When Emory University professor and scholar Dr. Karida L. Brown began researching America's segregated education system, she didn't expect to uncover a radical history of resistance, innovation, and profound courage. Yet after eight years of meticulous archival work across America and South Africa, that's exactly what she found.

Dr Brown’s latest book, "The Battle for the Black Mind" reveals extraordinary stories of Black women educators who created schools with nothing but vision and determination. Mary Smith Peake risked everything to teach enslaved people to read two decades before Emancipation, establishing a freedom school under an oak tree that still stands on Hampton University's campus today. Lucy Craft Laney built the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute from a church basement into a sprawling educational center spanning two city blocks in Jim Crow Georgia, including the state's first Black nursing school.

Dr Brown, who currently serves on the board of The Obama Presidency Oral History Project, calls these nearly forgotten powerhouses and others like them “Freedom Dreamers”. She says that, "Freedom dreaming is the most radical form of political imagination."

https://www.karida.io/

Order The Battle for the Black Mind book: https://www.karida.io/books

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Timestamps:

• 0:00
  Meeting Dr. Karida Brown
• 8:18
  The Battle for the Black Mind
• 20:16
  Mary Smith Peake's Freedom School
• 31:02
  Black Americans Birthed Public Education
• 39:06
  Lucy Craft Laney's Educational Legacy
• 47:31
  Battle for Education: Competing Interests
• 50:17
  Freedom Dreams for Today's Challenges

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