How the 1954 Brown decision still influences today’s teaching ranks

Education has always played a crucial role in Leslie Fenwick’s life.

The dean emerita of the school of education at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and professor of education policy says that her parents were adamantly opposed to segregationist policies. They also taught her about Black educator excellence, a story she wasn’t taught in school.

Dr. Fenwick’s most recent book, “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership,” published earlier this year, tells the story of highly qualified Black educators displaced during school integration efforts. The book presents historical evidence showing that following the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation in schools, nearly 100,000 Black educators were dismissed or demoted from their positions and often replaced with less qualified white educators. That meant losing many Black teachers who had used scholarships offered by some states to attend schools like New York University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State University, and University of Michigan for their teaching credentials.

Dr. Fenwick spoke with the Monitor about the history her book documents, how she sees the events of the post-Brown era still affecting education today, and possible paths forward to address past harms. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Are there ripple effects from what happened to many Black educators following Brown v. Board of Education that we still see in schooling and the educator workforce today? What connections do you see between what happened in the past and today?

I do believe there’s a connection. I don’t think this history is dead, and I think we’re still living with the fallout of this history. When 100,000 Black educators were purged from the system, and these were the system’s most credentialed, experienced, and capable educators, you see that the system was not left in the hands of the most capable – at least in terms of the quantitative, normally accepted indicators of quality, which would be the teachers’ credentials. 

During the years that this purge is happening, the overwhelming majority, something like 72% of Black professionals, are educators, either principals or teachers. The Black community, and I would say the public school system generally, experienced four traumas: [First,] the loss of a generation of exceptionally credentialed and effective educators. [Second,] the worst trauma would be that experience of Black students who now found themselves in previously all-white segregated schools without models of intellectual authority in teachers or leadership authority in principals, with no models to guide them through violent attacks or to tell them how to negotiate racism. [Third,] economic trauma. One hundred thousand educators losing their jobs translated in the Black community to about a $1 billion economic cut. [And fourth,] Black educators stood as an example that there was a way to be educated, to obtain a working service to your community, and with the massive firings that notion was troubled, and I think it had implications for future generations pursuing becoming a teacher or principal.

You mention in the book what you call a myth, that following the Brown decision, Black educators left education for better jobs in different fields. How does your book show that to be a myth? 

This is a point that really is quite important to me because it’s repeated not only in commentary, but also even in the research literature, that with the Brown decision, Blacks fled the education professions to pursue careers previously not open to them. That myth has been used to say this is why there is an underrepresentation of Blacks in the education profession today. In fact, the historical record shows the Black educator pipeline was nearly decimated because of massive resistance by whites to the new law of the land, Brown v. Board of Education.

Labor statistics do not support that myth. We don’t see after Brown an uptick in Blacks leaving the teaching profession and becoming physicians or dentists or scientists with government agencies, or business executives in corporate America. 

Before Brown, in the 17 states that were operating racially segregated school systems by state law and custom, 35% to 50% of principals and teachers were Black. Today, about 7% of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers are Black, and about 11% of the nation’s nearly 90,000 or so principals are Black, and less than 3% of the nation’s nearly 14,000 superintendents are Black. In some ways relative to the Black educator pipeline, we’ve gone backward.

What impact did the dismissal and demotion of Black educators following Brown v. Board of Education have on the students who were attending newly integrated schools? 

One of the reasons why the hope of Brown is unfilled is because we didn’t integrate. We simply moved Black students into previously all-white segregated schools. Black students went into settings that were captured, I would say, by the segregationist hold on them. So the models of intellectual authority were almost exclusively white. The model of leadership authority was almost exclusively white. The curriculum was almost exclusively white in terms of imagery, in terms of content, and in terms of authorship. I think that combination accrues to the disadvantage of Black students’ intellectual and academic development. We have about 40 years of research that shows that when Black students and Hispanic/Latinx students are in highly diversely staffed schools, there are numerous academic and social benefits that accrue to them. 

What recommendations can you offer to people who are wondering what can be done now to help repair the harms from the past that your book documents? 

One of the great findings of the book is that the NAACP is certainly a champion for the case of Black educators when they are purged out of this system. The NAACP, at the urging of Black educators, engaged majority-white organizations, mainly the National Association for Secondary School Principals, which at the time was almost exclusively white and male. Yet the NASSP comes to the aid of Black principals and teachers and works with the NAACP to say this is wrong, and they are very adamant about it. They, along with the American Federation of Teachers and the American Jewish Congress – this multiracial coalition under the herculean leadership of the NAACP – fight for the right cause. I think there’s still a message there that interracial, pluralistic, diverse coalitions fighting on the side of right can make a difference and that we can get further in terms of achieving equality and equity goals when we collaborate in this way.

For policymakers, in 2022, [historically Black colleges and universities] produce over 50% of the nation’s Black teachers, but HBCUs are less than 3% of the nation’s colleges and universities, so these are really strong engines for the production of Black educators. Two Hispanic-serving institutions produce 90% of the nation’s Hispanic/Latinx teachers. I think there needs to be more investment in these institutions because they are strong engines for the production of teachers of color. That holds true for TCUs, tribal colleges and universities, as well. 

I also think that knowing and telling this history is important for the American dialogue because when we tell a false history and then set policy around that false history, or that false cause, our solutions are always off.