During the half century preceding widespread school integration,
black North Carolinians engaged in a dramatic struggle for equal
educational opportunity as segregated schooling flourished. Drawing
on archival records and oral histories, Sarah Thuesen gives voice
to students, parents, teachers, school officials, and civic leaders
to reconstruct this high-stakes drama. She explores how African
Americans pressed for equality in curricula, higher education,
teacher salaries, and school facilities; how white officials
co-opted equalization as a means of forestalling integration; and,
finally, how black activism for equality evolved into a fight for
something "greater than equal--integrated schools that served as
models of civic inclusion.
These battles persisted into the
Brown era, mobilized black
communities, narrowed material disparities, fostered black school
pride, and profoundly shaped the eventual movement for
desegregation. Thuesen emphasizes that the remarkable achievements
of this activism should not obscure the inherent limitations of a
fight for equality in a segregated society. In fact, these
unresolved struggles are emblematic of fault lines that developed
across the South, and serve as an urgent reminder of the
inextricable connections between educational equality, racial
diversity, and the achievement of first-class citizenship.