First Class
eBook - PDF

First Class

The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School

  1. 356 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

First Class

The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School

About this book

Combining a fascinating history of the first U.S. high school for African Americans with an unflinching analysis of urban public-school education today, First Class explores an underrepresented and largely unknown aspect of black history while opening a discussion on what it takes to make a public school successful. In 1870, in the wake of the Civil War, citizens of Washington, DC, opened the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, the first black public high school in the United States; it would later be renamed Dunbar High and would flourish despite Jim Crow laws and segregation. Dunbar attracted an extraordinary faculty: its early principal was the first black graduate of Harvard, and at a time it had seven teachers with PhDs, a medical doctor, and a lawyer. During the school's first 80 years, these teachers would develop generations of highly educated, successful African Americans, and at its height in the 1940s and '50s, Dunbar High School sent 80 percent of its students to college. Today, as in too many failing urban public schools, the majority of Dunbar students are barely proficient in reading and math. Journalist and author Alison Stewart—whose parents were both Dunbar graduates—tells the story of the school's rise, fall, and possible resurgence as it looks to reopen its new, state-of-the-art campus in the fall of 2013.

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Yes, you can access First Class by Alison Stewart in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Multicultural Education. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. Front Flap
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Foreword by Melissa Harris-Perry
  8. Introduction
  9. Prologue
  10. 1 It Is What It Is
  11. 2 Teaching to Teach
  12. 3 The Law Giveth and the Law Taketh Away
  13. 4 It’s the Principal
  14. 5 Bricks and Mortarboards
  15. 6 Old School
  16. 7 Chromatics
  17. 8 Coming of Age
  18. 9 Right to Serve
  19. 10 Bolling, Not Brown
  20. 11 Elite versus Elitism
  21. 12 New School
  22. 13 Children Left Behind
  23. 14 From Bed-Stuy to Shaw
  24. 15 The Fall
  25. 16 New New School
  26. 17 Back to the Future
  27. Acknowledgments
  28. Notes
  29. Selected Bibliography
  30. Index
  31. Back Flap
  32. Back Cover