The Black Struggle for Public Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Illinois Hardcover - 1987

From the publisher

In the pre-Civil War and Civil War periods the Illinois black code deprived blacks of suffrage and court rights, and the Illinois Free Schools Act kept most black children out of public schooling.

But, as McCaul documents, they did not sit idly by. They applied the concepts of OC bargaining powerOCO (rewarding, punishing, and dialectical) and the American ideal of OC communityOCO to participate in winning two major victories during this era.

By the use of dialectical power, exerted mainly via John JonesOCO tract, "The Black Laws of Illinois, "they helped secure the repeal of the stateOCOs black code; by means of punishing power, mainly through boycotts and OCyOCyinvasions, OCOOCO they exerted pressures that brought a cancellation of the Chicago public school policy of racial segregation.

McCaul makes clear that the blacksOCO struggle for school rights is but one of a number of such struggles waged by disadvantaged groups (women, senior citizens, ethnics, and immigrants). He postulates a OC stageOCOOCO pattern for the history of the black struggleOCoa pattern of efforts by federal and state courts to change laws and constitutions, followed by efforts to entice, force, or persuade local authorities to comply with the laws and constitutional articles and with the decrees of the courts."