Lessons for today from the overlooked stories of Black teachers during the segregated civil rights era

Lessons for today from the overlooked stories of Black teachers during the segregated civil rights era

A Black schoolroom in Mississippi in 1939. Corbis via Getty ImagesMy grandmother’s name was Mrs. Zola Jackson. As one of the handful of Black teachers in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era of racially segregated public schools, she faced a daunting challenge in providing a first-class education to students considered second-class citizens. Educated at Rust College, a historically Black school, in the 1940s, she taught in the small city of Ha…