Episode 17: 60+ Years of “Black at” featuring Dr. Michelle Purdy

On this episode- a look at the history of elite Private Schools. with our guest Dr. Michelle Purdy author of Transforming the Elite:Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools, Following the Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education which mandated desegregation of public schools, enrollment in private schools skyrocketed… but NOT for black students. Simply put, White families did not want to integrate. Eventually, some independent schools DID accept black students for fear of bad publicity and concerns about their tax exempt status. —

he first Black students enrolled in southern private schools in the mid 1960s, but how welcome were those “fearless firsts?” In her book Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools, our guest Dr. Michelle Purdy focuses on the Westminster School in Atlanta… yes, Lisa went there. Purdy attended St. Andrews Episcopal School in Jackson, MS and today as a professor of education at Washington University, she’s continues to track the ways private schools struggle with creating a culture that sees and hears ALL students. This week we dive deep into what happened then, our own experiences and what’s being said on the “Black@" accounts where students are sharing their own experiences of what it’s like to be Black at a private school in the 2020s.

See the full show notes at https://eracedpodcast.com

Intro music by https://instagram.com/mikedupreemusic