Education As My Agenda: Gertrude Williams, Race, and the Baltimore Public Schools

When Gertrude Williams retired in 1998, after forty-nine years in the Baltimore public schools,The Baltimore Sun called her "the most powerful of principals" who "tangled with two superintendents and beat them both." In this oral memoir, Williams identifies the essential elements of sound education and describes the battles she waged to secure those elements, first as teacher, then a counselor, and, for twenty-five years, as principal. She also described her own education - growing up black...