It is said that crisis is the true test of a leader. The leaders who contributed to this volume and their peers at HBCUs nationwide were tested in unprecedented ways by the events of 2020 and 2021. The crisis caused by COVID-19 was unique in its wide-ranging effects, its duration, and the need for a multi-pronged and comprehensive response. This was a test to challenge even the strongest leaders. Accustomed to challenges and to adversity, the leaders of our nation's HBCUs stepped up, marshalled their forces, and developed and implemented plans to mitigate and to combat the impact of COVID-19 on their institutions and on African American higher education. While each president who contributed to this volume brought their own unique perspective, skills, and experience to the crisis on their particular campus, they confronted common challenges. Racial disparities in the United States affect every aspect of life, and the pandemic magnified and exacerbated those disparities. The racial disparities that we see in our health and health care in this country are evident in the numbers of African Americans, including college students, who contracted the virus and who suffered significant health ramifications and even death. At the same time, COVID-19 forced our nation online and the racial and economic digital divide which some thought had been bridged turned out to be wider than ever. As jobs were lost, particularly in service industries and other key sectors, people of color, especially Black and Brown people, took a disproportionate economic hit. Not only did HBCU leaders have to develop and implement plans to mitigate COVID's deadly threat to the health and safety of their students, faculty, and staff, they also had to address the challenges associated with trying to provide remote learning for students who lacked computers and internet access at home; transporting students back home who didn't have the resources to pay for transportation; and in some cases finding housing for students who could not return home or didn't have a home or sufficient food, among other issues.

In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America's failure to educate its children--and points the way to reversing that failure.
Brill not only takes us inside their roller-coaster battles, he also concludes with a surprising prescription for what it will take from both sides to put the American dream back in America's schools.

In The American Dream for Students of Color, the tenets of the American Dream as a merit narrative enacted in schools are examined to better understand how beliefs about talent, hard work, and perseverance support the status quo rather than critical analyze barriers to educational success for students of color and students from a poverty context. Using narrative methodologies, this book explores the connections and consistencies within and between their personal narratives and the narratives of school youth and educators that work with them. Based on analysis of these shared stories, the authors argue for the importance of moving from individualized success stories that reify hard work and perseverance to collective, communal stories that serve to break down myths of meritocracy, critically examine inequities, and move educational advocates forward in authentic, audacious, hopeful ways.