This being an education blog, I cannot resist thinking about the role education has played both in the centuries long struggle to recognize the full humanity of all Americans, and in the path that leads Barak Obama to this day. Back in the ugly origins of American racism, those who kept slaves recognized that it was far harder to deny the full humanity of an educated person, and in many slave states it became a crime to teach a slave to read and write. Figures such as Fredrick Douglass, a slave taught  the basics of reading who continued to learn on his own, who escaped north and became a powerful voice for the abolition of slavery, proved the slave owners were right to fear education of their slaves. In addition to advocating for the end of slavery in the south, Douglass argued for school integration in the north, where the under-funded schools provided to black children put them at a lifelong disadvantage.

Education continued to be a critical issue for improving the lives of African Americans.  In the period following the Civil War and Emancipation, two powerful leaders with radically different visions for education, but with equal commitment to improving the conditions of blacks in America emerged.  Booker T. Washington, freed from slavery at age 9, and given an opportunity to work in exchange for schooling, was named the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, which was originally formed to educate desperately needed black school teachers.  Washington expanded the institute to include several trade schools, reasoning that it was through the commerce made possible by skilled workers that African Americans were most likely to prosper. Another prominent African American, W.E.B. Du Bois, the first black to earn a PhD from Harvard University, was critical of Washington's focus on skills.  Du Bois argued that for blacks to reach full equality with whites they needed to focus their limited resources on educating the most able student, the "Talented Tenth," to demonstrate that there was nothing inherently inferior about people of African descent. Though these men disagreed in particulars of strategy, they were united in the belief that it was only though equality in education that blacks would achieve full equality in society. Du Bois, as one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was instrumental in eventually overturning segregated public education.  In 1954 the Supreme court, in Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, found that segregated schools were inherently unequal, a decision which required school systems all over the nation to move toward integration.

In the era of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. education was often the front line in the battle for civil rights and full equality.  In Little Rock, Arkansas federal troops had to protect nine high school students who had successfully sued for the right to attend an integrated high school in 1955.  In 1962 James Meredith had to sue to be admitted to the University of Mississippi School of Law, and U.S. Marshals were sent to escort him into class after Gov. Ross Barnett declared that, "... no school in Mississippi will be integrated while I am your Governor."  The Marshals were attacked by a mob, two individuals were killed and nearly 200 people were wounded, and President Kennedy had to send in Army troops to restore order and ensure that Meredith could attend.

The role Dr. King played in this era was often the product of his writing and his skill as an orator.  The foundation of these skills was laid in the segregated schools of Atlanta, including attending Booker T. Washington High School.  A bachelor's of arts degree in sociology from Morehouse College, a bachelor's in divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary and a PhD in systematic theology from Boston University earned in 1955 completed his formal education.

And what of our 44^th President?  Barak Obama attended public schools in Hawaii and briefly attended two schools in Indonesia. He started at Occidental College, transferred to Columbia where he earned a bachelors with a political science major.    After working in Chicago as a community organizer (including setting up college preparatory tutoring), he capped his education by graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review.  He then worked as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. 

Time will tell what fruits this education will bear during President Obama's tenure, but it is already safe to say that he wouldn't have reached this historic moment without that preparation. So as you reflect on the holiday and the inaugural events, consider the social impact of education in our ongoing struggle to more fully perfect this union. Then remember the countless individuals who fought and even died to provide African Americans (and through that struggle many other less privledged Americans) with the opportunity to become educated.