No struggle, no progress

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Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin

Cora Wilson Stewart (1875-1958) was an elementary school teacher and county school superintendent in eastern Kentucky who, in the fall of 1911, decided to open the classrooms in her district to adult pupils. Convinced that education could eliminate the poverty that plagued the region, she founded the Moonlight School movement, ultimately designed to combat illiteracy. The movement's motto, "Each one teach one," characterized education as the responsibility of every literate citizen. Stewart's Moonlight Schools caught on quickly, and when the state legislature created the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission in 1914, they were operating throughout Kentucky as well as in other states. Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky's Moonlight Schools examines these institutions and analyzes Stewart's role in shaping education at both the state and national level.

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Michael T. Hahn

A biography of the noted educator who was the first African American to graduate from an American college and the first to serve on a state legislature.

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Sybil Haydel Morial

"In 1950s New Orleans, a young woman steps into her white tulle gown and glides down the long hallway of her parents' house into the front garden. Her father, a respected surgeon, drives her downtown, where she will make her debut into Negro society. Though mesmerized by the rituals, Sybil Haydel, 17, cannot help but note their irony in a world where she daily faces the barriers and insults of Jim Crow. Thirteen years later, Sybil lies sleepless in bed next to her husband, Dutch Morial. Medgar Evers, the NAACP's national leader, has just been murdered in Mississippi. Dutch, the organization's New Orleans' president, has just received another chilling death threat. In halting whispers, the couple discusses how to protect their three young children. The Morials first become legal, then political, activists. Testing Brown v. Board of Education, Sybil attempts to enroll at Tulane and Loyola. She and Dutch challenge a statute restricting political activities of public school teachers. Barred from the League of Women Voters, Sybil forms an organization to help register Negroes held back from voting. After serving as judge and Louisiana legislator, Dutch is elected New Orleans' first Black mayor. Sybil's memoir reveals a woman whose intelligence overrides the clichés of racial division. In its pages, we catch rare glimpses of Black professionals in an earlier New Orleans, when races, though socially isolated, lived side by side; when social connections helped to circumvent Jim Crow; when African-American culture forged New Orleans--and American--identity. Through loving eyes, Sybil traces the rise of her sons and daughters: After Dutch's death, Marc Morial, serves two terms as New Orleans mayor"--Provided by publisher.

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adapted by Karen Kennerly

The autobiography of a slave kidnapped from a West African tribe as a child who, during his voyages and trials in various parts of the world, educated himself and ultimately purchased his freedom.