapters. Within the pages of this volume, contributing authors discuss the historical and contemporary landscapes of Black female teachers, examine the underrepresentation of Black women in the US teacher workforce, as well as discuss innovative strategies to increase the recruitment and retention of Black female teachers in PK-12 classrooms. Ultimately, this chapter provides insight into the salience of Black female teachers in the diversification of the US teacher workforce. Moreover, highlighting implications and recommendations for a variety of educational stakeholders.

Currently, the field of education has been seeking innovative strategies to increase the representation of Black male teachers in U.S. classrooms. In this chapter, the author presents a status report of Black male teachers’ path to U.S. K-12 public school classrooms at six critical stages. These stages include the following: (a) Black males with a high school diploma; (b) enrollment in educator preparation programs; (c) educator preparation program completers; (d) educator preparation programs with the highest number of Black male graduates; (e) Black male education degree holders that select teaching as a profession; and (f) the current status of Black male teachers in U.S. K-12 public schools. Based on the data presented in this chapter, recommendations are provided to the field of education to improve their representation for the benefit of all students. Additionally, the critical need for this timely book is discussed.

The underrepresentation of Black girls in gifted programs has received attention in both education and counseling literature. Nevertheless, scholars have given less emphasis to the intersections of intellectual ability, race, gender, social class, and place, particularly the idiosyncratic experiences of gifted Black girls from rural, economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The authors of this chapter discuss this unique positionality, with a focus on historical segregation and exclusionary practices within the American educational system. The authors discuss the tenets of critical race feminism and identify factors that may foster educational resilience for Black girls from rural, low-income communities. Recommendations are provided to address pertinent issues related to structural educational reform and inclusive gifted education. The chapter concludes with a call for education and counseling professionals to fundamentally change the systems and processes that perpetuate systematic inequity for this underserved population.

According to Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, whose best-known contribution to critical thought is his theory regarding hegemony, education “serves a directly important function in maintaining hegemony…[for] [i]t is a vehicle by which consensus is maintained and the knowledge of the ruling bloc (the majority ruling class) is legitimated” (Gross, 2011, p. 66). Although Gramsci's theoretical work was initially situated within the Fascist-dominated Italian legislature in which he aimed to understand how the ruling class maintained power over the proletariat (oppressed groups), his concept offers a lens through which social critics have been able to understand the prevailing superstructures of power in Western capitalist societies. This chapter, therefore, relies on Gramsci's theories to develop an argument (and writing pedagogy) regarding the democratic ability of the historically Black college and university (HBCU), for I contend the HBCU, particularly its first-year composition classroom, is a space where students can practice and propel democracy, thus countering the hegemony that insists on oppressing Black and Brown people.

While the HBCU, as defined by the 1965 Higher Education Act, is a by-product of the superstructure and is thusly grounded upon and legitimated by what bell hooks terms “the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” therefore functioning as institutionalized spaces for constructing and maintaining hegemony, HBCUs, explains Eddie S. Glaude Jr. in his 2016 Democracy in Black, are “institutions that both cultivated their (Black folks') civic capacities and served as a space to transmit values that opposed the value gap” (p. 125). In other words, Black folks have had to create “safe spaces” like the HBCU, to exist in their full humanity within an oppressive America whose white citizens devalued their being, and therefore, their American citizenship. Although the HBCU is legitimated by the hegemony, the HBCU, I argue, remains a space where the democracy America has yet to realize can be learned and practiced, especially if teachers, particularly within first-year composition programs, employ counterhegemonic curriculums and practices like the AfriWomanist approach to teaching I offer here.

This chapter chronicles some of the early years of the author growing up in the racially segregated South Alabama and its influence on his thinking about race, environment, social equity, and government responsibility and his journey to becoming an environmental sociologist, scholar, and activist. Using an environmental justice paradigm, he uncovers the underlying assumptions that contribute to and produce unequal protection. The environmental justice paradigm provides a useful framework for examining and explaining the spatial relation between the health of marginalized populations and their built and natural environment, and government response to natural and man-made disasters in African American communities. Clearly, people of color communities have borne a disproportionate burden and have received differential treatment from government in its response to health threats such as childhood lead poisoning, toxic waste and contamination, industrial accidents, hurricanes, floods and related weather-related disasters, and a host of other man-made disasters. The chapter brings to the surface the ethical and political questions of “who gets what, why, and how much” and why some communities get left behind before and after disasters strike.

“Men make their own history,

but they do not make it just as they please;

they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves

but under circumstances directly encountered,

given and transmitted from the past.”

–Karl Marx

“Men make their own history,

but they do not make it just as they please;

they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves

but under circumstances directly encountered,

given and transmitted from the past.”

Over one dozen books have been written about historically black colleges and universities over the last 15 years. However, not one of the volumes published addresses this cohort of institutions from a global dimension. Each of the books ignores the reality that there are institutions of higher education populated by persons of African descent scattered around the globe. Equally, the emergent literature is silent on issues of racial stratification; consequently, treating black colleges as homogenous monoliths. This quiesance ignores the important tension of racial oppression/white supremacy, social stratification, and the persistent hegemony of power in societies with black populations. In this commencing chapter, there are two primary explorations: (1) the particularities of race and identity in black colleges in the United States, and (2) the nexus between race and culture in black colleges outside of the United States. In order to properly contextualize this diorama, it is imperative to examine the meaning of diaspora, the realities of racial stratification, and the ways in which hegemony can be unsettled and usurped.

Prior to Brown v. Board of Education 1954, Black female educators played a significant and vital role in segregated schools. Despite Black female teachers’ historic presence in the field of education, presently Black female teachers are disproportionately under-represented in the US teacher workforce. Acknowledging the shortage of Black female teachers in K-12 classrooms, the purpose of this qualitative study is to explore why Black female educators teach in under-resourced, urban schools. By examining Black female educators’ initial draw to urban schools in what we conceptualized as the urban factor, we hope to reframe the implicit biases surrounding under-resourced, urban schools as less desirable workplaces and unearth reasons why those Black female teachers who enter teaching gravitate more toward urban schools. Three themes emerged about Black female teachers’ thoughts on and preference for urban schools with an unexpected finding about Black female teachers’ perceptions of student behavior. Concluding, recommendations are offered for policy and practice.