ABSTRACT
Those words were spoken to me by my sixth-grade teacher in the spring of 1977. As I look back on that experience, more than 20 years later, I realize that I had no way of fully recognizing the significance of what my teacher was saying. Nor did I know that I was being put on a path in life where I would encounter few other African-Americans and where trying to understand the difficult and complex issues associated with mathematics learning, achievement, and persistence among African-Americans would become my life’s work. Beginning that next year, my friends and I simply went to different math classes. The reality of African-American underrepresentation in mathematics would become even more apparent in high school, where I was one of just three Black students enrolled in the accelerated math courses. This pattern continued through my years as an undergraduate student in mathematics and physics and as a graduate student in both mathematics and mathematics education. The more advanced the course, the smaller the proportion of African-American students.
