A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago Since the 1960s

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s by Elizabeth Todd-Breland Jillian Deas (bio) ELIZABETH TODD-BRELAND, A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s. University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 344 pp. ISBN 9781469647173. Elizabeth Todd-Breland explores the history of Chicago schools to discuss the politics that impacted and influenced Black achievement and the power, resources, and representation that maintain controlling politics. According to Todd-Breland, desegregation is a strategy to acquire “educational equity and liberation” (p. 6), which shifts to community control as a strategy. The lack of consensus in Black Chicago communities regarding education led to the rise of community control as a tactic to improve the resources and programming that occurred within the Black communities dictated by local control. When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, 1965) launched, many community organizers transitioned from grassroots protest and activism to community-support agencies due to newly available funding opportunities. The rise of racial pride through Black Power movements led to the recognition that “African-Centered education” (p. 85) was starkly missing from what [End Page 155] students were receiving, which led to parents transitioning their children to private educational institutions. Todd-Breland discusses Independent Black Institutions by presenting the question, “can we create or re-create the Afrikan mind in a pre- dominantly European-American setting?” This educational framework only impacted a small portion of the Black population in Chicago during the 1960s, as most students remained in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. Harold Washington became Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983, through the local political power possessed by Chicago Black teachers, who played a major role in his election. Accordingly, they exhibited heightened expectations of Washington to provide more equitable educational opportunities for Chicago’s teaching force and students. In the second section, Todd-Breland separates Chicago school reform and corporate school reform to analyze and consider the power, resources, and representation that impacted the Chicago education system. Centered on the rise of the first Black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington seemed to introduce a new level of Black politics and achievement. By the close of Washington’s political career, education reform leaders were more interested in decentralizing schools to local control with the rise of corporate and private school reform. The rise of neoliberal ideology, private and school choice options, aimed to solve all the issues that parents, students, educators, and communities were concerned with, nonetheless, much of the interest in corporate reform was self-serving and motivated by the hope of making profits, which commodified students, particularly Black students. A strength of this book is the concurrent nature of the content. The grit and determination displayed by Chicago’s Black educators is displayed through their repeated strikes for better conditions for the students and themselves. Additionally, we are introduced to some key players in the teachers’ and community’s movement toward equitable educational opportunities, such as Rosie Simpson, Barbara Sizemore, Soyini Walton, Lillie Peoples, and Karen Lewis. Todd-Breland clarifies her hopes for Black women educators and the Black community and her purpose in pursuing this history in the introduction and then mutes many of her positions until the end of the book. This allows the reader to trust her objective analysis and the authenticity of the history being told. She lays out the facts as she found them through archives, oral histories (p. 23), other texts, and videos. Structurally, she intertwines the women presented, whether they were connected through shared experiences or ideologies. Prominent organizations and male activists are mentioned but are limited to their contributions or deviations from the movement; this helps keep the focus on the unwritten histories of these women. Todd-Breland discusses the middle-class focus held by the Chicago Urban League and the fact that they didn’t support the Black woman educator’s movement. This in-depth exploration was initially a strength, but this wasn’t maintained with the other entities she discusses. One area [End Page 156] that would have benefited from further exploration is Reverend Jesse Jackson’s background before coming to Chicago to organize Operation Breadbox (p. 116...