Posted on February 26, 2026 in Featured Review
Authors:
Duncan JamiesonThe Battle for the Black Mind, by Karida L. Brown. Legacy Lit, 2025. 256p, ISBN 9781538768433 $30.00, ISBN 9781538768457 $14.99
Karida L. Brown (sociology, Emory Univ.), who earned her MA and PhD in sociology at Brown University and previously taught at the University of California, Los Angles, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the author or coauthor of Gone Home: Race and Roots in Appalachia (CH, Feb’19, 56-2468), The Sociology of W. E. B. DuBois: Racialized Modernity and the Global Color Line (2020), and The New Brownies’ Book (2023), which was inspired by W. E. B. DuBois’s The Brownies’ Book (1920–21). The Battle for the Black Mind, her latest book, is an incisive polemic focused on the continuing struggle for educational equality and civil rights.
Following Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election as president, eleven slave states seceded from the Union to protect their “rights” to slavery. In April 1861, war between the newly created Confederate states and the Union erupted, quickly morphing from a war to preserve the Union into a war to free the slaves. In 1862, to undermine the South’s ability to wage war, Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863, freeing those slaves in areas of rebellion. In April 1865, when General Lee surrendered to General Grant, most of the fighting ended and the Confederacy collapsed. In December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, opening the door to education for Black Americans.
From 1865 through 1877, congressional Republicans undertook to “reconstruct” those states that had rebelled; at the same time, they created programs for the advancement of Black people. For their part, the southern states labored to continue life as it had existed before what they saw as “the war of Northern aggression.” For both the federal government and freed people, education was the highest priority. Without support and having been denied the most rudimentary educational skills, the vast majority of Black people were left unable to improve their position. As a result, the federal government established the Freedmen’s Bureau, which, among other priorities, created schools, an initiative supported by the American Missionary Association, which sent men and women south to establish Black schools to teach a combination of practical skills along with courses designed to offer Black people educational opportunities equal to those afforded to white people.
Two questions immediately arose: what type of curriculum should be taught, vocational or academic, and who should be in charge of the schools, white teachers or Black teachers? Competing educational models quickly appeared, both created by founding members of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). First came Atlanta University, chartered in 1865, with an eclectic curriculum including literature, algebra, and Greek and Latin, along with home economics and agriculture. Three years later, the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) favored a practical, skills-based education.
While Black people were influential in the founding of many HBCUs, white people often maintained control by providing financial aid, only slowly ceding power to Black educators.
In 1872, Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) began his formal education at Hampton, going on to found the Tuskegee Institute in 1881, now Tuskegee University, an HBCU geared toward a practical vocational education centered on agriculture and manual training. This became known as “the Tuskegee Machine,” managed by conservative whites to keep Black people in an inferior position. The schools “promoted the idea that Black people needed an education adapted to ‘their place’ in society” (p. 32). Such an education would train them to be a “subservient labor class—a permanent underclass designed to support the industrial machine” (p. 33). This in no way represented equal opportunity. While Black people were influential in the founding of many HBCUs, white people often maintained control by providing financial aid, only slowly ceding power to Black educators.
HBCUs have remained necessary to this day; like the Ivy League, they offer an exceptional education to those who choose to attend. Unfortunately, the North lost interest in both the Freedmen’s Bureau and the reconstruction of the South by the mid-1870s. This led to the contested election of 1876 and the ushering in of Jim Crow, or de jure segregation, along with lynching, all designed “to keep Black people in their place” (p. 2).
For ten years, Brown researched these two styles of education and each one’s supporters. Booker T. Washington was a strong advocate for vocational education. At the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition held in Atlanta, he delivered his now famous “Atlanta Compromise” speech. Perhaps because he was born a slave and lived in the heart of the racist South, he suggested that in all social ways, white and Black people could be as separate as the fingers of one’s hand, but when it came to employment they could be as close as the fingers in a fist, although Black people would occupy only the inferior, manual positions. Born a decade later in Massachusetts, W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) earned his first bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, an HBCU, followed by a second bachelor’s degree and a PhD from Harvard University. He stood at the opposite extreme from Washington, encouraging Black people to demand full equal rights. He rejected any limitations on Black advancement, preferring an open educational philosophy guided by Black people themselves.
In line with Du Bois, Brown envisions a society that grants all children the ability to succeed to their fullest potential, regardless of race, gender, or economic position. Whether a student wants to study astrophysics, metaphysics, welding, or some combination of all three, that student should be encouraged to find their own path without guidance counselors or school boards blocking their decision. Qualified men should be supported if they want to attend nursing school, just as qualified women should be encouraged to become physicians if that is their goal. But as Brown demonstrates, Black people have been and continue to be steered toward manual labor while white people are expected to use their heads rather than their hands.
The Battle for the Black Mind acknowledges a major theme connected to ‘race relations’ around the world: the belief that those who are not white are in need of being ‘civilized.’
The Battle for the Black Mind acknowledges a major theme connected to “race relations” around the world: the belief that those who are not white are in need of being “civilized.” At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, white European leaders carved up Africa to further their own economic needs, as one would expect, without any representation from African peoples or nations present. One such colony or protectorate created by the Germans in West Africa brought together several African ethnic groups to create Togoland. Following the Tuskegee Machine model, Germany established schools using African American educators, believing they “could ‘civilize’ the African population” (p. 132). Following the Germans’ defeat in 1918, Togoland became a French colony, gaining its independence as Togo in 1960. However, the official language remains French.
The post–World War II American Civil Rights Movement coincided with the decolonization of Africa. Throughout the text, Brown describes an American society founded on the belief of white superiority, which established white privilege in the British colonies of North America. The belief that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America denies the existence of the non-white Indigenous civilizations that thrived here for millennia before the European Age of Exploration. The English settlers who crossed the Atlantic to establish the thirteen colonies that founded the United States acknowledged their superiority when they began enslaving Africans in 1619. Over time, white people have justified this, arguing that they knew what was best for the benighted people of the “dark continent,” a belief not limited to the United States. Enslaved Africans were supposedly better off here than they had been living free in Africa. An example of this gross chauvinism is the racist belief that the slaves were no longer primitive heathens but now Christians. Their lives on the plantation were allegedly superior to the lives of those still living in the jungle, another example of the white chauvinistic view.
The end of slavery marks the beginning of The Battle for the Black Mind. Reconstruction and the American Missionary Association together acknowledged the need to educate the freed people who had been denied the opportunity to learn, but the question of how to go about rectifying this gross injustice has never been fully resolved. Sadly, as Brown succinctly concludes, white people remain in control of education, calling the shots and making decisions for Black people rather than collaborating with them. For these last one-hundred-sixty years, despite continued resistance from the dominant white society, each generation of Black Americans has endeavored to share control of Black children’s education. While gains have been made, today there is a need to dismantle the “systems of ideological oppression calling for a curriculum that reflects not just Black American experiences but broad global perspectives” (p. 205). Some recent volumes that aim to enliven this view include Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told (CH, May’15, 52-4952), which explores the centrality of American chattel slavery to the growth and success of American capitalism, and Charisse Burden-Stelly’s Black Scare / Red Scare (CH, Jun’24, 61-2850), which similarly dissects the interwoven threads of racist oppression, capitalist exploitation, and political repression.
Ending on a positive note, Brown pulls together ten lessons for readers, “as a practical guide we can all carry forward” (p. 208). All Americans, Black and white, must follow the path laid out to build on the successes made by earlier generations. Multiple copies of this book should occupy the shelves of every library to offer hope and understanding of what has been accomplished and what still remains to be done to achieve equitable education for all Americans.
Summing Up: Essential. All readers.
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Education
Duncan R. Jamieson is a professor of history at Ashland University. He has a PhD in American intellectual history from Michigan State University.
 | Joel Wendland-Liu’s review of Black Scare / Red Scare (2023): “Entangled Legacies of Exploitation: How Capitalism and Racism Converge in American History“ |
 | Duncan Jamieson’s review of African Founders (2022): “A New Founding Narrative: African Influences in the Creation of America“ |
 | Amy Yeboah Quarkume’s review of The Movement (2021): “The Quest for Equality Is Ongoing: Holt Reveals a More Nuanced Civil Rights Movement“ |
Editors Yancy and Franklin invite philosophical reflections on Mamie Till-Mobley's decision to show the world the brutality done to her son, underscoring the power of bearing witness.
Posted on in Featured Review
Cobb’s incisive reportage revisits the nation’s defining crises, revealing the persistence of white supremacy and the ongoing struggle for civil rights.
Posted on in Featured Review
The Policing in Chicago Research Group argues that US policing, immigration, and security systems operate as interconnected imperial structures fueled by data-driven surveillance and carceral liberalism.
Posted on in Featured Review
Jones's engagingly written family history corrects previous inaccuracies and introduces students to the practice of conducting historical research.
Posted on in Featured Review