Emerging from the darkness of the slave era and Reconstruction, black activist women Lucy Craft Laney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Nannie Helen Burroughs founded schools aimed at liberating African-American youth from disadvantaged futures in the segregated and decidedly unequal South. From the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, these individuals fought discrimination as members of a larger movement of black women who uplifted future generations through a focus on education, social service, and cultural transformation. Born free, but with the shadow of the slave past still implanted in their consciousness, Laney, Bethune, Brown, and Burroughs built off each others successes and learned from each others struggles as administrators, lecturers, and suffragists. Drawing from the womens own letters and writings about educational methods and from remembrances of surviving students, Audrey Thomas McCluskey reveals the pivotal significance of this sisterhoods legacy for later generations and for the institution of education itself.

Audrey Thomas McCluskey is professor emerita in the Department of African-American & African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. She served alternately as director of the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center and director of the Black Film Center/ Archive. Her publications on black women educators include several journal articles, book chapters, and the coedited book, Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World.

1. The World They Inherited
2. "Moving Like a Whirlwind": Lucy Craft Laney, Activist Educator
3. "The Best Secondary School in Georgia": Building the Haines Institute Culture
4. "Ringing Up a School": Mary McLeod Bethunes Impact on Daytona Beach
5. "Show Some Daylight between You": Charlotte Hawkins Brown and the Schooling Experience of Memorial Palmer Institute Graduates, 1948–1958
6. "Telling Some Mighty Truths": Nannie Helen Burroughs, Activist Educator and Social Critic
7. "The Masses and the Classes": Womens Friendships and Support Networks among School Founders
8. Passing into History: Commemorations, Memorials, and the Legacies of Black Women School Founders
Milestones and Legacies
Bibliography
Special Collections

"In this chronicle of a sisterhood of purposeful women, McCluskey, a professor at Indiana University, examines the lives of . . . four African American activist women who gained notoriety for their dedication to educating African American youth and their mission to sustain schools among the harsh conditions of the Jim Crow era. Confronted with issues of class, race, and gender in an era of harsh racial repression, as well as a social order that constricted and confined women, Lucy Craft Laney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Nannie Helen Burroughs all succeeded in educating black girls and boys, young women and men, as well as establishing Institutions, three of which survive today. McCluskey explores their supportive, although occasionally competitive relations with one another, their links to the networks of black women’s clubs, and white philanthropists who supported their efforts, their writing, and their emergent feminist and political activism as well. Of special interest are the interviews with several surviving graduates of Palmer Memorial Institute, which was founded by Charlotte Hawkins Brown in 1902 and closed in 1971. The graduates detail their experiences—how they came to study there, how the school commemorated Brown, and what the daily regimen was like. McCluskey’s well-researched account articulates the importance of this particular movement in education, appropriately and skillfully, to memorialize the four pioneering women at the forefront."
— Publishers Weekly

"This slim volume traces the careers of four black women who founded schools to educate and uplift African Americans during the nadir of race relations. Lucy Craft Laney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Nannie Helen Burroughs defied the disadvantages of race, class, and gender to form networks and share influence as religious, social, economic, and political leaders in local communities, the nation, and the world. Excellent individual biographies and articles have been written on some of these women, but pulling their stories together helps highlight their uncommon collective power in this era. While they often partnered with and raised funds among men and whites, they valued their autonomy and even criticized these groups in both diplomatic and blunt fashion. They favored the liberal arts as well as industrial education, unlike their better-known male contemporaries, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. A lifetime of research in diaries, correspondence, photos, organizational records, newspaper articles and editorials, interviews with former students, and memorials to these pioneers allows McCluskey to paint admiring portraits of indomitable educators and activists who paved the way for the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries."
— Choice Reviews

"This well-researched and well-written book on the history of four important Black women school founders in the staunchly segregated South fills a void in the literature on Black education in the South and on Black women educators. Audrey Thomas McCluskey presents a powerful story of courage and perseverance through the women’s own letters and writings. This will undoubtedly become an authority on these women and the lasting impact they had."
— Linda M. Perkins, associate professor and director of the Applied Womens Studies Department, Claremont Graduate University

"The interconnected narratives of support, courage, and perseverance of these women leaders from an earlier historical moment offer an example of hope and inspiration to social justice warriors in the current struggle for equity in American education."
— Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equal Opportunity, Case Western Reserve University

“Essential reading for students, professors, and others who want to gain invaluable insights into how compelling ideas shaped black institutions of higher education."
— Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, Indiana University

“The lives detailed in this important study have much to teach us about African American womens history and educational strategies for social change.”
— Tiya A. Miles, University of Michigan

“[This book] includes the important and all too often forgotten efforts and contributions of Black women, who tirelessly fought to ensure that American education is accessible, equitable, and just for all.”
— Stephanie Power Carter, Indiana University - Bloomington

“To read A Forgotten Sisterhood is to elate in the triumph of Black educational achievement in the United States.”
— Jacinda Townsend, University of California-Davis