The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

Volume 17: Education

Offering a broad, up-to-date reference to the long history and cultural legacy of education in the American South, this timely volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture surveys educational developments, practices, institutions, and politics from the colonial era to the present. With over 130 articles, this book covers key topics in education, including academic freedom; the effects of urbanization on segregation, desegregation, and resegregation; African American and women's education; and illiteracy. These entries, as well as articles on prominent educators, such as Booker T. Washington and C. Vann Woodward, and major southern universities, colleges, and trade schools, provide an essential context for understanding the debates and battles that remain deeply imbedded in southern education. Framed by Clarence Mohr's historically rich introductory overview, the essays in this volume comprise a greatly expanded and thoroughly updated survey of the shifting southern education landscape and its development over the span of four centuries.

The desegregation of southern education occurred in several phases over 80
years: (1) 1930–45, inauguration of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) desegregation campaign, which
ended the era of virtually unchallenged Jim Crowism; (2) 1945–54, overturning
the separate-but-equal doctrine, first in graduate and professional education and
then in elementary and secondary schools; (3) 1955–64, massive southern white
resistance countered ...