# Read the first page of Reading, Writing, and Segregation by Sonya Yvette Ramsey Read the opening of Reading, Writing, and Segregation by Sonya Yvette Ramsey free, no signup. Black women teachers through Nashville's school segregation and integration. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/reading-writing-and-segregation-sonya-yvette-ramsey - Genre: Thrillers - Year: 2008 - ISBN: 9780252032295 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780252032295&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780252032295 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780252032295 ## The opening In 1878 the prominent black attorney and businessman James Carroll Napier won a seat on the Nashville city council by pledging to have African American teachers hired in the city's black schools. He claimed that they offered an "incentive to colored pupils" and that southern white teachers cared more for their salaries than for helping black children. Napier's campaign promise to voters in his predominately black Fourth Ward was part of the local community's ongoing drive to obtain African American teachers for their children. The struggle had begun in 1868 when black residents first petitioned the Nashville City Board of Education, and continued until 1887, when the board employed a new African American teaching staff at the last remaining black school with an all-white faculty. When the Tennessee General Assembly passed several segregation acts in 1901, including one barring teachers from instructing students of another race, Nashville’s African American community did not object because the law reinforced their desire for black teachers in black schools. The black residents of Nashville continued to ask an indifferent board of education to remedy glaring inequities in funding and resources. The battle to end segregation was in the future. Set in the context of the appalling state of Nashville's institutions and the city's tense racial climate during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the quest for improved black schools and a black faculty was a profound response to society's broken promises of freedom and equality. The struggle bore upon the entire black community and would continue throughout the twentieth century.² Answering the community's call, African American teachers embarked on a journey that required them to combat the impact of segregation and oppression at a variety of levels. They assumed leadership roles in service organizations and even provided lunches and clothing for needy students. Some were armed with little more than confidence and self-respect, but they struggled to keep students from internalizing the larger society's views of black inferiority. Working against overwhelming circumstances, black women teachers sometimes fell short of the mandate to uplift the race through education, but their efforts offered the black community the comfort of knowing that its children had caring and accountable instructors. Improved schooling was entwined with the black community's desire to expand its middle class. In addition to securing more teachers for their children's benefit, the establishment of Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School (A&I) in 1912 allowed greater numbers of blacks to become professionals. A&T's motto charged students to "Think, Work, and Serve," and the education they and their Fisk University counterparts received prepared them to adapt to the complicated issue of being role models for the race. As national leaders, especially Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, debated the best strategies for educational progress, black institutions of higher learning in Nashville employed a variety of ideas that helped black women develop as professional teachers. They were encouraged to overcome inferior surroundings, become leaders and activists in racial uplift, and maintain social standing by participating in professional associations and exclusive clubs and organizations. The experiences of black teachers in Nashville from the 1880s, when they first began working in sizable numbers in schools, to the 1930s, when they became the majority of black professional women in the city, demonstrate their belief that becoming educated, middle-class community leaders would help them adapt to—and sometimes overcome—the economic and social obstacles of a racially inequitable system. Their efforts to "serve by precept and example" outside their classrooms also reveal the educators' drive to embody and shape the city's female black middle class. ## Books with a similar feel - [The Novels of Gillian Flynn by Gillian Flynn](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-novels-of-gillian-flynn-gillian-flynn.md) - [A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins](https://uncovered.ink/read/a-slow-fire-burning-paula-hawkins.md) - [Sycamore Row by John Grisham](https://uncovered.ink/read/sycamore-row-john-grisham.md) - [Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins](https://uncovered.ink/read/hex-hall-rachel-hawkins.md) - [The Prisoner by B.A. Paris](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-prisoner-b-a-paris.md) - [The Warning by James Patterson](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-warning-james-patterson.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.