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A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience: A Record of Struggles and Triumphs

This book offers a history of African American education, while also serving as a companion text for teachers, students and researchers in cultural criticism, American and African American studies, postcolonialism, historiography, and psychoanalytics. Overall, it represents essential reading for scholars, critics, leaders of educational policy, and all others interested in ongoing discussions not only about the role of community, family, teachers and others in facilitating quality education for the citizenry, but also about ensuring the posterity of a society via equal access to, and attainment of, quality education by its constituents of color. Particularly, this volume fills a void in the annals of African American history and African American education, by addressing the vibrancy of an education ethos within Black America which has unequivocally served as cultural, historical, political, legal and theoretical references.


Hazel Arnett Ervin received her PhD in African American Literature from Howard University. She has earned leadership certificates from the Hampton University Leadership Summit and the American Council on Education’s Office of Women in Higher Education. Ervin has numerous years of experience as both high school and college educator, and has promoted a student-centered model of teaching and learning. In 2011, Ervin was appointed by the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known also as the Nation’s Report Card, to help “set achievement levels” for writing in American education. Internationally recognised for her monographs, articles and scholarly editions on writer Ann Petry, she is also known for her theoretical publications on African American literature, especially African American Literary Criticism and The Handbook of African American Literature. She is the recipient of the Fulbright award and fellowships from Mellon, NEH, and the WYE Institute, and was named in Who’s Who in Black America and Who’s Who in Black Atlanta. She currently serves as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Lois Jamison Sheer, an administrator, assistant professor, and consultant in higher education, is the Director of the Academic Success Center and Co-Director of the Student Tuition Assistance and Readiness Tract Summer Bridge Program, both at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. She has received awards and recognitions for teaching and leadership, including a Distinguished Teaching Award, inclusions in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers and Who’s Who Among American Educators, and leadership achievements in curriculum development. She is the founder of the Christian Book Discussion Group, a community-based literary guild, and currently Vice President of the HBCU – General Education Alliance, Inc. Dr Sheer received her PhD in Reading from Georgia State University.

“In A Community of Voices, Ervin and Sheer have selected a variety of personal testimonies, litigation summaries and intellectual perspectives based on themes and practices in African American education. These scholarly critiques can help to serve as guiding beliefs in the field. Resources dating from the 1700s to the early 1970s describe how African Americans faced life threatening situations along with political, social and economic barriers in order to obtain an education. But these critiques also show the ideals that the African American community saw as worthy of preserving and passing on to future generations; things such as dignity, identity, family, freedom, and literacy. A must-read for those looking for a historical overview of how the African American family, the community, the church, and the academy worked to promote and gain access to education in our society.
Janet Sims-Wood
Distinguished Research Librarian

“A Community of Voices is a much-needed text in education history. It centers our attention on an education ethos which historically and philosophically guides Black America (family, teachers, church and community), from the early 1700s to the late 1970s. It centers the perspectives of African American students and their support team which intentionally and consistently remains family, teachers, church, and community. It supplies knowledge and directions—landmarks and milestones, personal testimonies, summations of litigations, intellectual perspectives, and exhaustive bibliography—to education reformers seeking history and memory as theoretical building tools. In this text, readers meet “witnesses” to the humanity of a people who saw education as the pre-condition to survival in America and in global societies. By the last page, we are witnesses, too.”
McLouis Clayton
PhD, Chair, Advisory Board, HBCU-General Education Alliance, Inc.

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-8116-3

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-8116-6

Release Date: 1st March 2016

Pages: 455

Price: £57.99

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