91桃色 is thrilled to announce the recent signing of Eddie R. Cole鈥檚 Black Ideas, a history of American higher education as told through the Black intellectuals who shaped it.
Peter Dougherty, acquisitions editor for the project, secured World rights, including audio, to the book by Cole, an award-winning scholar and educational historian.
This book examines Black people鈥攑rofessors, administrators, students鈥攁nd their views about the purpose and aims of higher education across the past two centuries. This ambitious history prioritizes Black archives and repositories, Black newspapers, and oral histories to vividly illustrate how Black people have molded America鈥檚 higher education system.
In the process, it moves the contributions of Black people to the center of the narrative about American higher education by examining Black individuals who were motivated to expand higher education鈥檚 mission of addressing societal inequalities. Black Ideas traces Black people鈥檚 historical pursuit for social equality, beginning in a small schoolhouse in late eighteenth-century Vermont and culminating with their ideas that continue to shape American higher education.
Author Eddie R. Cole notes that 鈥淏lack people have long understood and offered solutions to the most pressing issues facing American colleges and universities. Yet, for far too long, the intellectual and institutional contributions of Black people to American higher education have been ignored, overlooked, and discredited. This reframed history is essential to retelling the American narrative鈥攁nd the retelling of higher education鈥檚 central role in the nation鈥檚 democracy and its oppression.鈥�
Peter Dougherty, who acquired the project, shared the following:
鈥泪苍&苍产蝉辫;Black Ideas, Eddie Cole promises not only to enrich the story of American higher education and those heroic Black figures who have shaped it, but to tell the story in a way that encompasses the interests of historians, educators, activists, and leaders alike. Black Ideas will be a once-in-a-generation book that will serve as the text of the discussion of race and higher education for years to come.鈥�