The purpose of the Journal is threefold: first, to stimulate the collection and facilitate the dissemination of facts about the education of Black people; second, to present discussions involving critical appraisals of the proposals and practices relating to the education of Black peoplle; third, to stimulate and sponsor investigations of issues incident to the education of Black people.

Horace Mann Bond was an early twentieth century scholar and a college administrator who focused on higher education for African Americans. His Negro Education in Alabama won Brown University’s Susan Colver Rosenberger Book Prize in 1937 and was praised as a landmark by W. E. B. Dubois in American Historical Review and by scholars in journals such as Journal of Negro Education and the Journal of Southern History. A seminal and wide-ranging work that encompasses not only education per se but a keen analysis of the African American experience of Reconstruction and the following decades, Negro Education in Alabama illuminates the social and educational conditions of its period. Observers of contemporary education can quickly perceive in Bond’s account the roots of many of today’s educational challenges.

This indispensable reference is a comprehensive guide to significant issues, policies, historical events, laws, theories, and persons related to the education of African-Americans in the United States. Through several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, the volume chronicles the history of African-American education from the systematic, long-term denial of schooling to blacks before the Civil War, to the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau and the era of Reconstruction, to Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights reforms of the last few decades. Entries are written by expert contributors and contain valuable bibliographies, while a selected bibliography of general sources concludes the volume. The African-American population is unique in that its educational history includes as law and public policy the systematic, long-term denial of the acquisition of knowledge. In the 18th century, African-Americans were initially legally forbidden to be taught academic subjects in the South, where most African-Americans lived. This period, which ended around 1865 with the conclusion of the Civil War and the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau, was followed by the introduction of laws, policies, and practices providing for rudimentary education for 69 years under the dual-school, separate-but-equal policies established by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). These policies did not end until the Brown v. Board of Education decisions of 1954 and 1955 were reinforced by the passage of civil rights and equal opportunity legislation in the mid-1960s. The education of African-Americans has been a continuing moral, political, legal, economic, and psychological issue throughout this country's history. It continues to consume time and attention, and it remains an unresolved dilemma for the nation. Through several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, this indispensable reference offers a comprehensive overview of significant issues, policies, historical events, laws, persons, and theories related to African-American education from the early years of this country to the present day. The entries are written by expert contributors, and each entry includes a bibliography of works for further reading. A selected, general bibliography concludes the volume.