Hasan Karayam History 7104 2-10-2011 Review book

Sonya Ramsey, Reading, Writing, and Segregation: A century of Black Women Teachers in Nashville. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008, xiv, 182. $35. The book is divided into content, acknowledgment, introduction, four chapters, conclusion, notes, and index. The structure of the study is chronological structure from 1867 with the advent of the citys segregated black schools through the early 1980s. The book explores how crucial moments, such as rise of Jim Crow, World War I and II, the great depression, and Brown v.Boared of education, influence black of urban teachers. This book chronicles the experiences of educated urban women among African American education experience in the urban South. Ramseys work examines the civil right movement from the perspective of the teachers in charge of implementing desegregation in the aftermath of the Supreme Courts landmark decision in Brown.v Board of education in 1954. Because, it focuses on the black woman teachers and their role in the educational system, as well as their contribution to the rising black middle class. Ramsey used different sources in her study, such as primary sources, secondary sources, like official decisions, curt cases that support her perspective and results. She begins her study in the post Civil War period to the beginning of the Great Depression. She describes the development of African American segregated public schools in Nashville. She notes that the role of religion that primarily was white missionaries from the

North to help the black community. Then, she introduces several problems that would langue black schools and teachers for decades, such as unequal pay for back teachers and funding for black schools. She also discusses the black college system through the role of Fisk University and Tennessee A&I during Reconstruction. According to Ramsey, black women teachers in that time contributed to rising black middle class and were acutely conscious of their role within their communities. She traces actions and activists of the teachers throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. According to Ramsey, the teachers saw their role change when they became involved within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). in other words, They support NAACPs strategies to end segregation like the Thomas v. Hibbits case against the citys all-white board of education. Ramsey does great job of tracing these trends through oral histories, statistic and recorded court cases. she explains resistance to desegregation and the consequences of desegregation that concluded with federal intervention. She describes the role of teachers not only in courts but also with their communities. Although, many teachers were not willing to participate in sit-ins, because they feared job loss as retribution, they contributed behind the scenes by posting bailed providing students with car rides to sit-ins. She examines the experience of those who desegregate with public schools and those who remained at previously schools and discuss the impact of desegregation in teaching professional, its influence on the black community. She notes that when experienced the black woman teachers left neighborhood schools, the stabilizing influence these teachers provided for their students, was also removed. In other words, how to create harmony between teachers and student in the new system after integration.

Ramsey does great job in her study in few aspects, a major strength of her work is her use of extensive teacher interviews that is supported by other primary sources documenting the regional and national context. She presents some fascinating insights into Nashvilles black educational system that demonstrated the historical importance of this study as part of civil rights movement. In contrast, she could not make good connection with other events in the South in the same period.