NCWN

School Segregation in Western North Carolina: A History 1860s-1970s by Betty Jamerson Reed

McFarland, $45.00, paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7864-5965-0 (print)
ISBN: 978-0-7864-8708-0 (e-Book)
September, 2011
History
Available wherever books are sold, through the publisher, or Amazon.com

This study of a minority population's quest to achieve improved educational opportunities for their children in a rural environment highlights the stuggles and ultimate victory of a unified community. The book explores events that led African Americans into Appalachia and features comments from former students, teachers and parents, while weighing the important of segregated education contrasted with integrated school opportunities. The author highlights the importance of sports and extracurricular activities as well as the curriculum. It delves into an important arena of the on-going civil rights struggle.

Betty Jamerson Reed is the author of The Brevard Rosenwald School: Black Education and Community Building in a Southern Appalachian Town, 1920-1966 (McFarland, 2004). Her poetry and short fiction have been anthologized in Out of Our Hearts and Minds (2006) and Echoes Across the Blue Ridge (2010).