sonya ramsey

8/13/2019 Sonya Ramsey

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Hasan Karayam

History 7104

2-10-2011

Review book

Sonya Ramsey,Reading, Writing, and Segregation: A century of Black Women Teachers

in Nashville. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008, xiv, 182. $35.

The book is divided into content, acknowledgment, introduction, four chapters,

conclusion, notes, and index. The structure of the study is chronological structure from 1867

with the advent of the citys segregated black schools through the early 1980s. The book

explores how crucial moments, such as rise of Jim Crow, World War I and II, the great

depression, and Brown v.Boared of education, influence black of urban teachers. This book

chronicles the experiences of educated urban women among African American education

experience in the urban South. Ramseys work examines the civil right movement from the

perspective of the teachers in charge of implementing desegregation in the aftermath of the

Supreme Courts landmark decision in Brown.v Board of education in 1954. Because, it focuses

on the black woman teachers and their role in the educational system, as well as their

contribution to the rising black middle class. Ramsey used different sources in her study, such as

primary sources, secondary sources, like official decisions, curt cases that support her

perspective and results.

She begins her study in the post Civil War period to the beginning of the Great

Depression. She describes the development of African American segregated public schools in

Nashville. She notes that the role of religion that primarily was white missionaries from the


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North to help the black community. Then, she introduces several problems that would langue

black schools and teachers for decades, such as unequal pay for back teachers and funding for

black schools. She also discusses the black college system through the role of Fisk University

and Tennessee A&I during Reconstruction. According to Ramsey, black women teachers in that

time contributed to rising black middle class and were acutely conscious of their role within their

communities.

She traces actions and activists of the teachers throughout the 1940s and early 1950s.

According to Ramsey, the teachers saw their role change when they became involved within the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). in other words, They

support NAACPs strategies to end segregation like the Thomas v. Hibbits case against the

citys all-white board of education. Ramsey does great job of tracing these trends through oral

histories, statistic and recorded court cases. she explains resistance to desegregation and the

consequences of desegregation that concluded with federal intervention. She describes the role of

teachers not only in courts but also with their communities. Although, many teachers were not

willing to participate in sit-ins, because they feared job loss as retribution, they contributed

behind the scenes by posting bailed providing students with car rides to sit-ins. She examines the

experience of those who desegregate with public schools and those who remained at previously

schools and discuss the impact of desegregation in teaching professional, its influence on the

black community. She notes that when experienced the black woman teachers left neighborhood

schools, the stabilizing influence these teachers provided for their students, was also removed. In

other words, how to create harmony between teachers and student in the new system after

integration.


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Ramsey does great job in her study in few aspects, a major strength of her work is her use

of extensive teacher interviews that is supported by other primary sources documenting the

regional and national context. She presents some fascinating insights into Nashvilles black

educational system that demonstrated the historical importance of this study as part of civil rights

movement. In contrast, she could not make good connection with other events in the South in the

same period.

sonya ramsey

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