This book tells the story of one mans life journey in the heart of the struggle to reform the nation's schools. Fuller has always believed that it is important for poor and working class Black people to gain access to the levers of power dictating their lives. He believes that those of us who are educated and resourceful have a moral and historical responsibility to help them, and that is what he has always tried to do. Early in his life he found truth in the words of the great Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” “So struggle we must” says Fuller. That understanding of the relationship between struggle and progress is what propelled him down dark alleys and dirt roads in some of North Carolina's poorest communities in the 1960s and pushed him into the bush, mountains, and war-torn villages of Africa nearly a decade later.“It is what pushes me still in the fight over one of the most contentious education issues of this era: parental choice. I believe deep in my heart that giving low-income and working class parents the power (and the money) to make choices about the schools their children attend will not only revolutionize education but provide the compass to a better life for the many poor, Black children stuck in failing systems. … Education reform is one of the most crucial social justice issues of our time, and I will spend the rest of my days fighting for my people, most especially those without the power or the resources to fight for themselves.”
Against all odds Art J. McCoy, Ph.D., became Missouri's youngest certified teacher at age nineteen and the youngest and first African-American superintendent of schools in Ferguson, Missouri, at age thirty-three.
This important book centers race and voice in the desegregation discourse, examining and reconceptualizing the meaning of “equal education.” Featuring the unique perspectives of Black school leaders, Horsford provides a critical race ...