Tikia K. Hamilton — Nothing Less Than Equality
Historian recovers the story of African American activists who built and fought for equal education in the decades before Brown v. Board of Education.
Why we picked this
Hamilton recovers a generation of activists whose work made Brown v. Board possible but who rarely appear in the standard history. This is the kind of recovery work that changes the shape of what we think we know.
Tikia K. Hamilton’s “Nothing Less Than Equality” focuses on the decades before Brown v. Board of Education, recovering the African American educators, lawyers, parents, and community organizers who fought for equal schooling long before the 1954 decision made that fight nationally visible. The book argues that the standard history — which treats Brown as a beginning — misses a longer and richer story.
Hamilton is a historian whose research centers on African American education, civil rights, and the politics of schooling. She draws on local archives, community newspapers, and oral histories to reconstruct the networks of activists who sustained the struggle for educational equality through the most constrained periods of Jim Crow.
The event takes place at Politics and Prose’s Union Market location. It will be open to audience questions and is suited for anyone interested in civil rights history, the history of education, or the ways that historical memory shapes what we credit and what we forget.