Tuskegee, Achimota and the Construction of Black Transcultural Identity

Over the past four decades numerous scholars from a diverse range of fields, including history and comparative education, have turned to the transfer of the Hampton-Tuskegee model from the United States South to British colonial Africa to explore issues of global educational transfer and borrowing; nation-building; character education; and British colonial education policies. The primary goal of my dissertation is to consider this instance of educational transfer as a means of exploring the broader issues of black transcultural identity and black agency in education policy formation and implementation in the U.S. and in the Gold Coast. The two black actors who figure prominently in this case study are Booker T. Washington, the president and founder of Tuskegee Institute, and his African counter-part, James E.K. Aggrey, a co-founder of Achimota who together became the public face of the model on two continents while they quietly nurtured a elite cadre of black professionals and activists beneath the façade of industrial education. Using education as a site of social, political and economic transformation, this dissertation will require attention to both the explicit and subtle activities of Washington and Aggrey beneath the façade of accommodation to the prevailing ideology of white elites. This dissertation builds on emerging interdisciplinary scholarship on the African Diaspora that requires a new interpretative lens to assess the agency of subjugated blacks who used myriad techniques to negotiate a dominant white ideology committed to black subordination to advance a broader black nationalist agenda

21. Fredi’s Migration: Washington’s Forgotten War on Hollywood

Fig. 21.1. Portrait of Fredi Washington. Courtesy of Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. Nearly eight decades before #OscarsSoWhite focused attention on the dearth of roles for Blacks and other people of color in Hollywood, actress Fredi Washington became one of the most vocal critics of the industry’s racial bias. But despite her trailblazing work on stage and screen beginning in the 1920s, Washington has largely been forgotten as one of the pioneering African-American leading ladies,..

Women and Migration

The essays in this book chart how women's profound and turbulent experiences of migration have been articulated in writing, photography, art and film. As a whole, the volume gives an impression of a wide range of migratory events from women's perspectives, covering the Caribbean Diaspora, refugees and slavery through the various lenses of politics and war, love and family. The contributors, which include academics and artists, offer both personal and critical points of view on the artistic and historical repositories of these experiences. Selfies, motherhood, violence and Hollywood all feature in this substantial treasure-trove of women's joy and suffering, disaster and delight place, memory and identity. This collection appeals to artists and scholars of the humanities, particularly within the social sciences; though there is much to recommend it to creatives seeking inspiration or counsel on the issue of migratory experiences. As with all Open Book publications, this entire book is available to read for free on the publisher's website. Printed and digital editions, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found here: www.openbookpublishers.co