ABSTRACT
The literature on African American male achievement is disjointed. In education, a vast number of studies focus on what is happening currently. In Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom, Heather Williams analyzes primary documents and critical secondary sources to meticulously decipher acts of resistance. When physical slavery was outlawed, it was still dangerous to learn. But even amidst the oppression, African Americans constructed and operated their own schools. Williams discusses how students would ask for longer class days in order to maximize their instructional time. She demonstrates that education, for African Americans in particular, became an extension of emancipation. Cognizant that the legacies of learning as the practice of freedom are wedded to existential conditions of oppression let us now consider the ways that the African American community in Oakland. A vice-principal who has been working in education for over forty years told Michael Dumas that although she could retire, she continues to fight to make education right.
