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The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools
In the epic tradition of Eyes on the Prize and with the cultural significance of John Lewis’s March trilogy, an ambitious and harrowing account of the devoted black educators who battled southern school segregation and inequality
“Negroes cannot and will not be free or integrated if all that they have is relinquished, emasculated, given up, or abandoned.” —Dr. Horace E. Tate
For two years an aging Dr. Horace Tate—a former teacher, principal, and state senator—told Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker about his clandestine travels on unpaved roads under the cover of night, meeting with other educators and with Dr. King, Georgia politicians, and even U.S. presidents. Sometimes he and Walker spoke by phone, sometimes in his office, sometimes in his home; always Tate shared fascinating stories of the times leading up to and following Brown v. Board of Education. Dramatically, on his deathbed, he asked Walker to return to his office in Atlanta, in a building that was once the headquarters of another kind of southern strategy, one driven by integrity and equality.
Just days after Dr. Tate’s passing in 2002, Walker honored his wish. Up a dusty, rickety staircase, locked in a concealed attic, she found the collection: a massive archive documenting the underground actors and covert strategies behind the most significant era of the fight for educational justice. Thus began Walker’s sixteen-year project to uncover the network of educators behind countless battles—in courtrooms, schools, and communities—for the education of black children. Until now, the courageous story of how black Americans in the South won so much and subsequently fell so far has been incomplete. The Lost Education of Horace Tate is a monumental work that offers fresh insight into the southern struggle for human rights, revealing little-known accounts of leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, as well as hidden provocateurs like Horace Tate.
“Negroes cannot and will not be free or integrated if all that they have is relinquished, emasculated, given up, or abandoned.” —Dr. Horace E. Tate
For two years an aging Dr. Horace Tate—a former teacher, principal, and state senator—told Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker about his clandestine travels on unpaved roads under the cover of night, meeting with other educators and with Dr. King, Georgia politicians, and even U.S. presidents. Sometimes he and Walker spoke by phone, sometimes in his office, sometimes in his home; always Tate shared fascinating stories of the times leading up to and following Brown v. Board of Education. Dramatically, on his deathbed, he asked Walker to return to his office in Atlanta, in a building that was once the headquarters of another kind of southern strategy, one driven by integrity and equality.
Just days after Dr. Tate’s passing in 2002, Walker honored his wish. Up a dusty, rickety staircase, locked in a concealed attic, she found the collection: a massive archive documenting the underground actors and covert strategies behind the most significant era of the fight for educational justice. Thus began Walker’s sixteen-year project to uncover the network of educators behind countless battles—in courtrooms, schools, and communities—for the education of black children. Until now, the courageous story of how black Americans in the South won so much and subsequently fell so far has been incomplete. The Lost Education of Horace Tate is a monumental work that offers fresh insight into the southern struggle for human rights, revealing little-known accounts of leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, as well as hidden provocateurs like Horace Tate.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published July 31, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 25, 2019
If you are interested in racial justice in education, or want to understand why racism wasn't 'fixed' by integration, I strongly recommend this book.
Full disclosure: It's a long slog. Not because it's badly written--it's not. But it is long and full of So. Much. Detail. The author is a scholar, and the detail is in many ways crucial for building up her point, as you feel the weight of the betrayal by the end differently. But I also think it could really use a shorter more accessible version, because the story line is so important and so different from the official story.
The book takes us through the activities of the Black teacher's association in Georgia, starting with an in-depth look at how it and its members quietly, powerfully, and behind-the-scenes (like clandestine midnight drives by principals to pick up lawyers they couldn't been see with and keep their jobs behind-the-scenes) fought for better conditions and equal resources for segregated schools and taught the children in them to be full participants in a democracy. It shows how despite the discrimination against them, those schools were lacking in resources but not in teaching skills or outcomes. And then it walks us through the pitched, and ultimately unsuccessful, battle for a real, equal integration, instead of a second class integration that involved the firing or demotion of black educators and leaders, abandonment of black schools, and worse, as well as a merger with the larger white teacher's association that wasn't as committed to fighting for Black students.
It wasn't surprising exactly (though in this age of 'don't call me a racist!' the blatantness is still weird), but it does give the reader a much more visceral and moving sense of how we ended up where we are despite nominal victories at the Supreme Court level.
Full disclosure: It's a long slog. Not because it's badly written--it's not. But it is long and full of So. Much. Detail. The author is a scholar, and the detail is in many ways crucial for building up her point, as you feel the weight of the betrayal by the end differently. But I also think it could really use a shorter more accessible version, because the story line is so important and so different from the official story.
The book takes us through the activities of the Black teacher's association in Georgia, starting with an in-depth look at how it and its members quietly, powerfully, and behind-the-scenes (like clandestine midnight drives by principals to pick up lawyers they couldn't been see with and keep their jobs behind-the-scenes) fought for better conditions and equal resources for segregated schools and taught the children in them to be full participants in a democracy. It shows how despite the discrimination against them, those schools were lacking in resources but not in teaching skills or outcomes. And then it walks us through the pitched, and ultimately unsuccessful, battle for a real, equal integration, instead of a second class integration that involved the firing or demotion of black educators and leaders, abandonment of black schools, and worse, as well as a merger with the larger white teacher's association that wasn't as committed to fighting for Black students.
It wasn't surprising exactly (though in this age of 'don't call me a racist!' the blatantness is still weird), but it does give the reader a much more visceral and moving sense of how we ended up where we are despite nominal victories at the Supreme Court level.
July 18, 2020
Black educators supported and wanted integration. They imagined an additive model, in which black children would have more than what they already had. They had school climates that taught black students to aspire. They took the negative messages from the larger society, reconstructed them, and made children believe they could be anything they wanted to be. They had black educators working through their powerful organizational networks across the South, advocating on black children’s behalf. What they wanted was access—to newer school buildings and textbooks, bus transportation, science equipment, and playgrounds. They wanted for black children what many white people already had for their children.
It was their expectation that integration would retain the aspiration and advocacy, and they would gain access. Instead, with integration, they closed most of the black schools and fired many of the black teachers—there goes the aspiring school climates. There was a push following the Brown case to merge black and white teacher organizations in the South, to be on board with integration also. But white educational organizations never advocated for what black children needed. Many of the members of the white organizations were the very superintendents and principals who were oppressing black children. You put the two together—the capacity to advocate is lost.
Ultimately, all we got was compromised access. White southerners pulled their children out of public schools, so the access was never what the black educators envisioned integration—that additive model—would look like. But the momentum to desegregate in the late 1960s and early ‘70s—the good feelings that followed Brown v. Board—was too much of a distraction for mainstream supporters of integration. Nobody could hear black educators’ objections in real time.
Fast-forward to today, and think about the massive data on black children’s educational outcomes. Schools with climates that encourage black students to aspire are relatively rare. The advocacy structures—very tightly networked organizations that had been around since the turn of the century—are gone. And the access that we once had, as scholars have identified, is going backwards. So the question is: Where are we today?
Excellent and detailed account of African American educators fight for equitable education for black children and how that pursuit was distorted in the implementation of “integration.” Dr. Tate is heroic, as were all of those unnamed black teachers who quietly participated in this struggle.
It was their expectation that integration would retain the aspiration and advocacy, and they would gain access. Instead, with integration, they closed most of the black schools and fired many of the black teachers—there goes the aspiring school climates. There was a push following the Brown case to merge black and white teacher organizations in the South, to be on board with integration also. But white educational organizations never advocated for what black children needed. Many of the members of the white organizations were the very superintendents and principals who were oppressing black children. You put the two together—the capacity to advocate is lost.
Ultimately, all we got was compromised access. White southerners pulled their children out of public schools, so the access was never what the black educators envisioned integration—that additive model—would look like. But the momentum to desegregate in the late 1960s and early ‘70s—the good feelings that followed Brown v. Board—was too much of a distraction for mainstream supporters of integration. Nobody could hear black educators’ objections in real time.
Fast-forward to today, and think about the massive data on black children’s educational outcomes. Schools with climates that encourage black students to aspire are relatively rare. The advocacy structures—very tightly networked organizations that had been around since the turn of the century—are gone. And the access that we once had, as scholars have identified, is going backwards. So the question is: Where are we today?
Excellent and detailed account of African American educators fight for equitable education for black children and how that pursuit was distorted in the implementation of “integration.” Dr. Tate is heroic, as were all of those unnamed black teachers who quietly participated in this struggle.
May 25, 2021
This is a deep ethnographic historical analysis of the long fight for educational equality by the Black Georgia Teachers & Educators Association (GT&EA) from the turn of the 20th century to the 197os. I thought I was going to read about how integration harmed the education of Black students. The author writes, "Dismantling all the organizational structures and pedagogical precepts of black educators seemed to be the price for the Supreme Court decision intended to eradicate inequality, and it was wrong." But that part of the book was limited (and perhaps the focus of another of the author's books, Their Highest Potential), and most focused on the clandestine and powerful role of the GT&EA in the NAACP's legal battles and the long and challenging road towards the integration of the Black GT&EA with the White Georgia Education Association (GEA).
Between the pages and pages of political history of the GT&EA to fight for the rights of Black students and educators, are statements that give insight into the power of teachers who reflect the identify of their students. The author quotes a previous GT&EA president, who said during an education conference, "Each student had to be confident that the teachers were giving him the 'true facts of life and . . . making him feel that nothing is impossible for him.' Teachers needed to understand their influence in the community, be intentional about ways to cooperate with parents, and do anything that would help Negro people in general have a better quality of living. If they loved the children, the children would love them back, he told them. Teachers were to be 'deeply concerned; about the children, to consider being entrusted with the children a 'great responsibility' they could not afford to dismiss."
Among the biggest lessons of this book, in addition to the lots of horrific examples of racism and oppression of Black students and teachers by White administrators, is the role the Black school staff played in advancing the policy agenda. "Black educators had the dual responsibility of advocating for justice amid persistent inequalities," writes the author, "while simultaneously helping eager minds who needed opportunities for expression, originality, and recreation—who needed to aspire to know their individual dignity and human worth."
Between the pages and pages of political history of the GT&EA to fight for the rights of Black students and educators, are statements that give insight into the power of teachers who reflect the identify of their students. The author quotes a previous GT&EA president, who said during an education conference, "Each student had to be confident that the teachers were giving him the 'true facts of life and . . . making him feel that nothing is impossible for him.' Teachers needed to understand their influence in the community, be intentional about ways to cooperate with parents, and do anything that would help Negro people in general have a better quality of living. If they loved the children, the children would love them back, he told them. Teachers were to be 'deeply concerned; about the children, to consider being entrusted with the children a 'great responsibility' they could not afford to dismiss."
Among the biggest lessons of this book, in addition to the lots of horrific examples of racism and oppression of Black students and teachers by White administrators, is the role the Black school staff played in advancing the policy agenda. "Black educators had the dual responsibility of advocating for justice amid persistent inequalities," writes the author, "while simultaneously helping eager minds who needed opportunities for expression, originality, and recreation—who needed to aspire to know their individual dignity and human worth."
December 1, 2021
The story of black educators in the 20th century south told through the lens of Dr. Horace Tate was a difficult read. This book is a combination of narrative storytelling, and a meticulously documented account of how black educators taught their children under extreme deprivation, forming networks of parents, teachers, and administrators to fight for their children's education. Then in the post-Brown era of school desegregation, conditions only improved somewhat as black teachers and principals needed to use a combination of tricks and lawsuits (threatened or actual) to elicit a meager flow of resources. I was constantly pricked by the shame of my ignorance regarding this period of history when I was a student in the American public education system, benefiting from the privilege of well-resourced white suburban schools. I recall only 2 black students in my high school and none in prior years. I failed to realize that black schools were the victims of second class integration in which black students remained (whites had fled to private academies) and black teachers and principals were replaced by whites, ostensibly because the black teachers were inferior. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It was black educators with the clear-eyed understanding of racism and the needs of their children who were stripped of any power to advocate for them. Now 70 years after Brown v. Board, the same siphoning off of resources cheats black students and teachers. How dare any aspiring white school board members and parents deny that racism is still deeply at work in schools that blame black parents for failure and expect less of their black and brown students! Justice has not yet been served, nor true integration even attempted in most schools. The 1619 Project is sorely needed to teach the full history of slavery and its fallout over the centuries.
January 1, 2020
The Lost Education of Horace Tate was a gem waiting to be unearthed for me. I like to have something sizeable and of substance to read during the Holidays and Divine Providence answered that request. Quite by happenstance, Dr. Vanessa Siddle Walker’s comprehensive study of black education fell into my lap.
As a pupil of Southern segregation, a current educator and one who briefly chatted with Senator Tate, this book is monumental on so many levels. Enough cannot be said of this scholar’s ability to take documents, interviews and pictures and put them in a creative, artful narrative. I held onto every word. I am certain that Dr. Tate is smiling down on her success in putting it all together. What an engaging storyteller!
As a pupil of Southern segregation, a current educator and one who briefly chatted with Senator Tate, this book is monumental on so many levels. Enough cannot be said of this scholar’s ability to take documents, interviews and pictures and put them in a creative, artful narrative. I held onto every word. I am certain that Dr. Tate is smiling down on her success in putting it all together. What an engaging storyteller!
March 5, 2019
This is just fantastic! If you've heard of Brown v Board of Education, but couldn't tell me much more about what was going on, then you really need to read this. The clandestine, life-endangering work of folks like Horace Tate is practically unknown even in African-American communities. Men like Tate put their lives on the line week after week, constantly putting pressure on Georgia whites to just provide to African Americans something closer to what the whites kids had always been getting. Oh, and they had to take care of the teachers, too.
October 13, 2020
This book blew my mind. While it sometimes dragged a bit through replicating lots of formal, mid-20th century, flowery prose, it’s core story is basically a true story of amazingly courageous, persistent heroes.
All teachers are heroes. The black educators of the segregated south who quietly collected data and organized citizens committees while also fighting for the souls and hope of their students... they took it to another level. And this is their amazing story.
All teachers are heroes. The black educators of the segregated south who quietly collected data and organized citizens committees while also fighting for the souls and hope of their students... they took it to another level. And this is their amazing story.
March 17, 2023
This is a very important historical read IMO. It's a story told through the notes, and diaries of Horace Tate, primarily in the state of Georgia, but is really the story of the fight for justice in public education for all southern states, before and after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. It does get a little dry at times, but has lots of little known details and heroes during this struggle.
October 18, 2020
This book taught me a lot about a side of integration that is kept in shadow, out of the sun of the popular narrative about segregation. My only complaint is the book purports to be about Dr. Tate but is really about the GTE&A. Which is fine but since it was supposed to be about Dr. Tate I found myself wanting more info on his personal life or what he did after the final scene in the book.
November 5, 2020
This is a meticulously researched book that tells a very important history of segregation and integration in Georgia. Two thirds of the way through, it became a bit of a slog, however. I think some of the minute details (e.g. start and end times of conference registrations) could have edited to make the book more readable for a lay audience.
July 22, 2018
Great book: I'm martialing my thoughts for a revised review asap.
dnf
November 25, 2019DNF in March
August 1, 2020
The untold history of Black education in Georgia and the United States...devastating and enlightening at the same time.
January 22, 2021
Powerful. Deeply moving. Took time to digest because of the depth of this work and how intensely personal the story of complete strangers can often be.
February 20, 2021
Probably one of the most important books I've ever read, especially as a teacher in pursuit of justice. Indispensable history.
January 10, 2022
Excellent book about Black educators who went above and beyond to ensure Black children received an education.
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September 7, 2018370.92 W185 2018
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews