Anyone purporting to understand the challenges of K12 education in New Orleans absent knowledge of the disgraceful, entrenched history of Black oppression and White superiority in the city (and enabled by the layering of racist attitudes at the state level in multiple states) is only interfering with any genuine effort to address the problem.
It is convenient for would-be education reformers to begin their discussions with New Orleans public school test scores prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or to issues with the Orleans Parish School Board prior to the storm, but such discussions only reveal the ignorance (willful or not) of the speaker.
Consider this a call to education, namely, to self-educate about New Orleans and the generations of intentional disenfranchisement of the Black community by entitled Whites.
To that end, I know of no book better to begin such self-education than William Franz Public School: A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans. In their primarily-archival investigation centered on a single school, William Franz Public School, authors Connie Shaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator pack an incredible amount of history in this 300-page, eye-opening, historical treasure.
Many might remember Willam Franz Public School as the once-all-White elementary school in the national spotlight when first-grader Ruby Bridges became the first Black student to enroll in November 1960. However, Shaffer et al. do not stop with November 1960. Indeed, they do not start with November 1960, and they do not stop with a narrow history of the CONTINUE READING: William Franz Public School: A Must-Read for Those Who Think They Know New Orleans | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog
