Moving Forward By Looking Back

When Latorial Faison meets somebody, she can almost immediately tell if they attended a Black school during segregation. She says they carry themselves with a special sense of pride. It’s actually what set her on her journey to writing her book, The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Education Experience in Southampton County, Virginia 1950-1970. And: Franklin County, Virginia once boasted a whopping 177 schools. Most were tiny one room buildings built by local communities in the first half of the 20th century. Benny Gibson and his son, Abe Gibson, have been consulting old maps and knocking on doors to recover what they call the Vanishing Schools of Franklin County.

Later in the show: Brittany Hunt studies anti-indigenous schooling practices. She says teachers often focus too much on the traumatic past of indigenous people, while failing to bring their story into the modern context. Plus: The US invaded the Dominican Republic in 1916 and installed a military government to oversee the occupation for eight years. Alexa Rodriguez says Dominicans used public schools during this period to express their own version of national identity and citizenship.