ABSTRACT
In a special issue of Ebony magazine published in August 1983, the African American community was introduced to a provocative question posed by Walter Leavy: is the black male an endangered species?1 To emphasize the deteriorating condition of the African American male, Leavy pointed to a number of statistics regarding the condition of the African American male, including homicide rates, rates of imprisonment, increases in the rates of suicides and infant mortality and a decrease in life expectancy.2 The debate about the endangered black male has been carried into mainstream us society with proposals by a few public school systems to establish African American male classrooms or academies. These proposals have been one of the most controversial educational issues of the 1990s. Proposals for such education have surfaced in a number of cities, including Miami, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee and New York.
