In Search of Helen Maria Chesnutt (1880-1969), Black Latinist

Classical scholars have begun to delineate the dynamic pattern of black classicism. This new subfield of the classical tradition involves the analysis of the creative response to classical antiquity by artists as well as the history of the professional training in classics of scholars, teachers and students in high schools, colleges and universities. To the first group belongs Helen Maria Chesnutt (1880-1969). Born in Fayetteville, NC, Chesnutt was the second daughter of acclaimed African American novelist, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932). She earned her B.A. from Smith College in 1902 and her M.A. in Latin from Columbia University in 1925. She was a member of the American Philological Association and the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. Her life was spent teaching Latin at Central High School in Cleveland, OH. This is the first full scale account of her career.

Teaching in the Hood, About the Hood: A Case Study of Teachers in South Central Los Angeles

This study examines how three teachers working at a South Central high school teach critically about race and place. While building on the “spatial turn” in social science, the article draws on Critical Race Spatial Analysis to advance literature at the intersection of race, place, and pedagogy. Additionally, the article utilizes cognitive mapping to understand the teachers’ senses of place and then, through a combination of interviews, observations, and document analysis, examines how they integrate racial-spatial ideas into their teaching. Positing a “critical pedagogy of race and place,” the study concludes with implications for future research and teacher education.

Surviving Shunning at Central High School: Lessons From Sybil Jordan Hampton for Social Justice Leaders

Sybil Jordan Hampton’s lived experience as the only African American in her class at Little Rock (AR) Central High School from 1959 to 1962 is presented. Sybil valued assets within her family and community, exhibited critical consciousness, and had courage in the face of being shunned. Leaders who aim to interrupt inequitable outcomes in schools must recognize the assets of their students, families, and communities; exhibit critical consciousness; and be courageous. Therefore, Sybil’s leadership serves as an example of how leaders other than those in formal positions can inform the development of leaders for social justice.

Tale of two schools : a phenomenological case study of culture in a high school with an international baccalaureate program

International Baccalaureate (IB), a highly rigorous academic and college preparatory program, has sometimes been implemented to turn around otherwise struggling school systems. Little is known about the impact on school culture from the implementation of IB in a low-achieving, high poverty school through the lens of critical theory and leader-member exchange theory. The purpose of this study is to gain teacher and student perspectives on the culture of a high school twenty years after the introduction of IB. The research questions that guided this study were as follows: Based on staff and student perceptions, what is the current culture at Central High School? What is the role of International Baccalaureate in that culture? Findings indicated that the culture of this high school was diverse, historic, superficially unified, and deeply divided. Findings further indicated that IB both encouraged diversity within the school, as well as facilitated division. Implications from this research state Central will continue to survive, and perhaps even grow, as a diverse and historic educational institution, however, the approach used towards cultural division will continue to perpetuate social, educational, and economic disparities within that school.

White Women, White Youth, and the Hope of the Nation

After Brown, white segregationist women build national organizations and were devoted to making white youth political activists and future purveyors of white supremacy. As the legal support for segregation diminished, the Jim Crow order remade itself. While moderates directed the implementation of integration, southern segregationist women continued to work in various ways and with national political constituencies to secure resistance to racial equality and to meaningful integration. They continued their efforts for racial segregation after the forced federal integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and of Ole Miss. As white segregationists focused on training white youth for the next iteration of white supremacist politics, they gradually amplified their color-blind political rhetoric. They built organizations like the Women for Constitutional Government and Patriotic American Youth that emphasized limited government, anti-communism, and school choice and opposition to decolonization, joining conservatives and segregationists nationwide to shape the New Right.

Basketball and Magic in “Middletown”

This chapter examines the passion for Indiana high school basketball that social scientists Robert and Helen Lynd tackled in their 1929 book Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture. In their study the Lynds revealed that Middletown was a real place—Muncie, Indiana. The Bearcats was the actual name of the high school basketball team at Muncie Central High School. They explained how basketball captured the magical essence of Muncie, insisting that “Magic Middletown,” the cultural essence of the community, appeared more fully on the high school basketball court than in any other realm of heartland tribal life. The Lynds's work on “Magic Middletown” marked a turning point in American social science and placed the idea that sport forged community firmly into the scholarly lexicon. This chapter also considers the history of race in Muncie Central basketball that reveals how “they” became “we” in Magic Middletown, raising a variety of questions that remained far beyond the boundaries of the Lynds's sociological imaginations.

“The Good Negroes”

This chapter explores President Eisenhower's and President Kennedy's widespread use of symbolic gestures in the realm of civil rights—including the extensive use of African Americans as cultural ambassadors. It argues that both administrations waged an unsuccessful battle to alter international perceptions of U.S. race relations. To illustrate this point, this chapter focuses on the goodwill tours of Mal Whitfield and Rafer Johnson, both of whom were abroad touring in close proximity to the unrest in Little Rock, Arkansas, that was sparked by efforts to desegregate Central High School in 1957. By juxtaposing international coverage of Little Rock with the reception of Whitfield's and Johnson's tours, this chapter suggests that the propaganda campaigns were not able to drastically alter international perceptions of U.S. race relations.