The Secret Network of Black Teachers Behind the Fight for Desegregation

For 25 years, the Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker has studied and written about the segregated schooling of black children. In her , , Walker tells the little-known story of how black educators in the South—courageously and covertly—laid the groundwork for 1954’s and weathered its aftermath. The tale is told primarily through the life of , an acclaimed Georgia classroom teacher, principal, and one-time executive director of the Georgia Teachers and Education Association (GTEA), an organization for black educators founded in 1878. Later in his career, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky; at the time, Georgia still banned black students from state doctoral programs. Walker first met Tate in 2000. Over the course of the next two years, he told her aboutclandestine meetings among decision—to protect the interests of black children.