S10E14 – Jim Crow’s Pink Slip with Dr. Leslie Fenwick

Jim Crow’s Pink Slip with Dr. Leslie Fenwick

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver,

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is Jim Crow's Pink Slip with Dr. Leslie Fenwick.

Dr. Val: I am so excited about this conversation.

Andrew: Me too.

Dr. Val: Uh, for a couple of reasons, right? It hits on our big theme, what integrating schools look like historically, right? And for me personally, it connects to so much of my own story around being an educator, being raised by Black educators. And this was truly a conversation that felt like home.

Andrew: Absolutely. Yeah. Really excited to share it. Dr. Leslie Fenwick is Dean Emerita from Howard University School of Education. She's a professor of education policy. Has a long and storied career and most recently wrote this book called Jim Crow's Pink Slip, which, if you can deduce from the title, is all about the teachers who got fired in the wake of the Brown V Board decision and desegregation attempts across the country. And, she goes deep into the research, into the archives to find, I think there was a sort of fairly commonly held understanding that there were maybe 35, 38,000 teachers that lost. And she actually dug deep into the numbers, and found that number as at least a hundred thousand Black teachers who were fired in the wake of desegregation attempts around the country.

Dr. Val: I think we need to repeat that for the audience. Like imagine the largest college football stadium that you can imagine full of people…

Andrew: … of Black teachers.

Dr. Val: … of Black teachers, and they literally all lose their jobs.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Val: That is unbelievable to imagine. And now we are scrambling to find Black teachers and other teachers of color to want to be a part of the profession. So it's just mind blowing to think that so much of, um, the Black educational capital, we lost in, in our school system and we're still trying to figure out how to make up for that.

Andrew: And, and these weren't just like, you know, Joe Schmo from around the corner who happened to agree to teach, right? These were highly qualified with, you know, masters, with PhDs, in fact, more qualified than the White teachers who ended up replacing them in most circumstances. So it wasn't, it wasn't like you just got a bunch of nobodies in there who happen to be teaching, but highly qualified, highly trained people with real expertise that was also lost.

Dr. Val: Right. And not just expertise in our young children, but also experts in the community and what the community needed and community uplift.These are folks who wanted to be educators who valued this role, who were honored in their community. And so these are the folks that were lost in this and yeah, it is heartbreaking.

Andrew: Yeah, obviously it is, it is a tragic story in so many ways. And I think what I really appreciate about Dr. Fenwick is, is she is able to pull some hope out of, and able to say, if we can look at this square on, if we can understand this history, then there is something better, something more hopeful out there.

Dr. Val: I loved it and it's accessible so, you know, you're emphasizing the research, but it's very accessible to everyone who's interested in this topic.

Andrew: Yeah. And so much of the research came out of this senate select committee. So this was fascinating to me. In 1971, Walter Mondale, who was a senator at the time, was…

Dr. Val: Wow!

Andrew: …I know right, chairing the Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity for the Senate, and pulled together this panel on the loss of Black teachers because there was a lot of talk in the community about what was happening to black teachers?

I'm always struck, you know, we talk about Brown, the 70th anniversary coming up, 1954. Nothing happened for a decade, right? We had all deliberate speed, which meant no speed at all. And it wasn't really until the mid sixties and onward that we started to try to do anything.

And so, you know, this select committee is 1971, right? 17 years after Brown, and they're finally starting to see the impacts of the desegregation attempts and the ways that, that we're going about it, which was not really in, in the spirit of the Brown decision, which said the educational experience should be integrated and rather, you know, the country took this approach of like, okay, we're gonna shove some kids together, but what possible need could we have for Black teachers?

Dr. Val: Yeah, 17 years is a generation. So it took a whole generation to start…

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: …to try to integrate schools and um, you mentioned, the 1970s, I believe it was 1973, where, my Nana integrated the school that she taught at in southwest Florida right. Was the first Black math teacher there in the seventies.

Andrew: Right. The seventies, I mean, and you know, like the seventies weren't, weren't like yesterday, but it's not, it's not ancient history. None of it’s ancient history right?

Dr. Val: They weren't uh, dude…

Andrew: Yeah.

(to here)

Andrew: I mean the other thing that I'm struck by just all the places that the stories that Dr. Fenwick tells overlaps with your own personal story, Val. And I think it's fascinating. Not surprising, you know, she talks about very early on, this is not about like a handful of exceptional people who were kind of overcoming, like they were all exceptional in their own right. And this was common. This was the way things went. You had incredibly qualified teachers and, I thought it was interesting how, how many of her stories matched your own personal family story.

Dr. Val: I am too. I am too. And, that means that my story wasn't unique. And there's probably lots of us out here, who share a similar story, and so I hope some of them call us sometime…

Andrew: That’s right.

Dr. Val: …and tell us about it.

Andrew: Send us a, send us a voice memo, let us know about it, speakpipe.com/integrated schools, and let us know your own personal story if this resonates with you or if it doesn't.

The only other thing before we jump into the conversation, you know, she talks a lot about the dual system states, and this was something I had to go and look up when I started reading the book. The dual system states were the states in the south that had explicit policies written in their law that there would be Black schools and there would be White schools. We know that segregation happened across the country, but in the southern states, it was written into the law. In places like Denver and other places it was, you know, achieved through custom but not necessarily written into the law. So the dual system states are those places where they had actual written out laws to say there will be White schools and there will be Black schools.

Dr. Val: Yep. I want everyone to listen to her right now, so we'll stop talking. And we'll jump in. Dr. Fenwick.

Andrew: Here she is.

—----------------------------

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: I'm Dr. Leslie Fenwick, uh, Dean Emerita of the Howard University School of Education, and a professor of education policy. I also serve as dean in residence at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education in Washington DC.

Andrew: That's amazing

Dr. Val: That is amazing.

Andrew: Yeah. That's impressive. And you recently wrote a book called Jim Crow's Pink Slip. How did you find yourself caring about education in general?

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: So I'll start with the book first. Like, why did this book come about? I was in my PhD program and I was taking a politics of education class, and really excited about learning more about the Brown decision because that wasn't my lived experience. And as an education policy scholar, I wanted to know how that decision shaped contemporary schools. So I had two disappointments at the beginning of that class. One, the professor said, we won't be studying Brown. And I thought if there's ever a place where you would study Brown, it would be the politics of education. So I was a bit deflated about that. And then the second thing the professor did was, at the time, put up a transparency. Some of your listening audience may not even remember…

Dr. Val: I do. I used them.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: … transparency up and had all of these statistics listed about the Black community. And they were all negative. Just a litany of pathology. And I'm sitting there looking at these statistics, which also don't reflect my lived experiences or the lived experiences of many Black people in my opinion. And I asked the professor if he thought by sharing those naked statistics, some of which I believed were wrong, were reinforcing racist notions about Black people.

Andrew: Mmmmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: And there was utter stiff necked silence in the classroom. I kind of looked to my PhD buddies for backup. Everybody was looking straight ahead. This is one of our first classes, this is our professor. No one wants to be disagreeable. And I didn't consider myself being disagreeable, but I said, my God, why are we starting a PhD class out like this?

And so I left the class in anger, and marched over to the library and I said I was gonna bring back some accurate statistics for this professor and, hope to reshape a more accurate view of the Black community and an understanding of why he felt that was necessary, but Brown wasn't.

So I'm over in the stacks. This is, you know, Dr. Val and Andrew, this is during the day when you actually had to go to the library, and while I'm literally in the stacks just pulling books because I wanna have all the references for these stats that I'm gonna share with this professor. And, the US Senate hearings on the displacement of Black principals, which ends up being the primary evidentiary base for Jim Crow's Pink Slip, literally kind of falls out of the stacks, almost in a Harry Potter kind of way, like boom. And it's just this big black binder. And I thought, oh, this is interesting. I kind of flipped through it and it had these positive statistics, a narrative that was relevant to the class on politics of education and also relevant to my quest. So that's kind of how the book started. So I've been carrying around these Senate hearings since I was a PhD student.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Nice. When you went into your research, was that the intent when you started that PhD program? Like, this is what I wanna study, or were you inspired by that first day in class? Saying this, this is where I'm going with my research.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: No, it, Dr. Val, it, my mind was wide open about where my PhD program would lead. And so, what I did in that class was not typical for me. I'm there thinking, you know, the professor is this repository of wisdom and intelligence. I wanna soak up everything and learn these strategies myself. So this was very unlike me, but necessary. But one of the things I learned now looking back, is every time I've been angry about something is my best writing.

Dr. Val: I love that.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: It's just I cannot let this stand. I must write something about it.

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm.

Andrew: Why, what, what, in what in your background, what growing up kind of who, who poured that into you? How did you come to have that?

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: I really appreciate you asking that question, Andrew. My mom. My mom was an exceptional writer. Now she, her training, she had a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in education. The latter with an emphasis on public health and gerontology. But her undergraduate training was in nursing, but she always wanted to be a journalist. And she taught my brothers and I how to write. So by the time we got to school, pretty much in every grade, we were ahead of what the instruction was in writing and language arts because of my mom. Her and my dad's stories about their schools shaped my knowledge about this topic. So when I went to the library, I wasn't seeking something I didn't know. I was seeking to share what I knew in the context of being in a doctoral program where you have an evidentiary base, where you have a literature review and those kinds of things. So I grew up hearing these stories about my parents' schools. My dad grew up in Washington, DC. Among the schools he attended; the famed Dunbar High School. My mom is from…

Dr. Val: Oh, nice.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …in Kansas City, Kansas. She attends the famed Sumner High School. So my parents and my grandparents and their parents all attended segregated all Black schools and my parents' friends, the same. My dad is a dentist with a master's degree in public health. And so growing up, many of my parents' friends, uh, were graduates of HBCUs, historically Black colleges and universities, and, and then when my parents would be with their friends and they would talk about their schools, wherever they were from, they all attended, segregated all Black schools, and they would speak about their teachers’ credentials.

I said this in another interview, and then it got published that ‘when Fenwick’s parents were playing poker’, and I was like, my goodness, my parents did not play poker, but I said, ‘when they would be with their friends, it was like, my teacher, you know, went to Fisk and earned her master's degree at Harvard. Well, my teacher went to Howard.” So, you know, imagine. I don't even play poker. I don't know why I used this metaphor, but I thought this, it worked and clearly it did not, [Andrew and Val laugh]but it was kind of almost like a game of one-upmanship…

Dr. Val: That’s beautiful.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …about their teacher, which taught me as a child, I'm listening to this and all this stuff is in the back of your head, and then it comes into the fore when I'm writing the book that this was their universal experience.

This was not about an exceptionalism. It was not about an exceptional individual school or an exceptional individual person. And this is a really important point to me in the book, that this is about, two generations at least, of educators and their common experience. And that common experience was having exceptionally credentialed and able principals and teachers in their schools, even in the face of raw segregation and the underfunding of education for Black students, which is an ongoing issue.

One of our faults in the American experiment is that we've never funded public education for Black students at the level that we have for White students, even now in 2024. While we're crafting a path toward Mars, we haven't accomplished this on earth. I see you Dr. Val. [all start laughing]

Dr. Val: Well, it's true. And I, what it took me to, The Summer of Soul, I don't know if you've seen that documentary, but there's one interview during the Summer of Soul. Cause that's when they landed a man on the moon. It was during the summer, and the interviewees were like, yeah, no, I'm glad you landed a man on the moon, but can we get some resources to our community? So that's where it took me and yeah, now we're on Mars and we're still at, you know, asking the same questions of our, our communities and our government to, to do this.

Andrew: Yeah, there's so many threads that come out in your story that make it not surprising that you would find yourself in this, but you know, the exposure to Black excellence in education from a very young age. And then, the sort of storytelling, the history that you grew up as just accepting as real, because it was the, you know, environment you grew up in. And then you come across these sort of quote unquote “experts” who are telling you something different, who are giving a different story. And so obviously there's some tension you're like, well, how I need to, I need to do something about this.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Yeah, and that tension had been going on since at least second grade. So there's one story being told in my family where my parents are teaching us the age appropriate intricacies, my brothers and I, of Black history. So my dad's a dentist, but he considers himself a historian. My mom is in the health sciences as a nurse, but she's really a writer.

So they're masquerading and we're the beneficiaries of their masquerade. Okay, so I go to wonderful schools, wonderful, uh, schools, K through12. In second grade, I'm looking at the ceiling in this gorgeous church where we attend mass as part of school, and there are no Brown angels on the ceiling there. Every other kind of angel. Most of the angels represent White people. No Brown angels, no shade of brown.

Andrew: Mmmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: I'm in second grade and I'm looking at this. So I asked my mom when I get home and she said, oh girl, don't pay attention to that. Some people don't know what we know and there are many, many, many Brown angels. So I, from second grade, I grow up thinking that I have secret knowledge. And so this, you know, third grade, fourth grade, when I'm not learning these things in school, 'cause the curriculum is absent, it doesn't have even a dot, it's just silent and absent. So I grew up confident in this idea that I know some things that some adults don't know. This is kind of fun for any kid. But then when I get into my graduate school program, this is like, that course was like, no, this is intentional. Somebody knows something up in here.

This silence on this topic is a culpable silence. And it's informed by my teachers’ and my faculty members’ lack in their own education, their own miseducation and socialization, and then, the culpable elisions of the curriculum, right? And I, I just couldn't believe this was still happening in a PhD program, which is supposed to be the font of, you know, intellectual, advancement and wisdom.

Andrew: A PhD focused on education, right? Like, like it wasn't just, not just like some random 18th century literature, whatever, like this was supposed to be talking about the history of education and yet it was still missing from this.

Dr. Val: I appreciate that your response, like your inner anger turns into this beautiful research and this text, that's paying dividends. When that happened in my doctoral program, I, I text my, one of my professors, a Black guy, he ended up being my chair. I was like, I'm out. Because one of my other professors said, pretend that you are a slave owner and you are arguing against education for your enslaved. I said, absolutely not. So I almost didn't make it through that. And this is, this is 2022. So still very much the same problems.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: You know, Dr. Val, you are the first person that has said this to me. Because I almost decided to quit my program too. I said, this was literally what the language in my head, these people cannot teach me what I want to know and what they're teaching me, what they're trying to pour into me is deleterious to who I am. I'm out.

And the only person who stood between me and getting out, mind you, I'm performing well in the program and there are aspects of the program and faculty whom I just really hold in high esteem. But there's this tension.

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm?

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: And, Robert Glover was in my cohort, African American, doctoral student. And he said, “Fenwick, you're not quitting.” I had my, I remember the day I had my umbrella in my hand. I'm like, I'm out. He's like, “you are not quitting Fenwick.”

And I said, “well then what am I supposed to do? I can't take this.” He said, “you're gonna write the paper for the class and then you're gonna write the paper that you'll use when you're a professor one day. Get it out.” And I hadn't decided at that moment when he said that, that I was absolutely pursuing the professoriate. But that's what I did for the remaining year and a half or two years of coursework. I wrote two papers. So if I was in your class and you were asking me to do something crazy, I'd write your paper. And then I'd say, okay, how would I teach this? And, some of those papers became syllabi and some of them became my early published works, but you're the first person that has ever said to me that that common experience made you think about getting outta your PhD program. And now I wonder how many of us do.

Dr. Val: Right, right. And it makes me think back to what you wrote in the text just about students and educators in the spaces where they were together. They were able to develop that resilience, learning how to navigate these all White systems. And when we lost so many educators, our children didn't have a guide.

Right? If I didn't have that professor to say, “No, Val, we're gonna get through this. This is what you're gonna do. I'll advocate on your behalf.” I think similar to you, I felt like this, this place is not gonna gimme what I want. And honestly, all I wanna do is write about my granddad at this point and my, um, my granddad, I’d define him as an educator activist. He wouldn't define himself as that. But he was in the army, came back, became a history teacher, an educator, , an early childhood professor. And I just wanted to write his story because I was curious about how he became to embody like this educator activism spirit. And so my dissertation is actually around professional learning for educator activists in the Black educator tradition.

But I would not have written that if the professor that I connected to said, “No, I got you.” He was my chair. I had an all Black committee, and I felt like I could be authentic and whole in that experience. And that's the, that's the only way that I made it, because I was, I was done. I was done.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Yeah, and you know, so my book talks about the loss of 100,000. The earlier literature quoted 30 or 38,000, which I was willing to accept as I'm writing my book. But as I continue to do the research and look at the timeline, which extended into the late 1970’s, so we think of Brown as 1954, 'cause it was 1954, but the desegregation of schools was stalled until the late 1970s, early 1980s, which makes it, I think, recent history, um…

Dr. Val: I do too.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: This is not ancient history. And these 100,000. Were more academically credentialed and professionally licensed than those who replaced them. So this is the untold piece of the story. We think of segregated schools, certainly those prior to Brown, they were definitely underfunded. They ranged from beautiful brick structures like Dunbar to one room, dirt floor schoolhouses.

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: But in all cases, however, the school looked, it was underfunded, but the gem within the school was the principal and teacher.

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Prior to 1954 and after 1954, about 70 to 72% of Black professionals were educators, principals, or teachers. A far lesser percentage of White, white collar professionals were in education. So this was a prized profession and an esteemed profession.

Andrew: These stats were shocking to me, I mean to think that 70% of all Black professionals were in education in some way. That part was definitely surprising to me. And the fact that they were all really well credentialed academically. Can you tell us about that?

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: And so how these educators, these Black educators, became exceptionally academically credentialed is a story in and of itself, which I tell in chapter two, which is my favorite chapter of the book. It attacks the myth of black professional inferiority. So I talk about how, in the 17 dual system states, from Delaware down to Florida, over to Oklahoma, Arkansas… Blacks and Whites are restricted by state law from attending public schools together. Most of us think of that as an elementary and high school proposition, but it also related to college, the undergraduate years and graduate and professional school. The book focuses on the 17 that mandated racial segregation between Blacks and Whites by law. So if we're in Virginia and we're African American, the public colleges and universities, which are supported by our tax dollars, so Black people, White people, all people are paying their state taxes to support public institutions, and yet Blacks cannot attend those institutions. Right? And so what do they do? They establish, on their own or through Black churches or with the hand of White philanthropy, historically Black colleges and universities. And they go to those institutions. And those institutions were among the first and still among the only that never had racially exclusive admissions policies… never, still don't.

Dr. Val: Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: So Black educators go to HBCUs…

Dr. Val: My grandparents did. Yeah. Mm-Hmm

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: And then they decide they wanna go to graduate school, earn a master's or doctoral degree. Well, if the HBCU doesn't have graduate, or professional programs, they don't then have the option to look at, for instance, the University of Virginia or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they must look outside of their state legally, not as a, just a personal fetish, but the hand of the state is pushing them out of their state for graduate and professional school. There were some HBCUs that had graduate and professional programs. Of course, most notably at the time, Atlanta University, now Clark Atlanta, Howard University, uh, Fisk University, Harry Medical College. There were some but not many.

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm, Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: There was another tool that states used to circumvent the 14th amendment rights of Black citizens. And that tool, and I write about this in chapter two, was negro tuition scholarships. Okay? So rather than integrate public colleges and universities supported by all citizens tax paying dollars, they create negro tuition scholarships and negro with a small ‘n’, so a double insult. So what were negro tuition scholarships. They were not an academic or merit scholarship. They were a segregationist tool that said, rather than spend money in the state to desegregate public colleges and universities, you can take some portion of this money and leave the state and go where you want to, to graduate school. And in chapter two, I have the language of the scholarship. It's, it actually says this, these scholarships are provided for Negroes, otherwise qualified. In fact, I almost titled this book Otherwise Qualified. So the state is acknowledging in the state statute, you are otherwise qualified. What makes you not qualified?

Dr. Val: You just happen to be Black. [Val laughs]

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: There you go. And, but you're otherwise qualified.

Andrew: So that's money that the state rather than keeping in its own state university system, I mean, I think about like how much time and energy universities spend today on trying to, you know, lure students, trying to keep the money in their own systems rather than doing that, simply to avoid having to educate otherwise qualified Black students, said here take this money to a northern state just so you can get out of our universities.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Yes, yes, yes. And I hadn't thought of it that way. I hadn't linked our current day recruitment angst and exercises with what you just said. But yes. So the educators, utilize these Negro tuition scholarships and where do they go? And now I'm only talking about Black educators, principals and teachers. They go to these institutions in this order of frequency… New York University, Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, The Ohio State University, University of Michigan and Iowa. Okay, and to put some of this in perspective, between about 1931 and 1960, the University of Chicago alone awards 144 doctorates to graduates of HBCUs. Okay. So again, these people were exceptional people, but I'm not talking about one, I'm trying to push against the notion of exceptionalism and saying, look at the generation of these people. So they do this academic migration, I call it in the book. And then they return….

Dr. Val: I love it.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …to segregated schools in the segregated border and southern states to teach.

Andrew: So you have this large number of highly qualified Black teachers returning from some of the most prestigious universities, with Masters and PhDs to teach in segregated schools, and after Brown and the desegregation efforts, they start getting fired and replaced by far less qualified White educators. This is something that Thurgood Marshall talked about that you mention in the book.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Thurgood Marshall, he doesn't talk at length about this. He, in a correspondence that I read as part of doing the research on this book, he talks about a teacher in a one room schoolhouse in southern Georgia, almost a dirt floor schoolhouse. He was principal and teacher of the school. He only had 14 students. So when the Deseg decision came down, he was fired from his position and replaced by a milkman, a White male that was a milkman. So that was the most egregious case I read. Marshall was railing about this and, um, he ends up at the NAACP establishing the Teacher Information and Security Department because he knew…

Dr. Val: Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …from his experiences that if Brown were to be successful, that Black principals and teachers would likely lose their jobs. And were going to need resources to litigate these cases.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: One of the most profound moments when I was doing the research, I had a memorandum that Marshall was writing to northern philanthropists, to get money for the Teacher Information and Security Department. And I kept thinking they had to know that this was gonna happen in advance of it happening. And that memorandum is dated 1952. So they knew as early as 1952, knowing the border state and southern state racial customs, and outrages. They knew and they were preparing for it. And sure enough, it happens to the tune of 100,000. So just at a time when the nation needs these teachers to define and execute desegregation, what it should look like, integration, we lose them and their knowledge base.

Dr. Val: Yep. That all of this requires an exhale. And you, you touch on this at the end of the last chapter before the epilogue. And it's a wondering that I've always had, and we talk about school integration, the fact that we decided to use young people instead of the educators to integrate. And what I imagine would've been a beautiful experience for the young people stepping into those schools if the first year their teachers were able to be there in that space, and help guide integration. And it, it, it really breaks my heart over and over again because I think we continue to use children as testers in these very dangerous situations. Um, and when I say danger, I mean physical, but also their spirit, you know? And yeah, it's painful. It's painful.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Well, it remains, it remains painful because it's not just the loss of the 100 thou... Remember, these individuals were more qualified than their White peers. And in the states, the system, the governors, the state legislatures, the superintendents, the school boards the reason they push the Black educators out is they want to maintain a segregationist hold on the school, not just in terms of the population, but in terms of the policies, the fundings that govern these schools, the cultures. So it wasn't that the intent of these Black educators’ White peers was otherwise, it was pretty explicit. We want to maintain these desegregated institutions as a certain kind of White space, and we still struggle with that.

And you say something that is the big finding of the book, the big assertion of the book, which is that because of this, Brown was misdefined and we continue to live in the public space with a mis-definition of Brown in our head. So we believe that Brown said, oh, put the Black and the White students together. Brown never said that. Brown and the decisions, especially the decisions subsequent to it, Bradley and Singleton said that to desegregate wholly…

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …you were to integrate the leadership, so superintendents, principals, teachers, and student bodies. And June 15th, 1971, we define integration as ratios of Black and White students, and that was a segregationist victory, whether we knew it or not. It was never to be this way.

Dr. Val: mm-Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: It was superintendents, principals, teachers, you are to integrate into a new whole system and the student bodies as well. And what happened instead is we shuffled Black students into antagonistic, hostile, violent, and hateful White spaces, and they had to live there…

Dr. Val: Alone. Mm-Hmm

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …alone with no adult guidance and no strategies like you and I got strategies for how to persist in our PhD programs. So the strategies that these young people are getting are primarily from their home and church, but they don't have an adult in the building to look to, and that's still true in many cases. Inside central cities, inner cities, 73% of teachers there are White. 68% of principals are White. Now I'm a former teacher and administrator, and I am not bashing my White colleagues. What I am saying is we know there's this huge demographic mismatch between inner city schools, and the school professionals who serve them. And that mismatch has a history. And this is the history. This is how we arrived here. We're living with these histories that we don't know, and they keep bumping things around like ghosts, you know, knocking over a vase or something. You don't know what's the big deal, you know? Or, or you say the Blacks fled the education professions after Brown because the world of opportunity opened up to them, which is an absolute lie. No, the Black teacher pipeline was purposely constricted and crushed by a segregationist hand exercising itself through state statutes, laws, and budgets.

Dr. Val: And that's certainly what I did not understand fully until reading your text. I just, I didn't know or understand how stealth, like it, it's always so sneaky. And I am, I'm thinking about the living room conversations probably over poker where Black folks are like… [Dr. Fenwick starts laughing]

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: You wrong for that, Dr. Val. [laughter]

Dr. Val: That's right. That's right, that's right. Where Black folks are like, is this worth, is this worth it? Thurgood… Is this going to be worth it? Because all of these teachers are gonna lose their jobs. Our children are gonna be left alone. Is this going to be worth it? And looking at it now, Dr. Fenwick, what do you say? I don't know what, I don't, I don't know what I say because I have a 16-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter. And from the day they got into school, it was like, which of these battles am I gonna fight for their wholeness? And I've told Andrew many times , I'd much rather, rather than go to a black under-resourced school where they can come out as whole young people, than to be in a White only space. Where their spirit is murdered every day… I would make that choice every single day of the week. So, yeah, what do you think, what do you think those conversations were like in the middle of it all?

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Well, I have some resources that indicate what those conversations were like. There's a special issue, of the Journal of Negro Education, which is a referee scholarly journal, in Oregon of the Howard University School of Education that spoke to some of these tensions, tensions where Black educators were saying we're losing our space, our ability to contribute and be an anchor in the community and move forward, certain liberties and rights and programs.

And there are others. You know, I think that Thurgood Marshall and the attorneys that fought this case, the coalition that was led by the NAACP of black attorneys and Jewish attorneys and White attorneys that fought for this, they considered themselves, I know Marshall did, of putting an ice pick in the eye of White supremacist thought and action. So it was a radical act. I know we think of Brown with pastel colors now, but it was a radical act to end White supremacy. I think American citizens’ opportunities in this country should be unabridged. So we had to do this. You know, Brown was not just a moral achievement, it was an intellectual achievement. The attorneys had to craft new legal theory…

Dr. Val: Yes.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …to out think this court and force their hand into the decision.

Dr. Val: I mean, that's kind of fun. That's kind of fun. [laughs]

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: That's kind of neat to say, wow, you out, you came up with new jurisprudential or legal theory to outsmart the court into making the right decision. And we still need to do it. We still need professionals in every field to advance equality, equity, to eliminate these disparities. We need new theory. You can't use the old theory to get to a new place. Right. But we keep thinking we can, but I'm hoping the generations born after 2000. I think they understand that.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: So I grew up with four brothers, so I feel your pain. I didn't experience what my brothers experienced, who were brilliant and beautiful and, you know, compliant students and still there were issues, crazy issues. Crazy, crazy. Harmful things that were it not for the genius and love of my parents and the sanctity of our home, they wouldn't be whole, right? They were just subject to that they wouldn't be whole. All I can say is we still have work to do, and it is an unfair burden, particularly on Black parents whose children in too many cases are under assault on a daily basis, having to negotiate, to hear racist inferences from their teachers, or exist in a culture that in no way affirms you.

I say even now in 2024, our textbooks are almost exclusively White in authorship, in imagery and content. Now we're a little better than we were when I was in school, or when I was teaching in the 80’s. It's a little better. But it's not where it should be. And in the meantime, children's humanity is under assault and daily needs a real check-in from Black parents and a real antidote.

Dr. Val: Yep.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: I will tell you this as a mom, when we were kids, everyday my mom would brush our hair. We were sitting in the kitchen, she'd brush my hair, brush my brother too, okay? And she's brushing our hair. She says the same thing every day. “My children are the most beautiful, intelligent children,” and she would name our school, “at such and such school.” And I used to think, you know, mama needs to visit our school because I know if that's true. [everyone laughs] Yeah, Rae is really pretty, and Tim is really smart, but every day she's telling, I'm thinking, for maybe let's say my brother John, well, that’s absolutely not true. Okay. But…

Andrew: Sorry, John [laughter]

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …everyday during elementary school. Okay. So at a certain point, it's sunk in. It sunk in, Dr. Val, it sunk into some space…

Dr. Val: Yep.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …that made you not as vulnerable. So something comes at you, but it doesn't sink into you because there's this barrier of what Mama said and she's really smart. So I gotta pay attention to that. And so I wonder for children who are in these spaces now, if they don't have a parent who's saying that to them and their teacher isn't saying that to them, or if the curriculum isn't saying that to them in some whole cloth way…

Dr. Val: Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: …then, then what?

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: I, I mean, this was one of the most devastating parts of the book to me, you know, reading in the end of the book, that today we have the largest group of Black students ever. To not have Black teachers, to not have those black role models. And we know all the research. We've talked about it before on here, you know, all the research about the power of even just one Black teacher, what a difference that makes to, to Black students, you know, potential for success. But now we are living in this era of the largest group of Black students without Black teachers. And yeah, I was, that was, it was devastating.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Yeah. And you know, to your point, Andrew, before Brown, 35 to 50% of the teaching force in each of the 17 dual system states was Black. And we have no state that approaches those percentages today.

Andrew: Even close, even close to it.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Not even close. Not even close. And we also have you, you referenced this and the book does as well, the copious research now that talks about the academic and social benefits that accrue to Black students when they're in diversely staffed schools. They’re models of intellectual authority. So kids, all kids really need to see diverse models of intellectual authority because it tells them, it teaches them without saying it, that the world of ideas, the world of creativity, the world of inquiry, the world of being smart belongs to all people, across the globe, every single shade of person across the globe. The counter narrative is when children only see one group of people is that, oh, this is their world. It's not necessarily my world. We don't have enough teachers of color. And here I'm not just talking about Black teachers, but teachers of color all across the spectrum to educate the nation's children.

White children need Black teachers as models of intellectual authority. We need, Black and Brown principals as models of leadership authority. And we need a more diverse group of superintendents who are leading education policy formulation and implementation and funding in their districts. Black educators are still the nation's most credentialed, academically credentialed educator.

Andrew: That was super powerful. Yeah.

Dr. Val: We're out here. We're out here.

Andrew: And unsurprisingly, White males are the least qualified, right? Like of principals…

Dr. Val: Get your people, Andrew. Get your people.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: So the interesting thing about this is the typical ascension pattern for the principalship, and then the superintendency comes through the teaching force and then academic credentials. White males represent a very small percentage of the teaching force at less than 10%, maybe even less than 7%, and they're the least likely if you compare them to Black males, Black females, and White females to hold graduate degrees.

So we see in operation a mechanism for advancing an underrepresented group and an under credentialed group relative to their peers. We see a mechanism operating that pushes them into the superintendency and central office positions where the control for budgeting, curricular implementation, and choices is made.

Dr. Val: Hmm.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: We know America has a racially divisive history and then we also have a racially triumphant history and we go through these cycles. I think some of us are getting tired of the cycles.

Dr. Val: Yep.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: But Americans in polls continue to express a belief in integrated schools. So, that's encouraging I think. I think we need more of us to hear that in spite of the negative messages around race and diversity, equity and inclusion that are going on now, the majority of Americans believe in this ideal and are open to continued progress in this way.

Dr. Val: Yeah. You write that our, our children are watching and the first, the very first question my son asked me about race when he was five years old. Very first question. We were driving by his new school, and I pointed out the window and I was like, that's gonna be your elementary school. And he said, “Am I going to have a Brown teacher?” And that was his very first question about race. Um, I worked in the school district, in the middle school. My husband worked in the high school. And I knew that he had two options. One was me and one was his dad. And that was in middle school and high school. Right. And it just broke my heart. And it was in that moment that I was like, okay, there's gotta be something that I can do in this effort as a voice in this district to push this conversation. And I think I was completely shocked because I was like, oh, I'll just volunteer to go to some, some job fairs and the Black student teacher candidates weren't there either. And then that's when I realized like the depth of the problem.

Andrew: It's so powerful. I mean, I think about the power to your PhD program of you being there, right? I think about the power of, of truly integrated spaces where everybody can show up as their full selves and, and bring their stories. It was the curiosity that was sparked in you because of this mismatch, right? Because of this tension we talked about between your lived experience and what you were being told, and maybe not everybody in your class was willing to accept it, right in that moment. I'm sure the professor did not fully appreciate being called out, but there was this power in being in this integrated space for everybody who was in that space because of your lived experience being different from theirs.

And that just speaks to me of the power, you know, if we can, like you say, there is this, there is an appetite, at least for integrated spaces, if we can do it right, if we can do it where the grownups are leading the way, that there is this like, a better world for everybody out there. And I think your work really speaks to that. And I'm so grateful for you, for you coming out and sharing with us for the book, for all of your work and for taking the time to tell us about it.

Dr. Val: It's something that we’ll continue to focus on and try to figure out how to keep the conversation going and making sure that Black educators are centered in all of this work.

Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Well, thank you, Andrew and Dr. Val for doing this podcast. It's such an important thing, especially for you two to come together. A Black female and a White male, having these conversations and showing that we can do them in civil ways and see where we stand on common ground and where we have more to go.

You know, the threats to Black children's Spirit is not theoretical for us, and if their spirit is threatened, White children's spirit is also threatened in a different way that's also harmful to them. But to me, this is the American dialogue. It's finding common ground and moving forward and leading the world. So I just really applaud you all for your work and willingness to take your personal time to do this and to give me a voice and share my work.

—---------------------------

Andrew: So, Val, what'd you think?

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh. It was like talking to a family member. You and I talk about how important it's for us to model this work and to have these conversations, and it was nice of her to acknowledge that. That she notices that we're trying to, to work through this nuance. And so that was super kind.

Andrew: That was really lovely.

Dr. Val: Thank you Dr. Fenwick.

Andrew: That was really lovely. Yes.

Dr. Val: It's uncanny how similar our paths were. And many things from having intentional conversations as children with our parents and family members about education, and specifically about education as a form of liberation and pride, right? And so when she was talking about her parents going back and forth, like, oh, my teachers had a master's degree and my teacher got a doctorate

Andrew: Mine had a PhD in this and…

Dr. Val: I was like, okay…

Andrew: Yep.

Dr. Val: And I just, I love that because, you know, I come from a family of Black educators. And I've always been proud of them, right? I didn't always know I wanted to be an educator, but certainly, I was always proud of them. And so it's nice to have a kindred spirit in that. I didn’t anticipate that her doctoral program would test her to be in this place and to have a very similar experience, you know, and I'm like, ah, I'm good. I have nothing else to prove to anybody. I'm gonna pack up my stuff. You know, I'm gonna go now. But my chair, Dr. Chris Busey said, “no, no, no, no, no.” We're gonna get through this together. How about you?

Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I spent a good deal of time just deciding to keep my mouth shut and let the two of you tell your story…

Dr. Val: I know you're quiet, you're quiet.

Andrew: …uh, because it was, it was beautiful. Yeah. It was beautiful to see that, what felt like a real kind of bond between the two of you and your shared stories. I mean, it always feels like a privilege to me to hear stories of importance that Black families place on teaching their own kids about Black history. That that is not something that is going to come from your school, in the vast majority of places. And so you're gonna do it. I think, like hearing Dr. Fenwick’s story of growing up and the things that she was exposed to, I was struck by that as well. And just, the deep reverence for education in the Black community that I think doesn't often get told outside of the Black community. That White people, I think are inclined to either not know about or ignore or pretend is not the case.

And obviously you are both exceptional. And the fact that Dr. Fenwick’s work highlights this story that also matches your family story in so many ways is not a fluke, right? It is because it was common. It was, it was what was expected. It was, you know, I forget what the number was something like 70% of Black professionals were in education at one point in the pre Brown days. Right? You know, there's all sorts of myths that get dispelled from her work, and certainly one that we always regularly come back to here. And I feel like another example of it is like the value that the Black community places on education.

Dr. Val: You know, I didn't think about this until you just said it, but it was never a question to me that I was gonna be responsible for teaching my children Black history. Like I never took that for granted. It was always part of the plan, I was very intentional about, for the most part, about how we started. And I say I was intentional because, prior to the kids going to kindergarten, we would have conversations that started with the story of Black people before they arrived on this continent, right? Because it was really important for me to help them root themselves in the fact that we did not start as an enslaved people so I was intentional, in doing that, and I never questioned my parents' intentionality around it either.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: It wasn't like, “Hey, we wanna start this tradition.” I'm sure it was just what the expectation was that was required of our community to know ourselves and to love ourselves. So yeah, I thank you for bringing that up. Do y'all have conversations about American history?

Andrew: No, not at all. I mean, history was something that some people were into and some people were not. There was not like a right, like you could be if it, that was your thing. You could opt into history or not, and if you opt into history, it was usually a specific, you know, “I'm really into Civil War.” And I think you still see that, right? You see people who are doing like Civil War reenactments, or you see people who are big World War I buffs are like, oh, like, yeah, the Band of Brothers and, and World War II, or, you know, like there's a way in which it's like, it's optional.

Dr. Val: That is so fascinating. Thank you for opening the curtain again. I never would've assumed that, but of course I do know folks were like, “Hey, I'm really into World War II, and so I have all of this historical knowledge about this one moment.” Rarely is that like, “Hey, I am really into American slavery. I got all this.” Like, people usually don't pick that one. They usually don't pick that one. But no, that's fascinating because that was absolutely expectation that we would know historical figures from every walk of life, we would just know them and be able to name them and to be able to share the contribution and to be able to see the through line. And I, that's what I knew was gonna be my responsibility for, for myself as a parent when my kids showed up. And you know, Dr. Fenwick mentioned that, White children and all children suffer a loss by not having Black educators and I think about the loss that just White communities have by not having these stories told in their families, ignoring that silence.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: I did want to read a portion of the text that as a Black parent really spoke to me. Reading, “After Brown, the loss of Black principals and teachers was keenly felt by Black students who often found themselves in unwelcoming and hostile new surroundings. Their intellectual models, guides, protectors, and encouragers were gone. The ones who would model and teach them how to negotiate a racist world were gone. As was any evidence of Black history, intellectual or cultural accomplishments in the school's curriculum and culture. In many ways, Black students were desegregated into school deserts with no oasis.”

Andrew: Hmm. Yeah, I think it puts succinctly into words a sense that I've had about what the loss of Black teachers must have meant. Certainly my understanding of the Brown decision has evolved over the years. I mean, the metaphor of the desert and no oasis in sight just feels really powerful. And I think, you know, coupling that with this stat that she pulls out at the end that I mentioned of like, you know, right now we have the largest number of Black students without an oasis that we’ve ever had. And so we think about all the ways that we have made progress and, I think that White folks like to hang our hats on that a little bit. But we know how powerful that oasis is. And, and this is the worst that it's ever been for that right now.

Dr. Val: Understanding the need for Black history, intellectual and cultural accomplishments to be a part of the curriculum would be like the first thing that any system school teacher could do. Obviously, we don't want you to do that harmfully, right? Um, and I think about the attacks through state policies across the country that are banning diversity, equity, and inclusion work and conversations. These are things that, they're not just fun to have, like we need to have them.

Andrew: They’re essential. Right.

Dr. Val: They are essential for all people. And I think Dr. Fenwick’s work really emphasized that.

Andrew: I mean, obviously her work is focused on Black teachers and largely on the cost to Black kids of the lack of Black teachers, and we need to center that. That is the crux of the story and the Black kids are not the only ones harmed.This idea she talks about, right? The kids need to see a diverse model of intellectual authority because it tells them that the world of ideas, the world of creativity, the world of inquiry, the world of being smart belongs to all people. And that's not just good for Black kids, right? That's good for everybody.

The idea that there is a wide diverse array of ways to be expert, of ways to bring value is something that makes everybody's life richer. And we'll talk about this on the next episode, but there were key elements of the Black educational tradition that we also lost in the wake of losing all these teachers. And, those are things that would be good for all kids, right? Like it's about a form of education, a form of learning, a form of intellectual growth that actually benefits everybody. And like Dr. Fenwick said, if Black kids' spirits are in danger, White kids' spirits are in danger too, right? Like, no one is free until everyone is free. This is all of our burden to bear. And, the harm is not the same. Racism hurts everybody. It hurts Black and Brown people first and worst, but it hurts everybody. What was lost was not just a loss to Black kids. What was lost was a loss to the country. What was lost was intellectual expertise for the entire country.

Dr. Val: Yeah. There's so much more in the book. We want you to pick it up. We want you to read it. We want you to talk about it.

Andrew: And if you are interested, in talking more about it, it is going to be, the Integrated School's book club pick for book club sessions coming up. So there'll be a link in the show notes about that and stay tuned to social media, our website to register for one of those book club conversations 'cause it is a book that is well worth reading and definitely worth discussing.

Dr. Val: I have really enjoyed discussing this with you. I hope that our listeners, you enjoy this discussion. You listen to this discussion, you share this. It would be great if this is one of our most listened to episodes, because it mattered then it matters now it will matter in the future. We have a lot of ground to cover if we wanna do this right for our young people.

Andrew: Absolutely. Speaking of the ground, we have to cover, obviously we know there's a dearth of educators of color, Black educators in particular right now. And in two weeks you will hear a conversation with Sharif El Mekki, who runs the Center for Black Educator Development, who is working on addressing that specific problem of how do we create more Black teachers? Dr. Fenwick talks about the Black teacher pipeline being crushed. How do we strengthen the Black teacher pipeline?

So that'll be coming. Make sure you hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this. Share, leave us a rating or review. We haven't asked for that in a while but that is always a great way to show your support. It helps other people find the podcast. We would love to see your ratings, we'll try to read a few of them in one of the upcoming episodes. So go ahead and drop us a rating or review wherever you're listening to this podcast. And if you are enjoying these conversations, if you liked the conversation we had with Dr. Fenwick and wanna support this work, go to patreon.com/integratedschools and throw us a few bucks every month to help us keep making this podcast. We'll be very grateful.

Dr. Val: Thank you all so much. Andrew, my heart is full.

Andrew: Me too.

Dr. Val: This is, this is great.

Andrew: Lovely conversation. It is an honor, as always, Val, to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.