ABSTRACT
This chapter explores leadership and urban education from a Black epistemological perspective, with a focus on the paradox and prospects of Black education leadership in urban contexts. African American education leaders worked to improve their racial community through extra-educational, formal, established networks. Black school leaders also devised ways to work either around or with white superintendents to acquire what their segregated Black schools needed. Researchers have written about other Black women education leaders of this era in largely biographical terms, portraying the complexity of their lives and how education intersected with their personal missions. Scholars have done a relatively thorough job of examining Black education leadership, specifically principals, after the Brown verdict. Race and racism are ubiquitous features of Western, white-dominated societies, and schools are not exempt. The leadership drives, and is responsible for, the implementation of policies and mandates, as well as the desired direction, ethos, and culture of the school.
