Overview

This book is an institutional history of Kansas City's Central High School. Centering the issue of race, this book chronicles the story of Central between 1867 and 2024. Urban Education: Kansas City's Central High School and the Enduring Legacy of Racism is an institutional history of the oldest public school west of the Mississippi River. Central High School was the premier segregated White high school in Kansas City and among the top high schools in the United States between 1867 and 1955. Following Brown v. Topeka Board of Education in 1954, Central High School became one of the first schools in Kansas City to integrate. Between 1955 and 1962, Central's student body went from all White to all Black. Central began hemorrhaging students in the late 1960s as White families and middle-class Black families moved out of the city and into surrounding suburban communities. The neighborhoods around Central High School became less affluent and more racially segregated, and the school became a target of media sensationalism as it confronted unique challenges. This book offers a unique perspective on urban education in the United States by following a single institution over time. Urban education is often considered outside of its historical contexts, resulting in biased views. Through a comprehensive institutional history, this book clarifies the complex nature of schooling in the United States, and in particular how the interplay of race and education has impacted one school over time.

Full Product Details

9781965278703

Table of Contents

Reviews

""A landmark study in educational history and racial justice. In Urban Education: Kansas City's Central High School and the Enduring Legacy of Racism, Bradley W. Poos delivers a searing, meticulously researched account of one school's journey through more than 150 years of racial and educational transformation. With scholarly rigor and heartfelt urgency, Poos traces Central High School's evolution from an elite, all-White institution to a predominantly Black urban school at the epicenter of desegregation, resegregation, and contemporary reform. This powerful narrative is not merely a local history-it's a profound exploration of how race, geography, policy, and power collide in the American education system. Poos unearths the structural and ideological forces that have shaped Central High School, and with it, the lives of generations of students. Grounded in archival research, student newspapers, oral histories, and community voices, this book offers a textured, intimate portrait of resistance, resilience, and the unfinished struggle for educational equity. Urban Education: Kansas City's Central High School and the Enduring Legacy of Racism is essential reading for educators, historians, policymakers, and anyone committed to understanding how the past continues to shape the present. Bradley W. Poos has written a vital, unflinching, and unforgettable work that demands our attention-and action."" -Donna M. Davis, PhD, professor of Educational Foundations, University of Missouri-Kansas City ""This book is an enlightening and comprehensive tale of Central High School within the context of a bitterly contested desegregation plan whose failure can be attributed to anti-Blackness attitudes in Kansas City. I was the school district's Effective Schools Director between 1983 and 1987, and Dr. Poos exposes truths of which I was not even aware. This fascinating book exposes hidden areas of the fight for integration that were silenced. Dr. Poos has effectively broken the silence."" -Dr. Loyce Caruthers, professor, School of Education, Social Work, and Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Author Information

Dr. Brad Poos is the Sprint Endowed Professor in Urban Education and Associate Director in the Institute for Urban Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Dr. Poos is a career educator who spent his first ten years in K-12 education as both a middle school and high school social studies teacher turned counselor, and who has spent the second half of his career in higher education. Dr. Poos is particularly interested in social history and exploring the lived experiences of everyday people. Dr. Poos has written and published broadly in these areas and has presented his work around the country. He has long been committed to work around equity and justice in education and the community at large.

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