In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America - Kabria Baumgartner

Descriere

n nWinner, 2021 AERA Outstanding Book Award n nWinner, 2021 AERA Division F New Scholar's Book Award n nWinner, 2020 Mary Kelley Book Prize, given by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic n nWinner, 2020 Outstanding Book Award, given by the History of Education Society n nUncovers the hidden role of girls and women in the desegregation of American education n nThe story of school desegregation in the United States often begins in the mid-twentieth-century South. Drawing on archival sources and genealogical records, Kabria Baumgartner uncovers the story's origins in the nineteenth-century Northeast and identifies a previously overlooked group of activists: African American girls and women. n nIn their quest for education, African American girls and women faced numerous obstacles-from threats and harassment to violence. For them, education was a daring undertaking that put them in harm's way. Yet bold and brave young women such as Sarah Harris, Sarah Parker Remond, Rosetta Morrison, Susan Paul, and Sarah Mapps Douglass persisted. n nIn Pursuit of Knowledge argues that African American girls and women strategized, organized, wrote, and protested for equal school rights-not just for themselves, but for all. Their activism gave rise to a new vision of womanhood: the purposeful woman, who was learned, active, resilient, and forward-thinking. Moreover, these young women set in motion equal-school-rights victories at the local and state level, and laid the groundwork for further action to democratize schools in twentieth-century America. In this thought-provoking book, Baumgartner demonstrates that the confluence of race and gender has shaped the long history of school desegregation in the United States right up to the present.n