This study collects the oral histories of residents of a single county in North Carolina who lived through the consequences of desegregation, examining the complex social and historical constructions of racial difference in education.

This book is written for the Millennial Generation to educate them about what school desegregation was actually about—the struggle over white domination in the United States. The textbooks they read as high school students describe the heroic efforts of African Americans to achieve civil rights but do not describe who was denying them these rights—white Americans. The oral histories in this book reveal how individuals navigated efforts to achieve educational equity amidst efforts to reassert white domination. These accounts counter the textbook history the Millennial Generation read which omits the massive white resistance to school desegregation, the various ways whites used subterfuge to slow down and redirect school desegregation in what would more benefit whites, and the concerted white political backlash that has been ensconced in educational policy and reform beginning with A Nation at Risk and continuing in No Child Left Behind. That is, educational policy as we know it is all about asserting white domination and not about educating children, and thus the Millennial Generation is faced with undoing what their parents and grandparents have done.

When the Supreme Court overturned Louisville's local desegregation plan in 2007, the people of Jefferson County, Kentucky, faced the question of whether and how to maintain racial diversity in their schools. This debate came at a time when scholars, pundits, and much of the public had declared school integration a failed experiment rightfully abandoned. Using oral history narratives, newspaper accounts, and other documents, Tracy E. K'Meyer exposes the disappointments of desegregation, draws attention to those who struggled for over five decades to bring about equality and diversity, and highlights the many benefits of school integration. K'Meyer chronicles the local response to Brown v. Board of Education in 1956 and describes the start of countywide busing in 1975 as well as the crisis sparked by violent opposition to it. She reveals the forgotten story of the defense of integration and busing reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the response to the 2007 Supreme Court decision known as Meredith. This long and multifaceted struggle for school desegregation, K'Meyer shows, informs the ongoing movement for social justice in Louisville and beyond.

This is the first comprehensive account of African American secondary education in the postwar era. Drawing on quantitative datasets, as well as oral history, this compelling narrative examines how African Americans narrowed the racial gap in high school completion. The authors explore regional variations in high school attendance across the United States and how intraracial factors affected attendance within racial groups. They also examine the larger social historical context, such as the national high school revolution, the civil rights movement, campaigns to expand schooling and urging youth to stay in school, and Black migration northward. Closing chapters focus on desegregation and the "urban crisis" of the 1960s and 1970s that accelerated “White flight” and funding problems for urban school systems. The conclusion summarizes these developments and briefly looks at the period since 1980, when secondary attainment levels stopped advancing for Blacks and Whites alike. Book Highlights: A comprehensive history, drawing on statistical analysis, archival research, and interviews with African Americans who attended school in the 1940s and 1950s.Lessons from the past, showing how parents and local communities played the most direct and dynamic role in the fight for access to education.Today’s major challenges, including the growth of inner-city poverty and changing family structures. John L. Rury is professor of education and (by courtesy) history at the University of Kansas. Shirley A. Hill is professor of sociology at the University of Kansas. “Based on prodigious research, The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling sets a new standard of excellence in social history and policy studies. The authors evocatively recreate the passions of the civil rights movement and centrality of public schools in the ongoing quest for justice, opportunity, and freedom.” —William J. Reese, Carl F. Kaestle WARF Professor of Educational Policy Studies and History, University of Wisconsin–Madison “This book is a rich and compelling addition to the literature on secondary education generally and on secondary education for African Americans specifically. It will set the standard for historical studies on American high schools for a long time to come.” —Jeffrey Mirel, David L. Angus Collegiate Chair of Education, Professor of History, University of Michigan “The African American Struggle for Secondary Schooling fills a major gap in the history of African American educational history. This book will be on my shelf and will no doubt be on the shelves of scholars and students who study African American educational history.” —Thomas V. O'Brien, Professor and Chair, Department of Educational Studies and Research, University of Southern Mississippi “This is the only book-length account of the growth and impact of secondary education for African Americans post-1930. With a unique and original analysis, the authors frame key themes not only within the common historiographical tradition of an unfolding of 'growth and development' over time, but correctly understand that high school entailed opportunities for ‘attainment’ in a broader social sense as well.” —Michael Fultz, Professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Undocumented Storytellers offers a critical exploration of the ways undocumented immigrant activists harness the power of storytelling to mitigate the fear and uncertainty of life without legal status and to advocate for immigration reform. Sarah C. Bishop chronicles the ways young people uncover their lack of legal status experientially -- through interactions with parents, in attempts to pursue rites of passage reserved for citizens, and as audiences of political and popular media. She provides both theoretical and pragmatic contextualization as activist narrators recount the experiences that influenced their decisions to cultivate public voices. Bishop draws from a mixed methodology of in-depth interviews with undocumented immigrants from eighteen unique nations of origin, critical-rhetorical ethnographies of immigrant rights events and protests, and narrative analysis of immigrant-produced digital media to interrogate the power and limitations of narrative activism. Autobiographical immigrant storytelling refutes mainstream discourse on immigration and reveals the determination of individuals who elsewhere have been vilified by stereotype and presupposition. Offering an unparalleled view into the ways immigrants' stories appear online, Bishop illuminates digital narrative strategies by detailing how undocumented storytellers reframe their messages when stories have unintended consequences. The resulting work provides broad insights into the role of strategic framing and autobiographical story-sharing in advocacy and social movements.

Using first-person narratives collected through oral history interviews, this groundbreaking book collects black women's memories of their public and private lives during the period of legal segregation in the American South.

Doing Oral History is considered the premier guidebook to oral history, used by professional oral historians, public historians, archivists, and genealogists as a core text in college courses and throughout the public history community. Over the past decades, the development of digital audio and video recording technology has continued to alter the practice of oral history, making it even easier to produce quality recordings and to disseminate them on the Internet. This basic manual offers detailed advice on setting up an oral history project, conducting interviews, making video recordings, preserving oral history collections in archives and libraries, and teaching and presenting oral history. Using the existing Q&A format, the third edition asks new questions and augments previous answers with new material, particularly in these areas: 1. Technology: As before, the book avoids recommending specific equipment, but weighs the merits of the types of technology available for audio and video recording, transcription, preservation, and dissemination. Information about web sites is expanded, and more discussion is provided about how other oral history projects have posted their interviews online. 2. Teaching: The new edition addresses the use of oral history in online teaching. It also expands the discussion of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) with the latest information about compliance issues. 3. Presentation: Once interviews have been conducted, there are many opportunities for creative presentation. There is much new material available on innovative forms of presentation developed over the last decade, including interpretive dance and other public performances. 4. Legal considerations: The recent Boston College case, in which the courts have ruled that Irish police should have access to sealed oral history transcripts, has re-focused attention on the problems of protecting donor restrictions. The new edition offers case studies from the past decade. 5. Theory and Memory: As a beginner's manual, Doing Oral History has not dealt extensively with theoretical issues, on the grounds that these emerge best from practice. But the third edition includes the latest thinking about memory and provides a sample of some of the theoretical issues surrounding oral sources. It will include examples of increased studies into catastrophe and trauma, and the special considerations these have generated for interviewers. 6. Internationalism: Perhaps the biggest development in the past decade has been the spreading of oral history around the world, facilitated in part by the International Oral History Association. New oral history projects have developed in areas that have undergone social and political upheavals, where the traditional archives reflect the old regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The third edition includes many more references to non-U.S. projects that will still be relevant to an American audience. These changes make the third edition of Doing Oral History an even more useful tool for beginners, teachers, archivists, and all those oral history managers who have inherited older collections that must be converted to the latest technology.