Cognize

Long before he became the most powerful man in the Alabama Senate, before he controlled billions of dollars in state money and had lobbyists, governors, and future presidents seeking his favor, Hank Sanders used newspapers and magazines as bathroom tissue. His mother would collect periodicals [...]

It is generally accepted that the Orleans Parish Schools taken over by the Recovery District in New Orleans (RSD-NO), as a group, performed at or near the bottom for achievement levels on The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP). Nevertheless, ardent supporters of this "reform" movement [...]

In the spring of 2008, I did a daylong stint on the Yale admissions committee. We—that is, three admissions staff, a member of the college dean’s office, and me, the faculty representative—were going through submissions from eastern Pennsylvania. The applicants had been assigned [...]

During its first few years, the Recovery School District (RSD) simply opened schools in New Orleans, without closing any and without changing any school codes. But, five years ago the RSD began to close schools and change school codes as [...]

I’VE LEFT EARTH in search of darker planets, a solar system that revolves too near a black hole. I have left a patch of dirt in my place & many of you won’t know the difference; we are indeed the same color, one of us [...]

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy [...]

An Excellent Education is Not Enough to Counter What Occurs Outside the Classroom.America, Our Brothers, Sisters, and Children Are Hurting In the summer of 2010, a young black man was stopped and questioned by police on the streets [...]

The Case for ReparationsTwo hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow.Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy.Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.Ta-Nehisi CoatesOriginally Published at The Atlantic. [...]

The 2007 Critics’ Choice Award winning book, Black Hands in the Biscuits Not in the Classrooms by Dr. Sherick A. Hughes, portrays one southern community’s experience of desegregation through keen observations, rare archival documents and in-depth firsthand narratives analyzed as part of an extensive native [...]