Why read Their Highest Potential?

Book cover of Their Highest Potential

Book description

African American schools in the segregated South faced enormous obstacles in educating their students. But some of these schools succeeded in providing nurturing educational environments in spite of the injustices of segregation. Vanessa Siddle Walker tells the story of one such school in rural North Carolina, the Caswell County Training…

Explore

Topics

Genres

History

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Their Highest Potential as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Mara Casey Tieken

Author

The common narrative is that rural Black schools in the segregated South were inadequate and poorly staffed; desegregation, the thinking goes, was an unmitigated good.

This book, by the esteemed historian Vanessa Siddle Walker, was one of the first I read to challenge this narrative, showing how, despite underfunding, these schools were often staffed by talented Black educators who held high standards and created nurturing, empowering classrooms.

In my research in the rural Delta, I have found that many adults today remember these schools fondly. For them, desegregation, which closed many of these schools, carried significant loss, and those losses…

From Mara's list on rural education.