Were it not for the social tumult in Chicago in the summer and fall of 1967, Dr. James D. Anderson likely would not have walked away from the joy of teaching high school social studies, found refuge in a Ph.D. program studying the history of education and transitioned to a career in higher education.
Now, 45 years after being hooded at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Anderson is one of the nation’s foremost scholars on the history of U.S. education as a specialist in the histories of public school desegregation and higher education desegregation and the history of African-American education in the South.
Anderson is dean of the College of Education and the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also serves as a professor of history and an affiliate professor of law. He is a senior editor of Education Quarterly, has advised and participated in several PBS documentaries and has been an expert witness in several federal desegregation and affirmative action cases.
Anderson says he couldn’t think of a more fitting year to be appointed to his endowed chair – 2014, the 50th anniversary of the watershed Brown v. Board of Education decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial separation of public school students was unconstitutional. That’s because so much of his scholarship revolves around the intersection of history, education and race.
“All teachers and administrators concerned with education should know the values and struggles fought by Black people to get access to quality education,” says Anderson. “Sometimes people assume that Black people maybe come from families that don’t place high value on education, but the truth is the opposite. Generation after generation, Black parents fight for their kids to have quality education. It helps to know that context before going in the classroom and saying, ‘These kids aren’t interested.’”
“If you know their traditions, you can call on their traditions and call upon what their ancestors tried to do. Talk to them about not giving up. I help them understand that their minds are as brilliant as minds anywhere else in the world. That sense of defeatism – that is the yoke round your neck.”
Bringing the best out of students was Anderson’s desire when he began his first job teaching high school social studies on the West Side of Chicago. Armed with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Stillman College, a master’s degree in history and social studies education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and teacher certification in secondary education, he quickly fell in love with teaching.
