Black teachers

Although state and local leaders are building comprehensive plans to increase the number of Black teachers, few plans include the recruitment of more Black principals, who play a critical role in Black teachers’ development.

Working longer hours, typically in under-resourced schools, Black teachers often climb up the rougher side of the educational mountain compared with their white peers. And, like all teachers, they dealt with the COVID-19 disruptions in their profession, trying to engage and teach to camera-off students over Zoom.

The old journals and bulletins chronicle the acts of resistance in places like Mississippi, Louisiana and North Carolina, where Black educators fought against injustice in education under Jim Crow. Those stories are now chronicled in the Black Teacher Archive, a groundbreaking new digital portal that was unveiled at Harvard University last month.