Vanessa Siddle Walker > Quotes

“intentional school board neglect?”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“In 1925, black parents contributed $800 in cash and labor to build a four-room Rosenwald school for Yanceyville’s elementary school children. (Photo courtesy of Nancy Lea)”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“possible that people were saying that they liked their segregated school, that they thought their school had been a good one?”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“I am indebted to the readers who provided consultation for the University of North Carolina Press—Jim Anderson, Marvin Lazerson, and George Noblit.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“As such, it neither contradicts the important political reasons for waging a legal war on segregation nor mitigates current studies that substantiate the sociological reasons for continued maintenance of desegregated environments.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“We must see integration in political terms where there is shared power. And I am not one that will integrate myself out of power.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools

“historical recollections that recall descriptions of differences in facilities and resources of white and black schools without also providing descriptions of the black schools’ and communities’ dogged determination to educate African American children have failed to tell the complete story of segregated schools.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“My relationship to the place cannot be overplayed, however.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“stifling of educational experiences that resulted from the inequality of resources.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“Rather than being add-ons to the curriculum, these activities were manifestations of the professional beliefs of principal and teachers about what had to be central to the curriculum if the needs of children were to be met.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“pose a response to the puzzling question, Why did some people like it so?”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“their duty to “prove” their need for education by demonstrating their resourcefulness in helping to achieve it.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“Although Michele Foster has begun to document the history of good African American teachers in segregated settings across the country,”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“but while I was traipsing around the country in graduate school and in several high school and college teaching positions, I had no reason to think about segregation.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“they were not a mere mirroring of the activities of other schools; instead, they reflected the faculty’s commitment to student development in a variety of areas.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“It seemed impossible, so I began seeking information. I talked with my mother. I went to visit my former first grade teacher. I started looking at a few yearbooks and reading old newspapers. I talked informally with some CCTS graduates. The comments were remarkably similar.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“black parents are shown to be victims of an oppressive system but are also depicted as agitators to the system, people who searched for ways to achieve better educational opportunities for their children.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“several generations of the schools African American educators and parents created with so little public support have been lost.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“the injustice of the sacrifices these teachers, principals, and parents were forced to make”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“I internalized the negative messages of the poor segregated schooling of African American children and never thought to compare those messages with the shadowy experiences I remembered.3”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“The comments I heard from members of the African American community in informal settings went something like the following: “Mr. Dillard worked so hard for that school”; “It was such a good school”; “I sure do hate to think about them closing it.” I was stunned to hear the fondness people expressed as they recalled an era twenty years past.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South

“Their strong appearances of disinterest were unnerving in contrast with the old CCTS yearbook pictures of African American children involved in debating, drama, literacy clubs, and so forth.”
― Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South