The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools

by Vanessa Siddle Walker

Overview

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018

“An important contribution to our understanding of how ordinary people found the strength to fight for equality for schoolchildren and their teachers.”
—Wall Street Journal

In the epic tradition of Eyes on the Prize and with the cultural significance of John Lewis's March trilogy, an ambitious and harrowing account of the devoted black educators who battled southern school segregation and inequality

For two years an aging Dr. Horace Tate—a former teacher, principal, and state senator—told Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker about his clandestine travels on unpaved roads under the cover of night, meeting with other educators and with Dr. King, Georgia politicians, and even U.S. presidents. Sometimes he and Walker spoke by phone, sometimes in his office, sometimes in his home; always Tate shared fascinating stories of the times leading up to and following Brown v. Board of Education. Dramatically, on his deathbed, he asked Walker to return to his office in Atlanta, in a building that was once the headquarters of another kind of southern strategy, one driven by integrity and equality.

Just days after Dr. Tate's passing in 2002, Walker honored his wish. Up a dusty, rickety staircase, locked in a concealed attic, she found the collection: a massive archive documenting the underground actors and covert strategies behind the most significant era of the fight for educational justice. Thus began Walker's sixteen-year project to uncover the network of educators behind countless battles—in courtrooms, schools, and communities—for the education of black children. Until now, the courageous story of how black Americans in the South won so much and subsequently fell so far has been incomplete. The Lost Education of Horace Tate is a monumental work that offers fresh insight into the southern struggle for human rights, revealing little-known accounts of leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, as well as hidden provocateurs like Horace Tate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620971055
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	07/31/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	621,361
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Vanessa Siddle Walker, a professor at Emory University, has studied the segregated schooling of African American children for more than twenty years. She is the president of the American Educational Research Association, a former National Academy of Education Post-Doctoral Spencer fellow, and a recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in education. She lives near Atlanta.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Finding the Hidden Provocateurs 1

Prologue: Before the End 7

Part I The Education of a Young Principal

1 In the Shadow of His Smile 13

2 Now You See Me, Now You Don't 29

3 My Dear Mr. Marshall 40

4 The Balm in Gilead 55

5 A Simple Scheme to Do a "Simple Little" 71

6 To Help Our People 83

7 Fighting White Folk 98

8 Out of the Public Eye 115

9 Seasons of Opportunity 124

10 Paying the Cost 136

Part II The Education of Negro Leaders

11 Just Trying to Be a Man 145

12 Moving on Up 159

13 In This Present Crisis 172

14 Shifting Sands 186

15 The Ties That Bind 201

16 Paying the Cost-Again 214

Part III The Education of a People

17 Walking the Ancient Paths 221

18 Policing the South 233

19 Justice Restructured in Dixie 245

20 As Freedom Turns 257

21 Not a Two-Way Street 270

22 We Hold These Truths 285

23 Fighting Back 301

24 A Charge to Keep I Have 317

25 Justice Betrayed 334

26 A Second-Class Integration It Is 352

27 Nobody but a Fool 363

Epilogue: The Last Word 368

Author's Note: A Look in the Rearview Mirror 373

Acknowledgments 379

Notes 383

Index 455

Editorial Reviews

05/28/2018
In this narrative history backed up with detailed scholarship, Walker, professor of African-American educational studies at Emory University, sheds light on the mostly unsung heroes—black teachers, principals, and other school personnel—in the battle for equal education in the South leading up to Brown v. Board of Education. Drawing on two years of interviews and the long-hidden archives of lifelong education activist Horace Tate, a former Georgia state senator who was a school teacher and principal in his younger years, the author recounts how Tate and others secretly fought the “separate but equal” ethos to get roomier buildings, school buses, and other educational necessities for African-American pupils. Their work had to be clandestine because, Walker writes, “even those trying to fly under the radar who attempted to challenge inequality could pay with their livelihoods, their health and sometimes their lives.” Walker gleans facts and colorful details from documents like letters and meeting minutes to illuminate how the personable Tate and his colleagues, “masterly tricksters,” deliberately obfuscated their activist roles behind their docile public faces as teachers and principals. This well-told and inspiring tale, with its rarely discussed angle on the school segregation fight, will draw in readers interested in meaningful work and activism, or just a well-told tale. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Vanessa Siddle Walker's Their Highest Potential:
"A compelling story."
?Journal of American History

"Excellent."
?MultiCultural Review

"This is a first-rate book and a very moving story."
—James D. Anderson, author of The Education of Blacks in the South

"[A] must read . . ."
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Praise for Vanessa Siddle Walker's Race-ing Moral Formation:
"Groundbreaking and riveting . . . [A]n essential book."
—Andrew Garrod, Dartmouth College

From the Publisher

2018-05-01
A historian of black education discovers an underground network of advocates and reformers.Drawing on two years of interviews and more than 15 years of research, Walker (African-American Education Studies/Emory Univ.; Hello Professor: A Black Principal and Professional Leadership in the Segregated South, 2009, etc.) focuses on the career of teacher, school principal, and Georgia state senator Horace Tate (1922-2002) to offer a new perspective on segregated schooling and education reform in the South. Before embarking on research for this book, Walker believed the "repeatedly told and almost universally accepted" story that "the NAACP protested injustice and crafted the successful Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case" that incited grass-roots movements, civil disobedience, and legal protests. Tate's testimony, however, along with the massive amount of archival material he provided for her, revealed generations of black educators acting strategically and covertly to achieve change. While the NAACP served as the face of reform, the organization could not have succeeded without these behind-the-scenes players. Much of Tate's career happened by accident: He attended Fort Valley State College, where by chance he took a part-time job as student chauffeur for the college's president, Horace Mann Bond, a savvy administrator who "manipulated the levers needed" to solve problems. By observing Bond, Tate learned how to achieve goals by focusing on the weaknesses, psychology, and prejudices of his opponents. Tate's first teaching job came by accident, too, when a principal, studying at Fort Valley, needed to hire a college graduate to teach in his high school. Through that position, Tate became a member of the Georgia Teachers and Education Association, an active and influential society of black educators (Tate eventually became executive secretary). When the principal was drafted into World War II, Tate took over as administrator. As he rose in the profession, he became involved in teacher training and designing innovative curricula that he kept "concealed from white eyes" who would object to an ambitious vision for black students.A fresh, well-documented study of the complex struggle for equality in education.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 06/15/2018
Black educators, in the South especially, have been unsung champions in the quest for justice in American public schools. By tracking the work of Dr. Horace Edward Tate (1920–2002), his Georgia Teachers and Education Association, and similar black educational associations throughout the South, Walker (educational studies, Emory Univ.; Behind Every Movement) paints a portrait of how black teachers networked locally and nationally to advance black students and schools, particularly in the era before the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racially segregated public schools in 1954. The author argues that Brown v. Board of Education's victory for equality resulted at least as much from the work of black educators as from the often much heralded NAACP lawyers. With detailed descriptions of Southern politicians and public educational policy, Walker highlights how Brown was often misinterpreted as an "outergration" of black teachers and their curricular emphases and values. VERDICT Walker's extensively documented work is a much-needed corrective contextualizing the landscape of school desegregation; required reading for those interested in the past, present, and future of education of African American children.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Library Journal

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