Rooks, Noliwe

OUR SYNOPSIS: Noliwe Rooks foregrounds histories of segregated education for understanding the intertwined economic and racial structuring of American society. She argues that the profitability of unequal education drives its continuation and exacerbation, analyzing the nineteenth century through the present. For 1877 to 1930, she focuses on public education in the U.S. South to show how white philanthropy restricted educational opportunities for Black students. Meanwhile, Black Americans worked relentlessly to improve educational prospects for their own families. After the mid-century Brownv. Board of Education decision, white Americans nationwide mobilized fierce legal and social resistance to school integration. Black Americans navigated restrictive transportation systems to advance integration and work towards equality. In the North, funding was drawn away from predominantly Black urban schools towards white suburban enclaves post-Brown. Frustrated with continued inequities, Black families increasingly turned to private or charter school options in the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first. She also shows how twenty-first century cases of legally disputed access to tax-supported educational opportunities exclude and criminalize communities of color.