Book Review: “The Battle for the Black Mind” by Karida L. Brown

“Use your brain!” If you had a dime for every time a teacher, parent, or supervisor told you that, you’d be rich. Stop fooling around. Consider what you’re about to do. Act with resolve, not impulse. It’s the best way to work, the optimal method for learning and, as in the new book “The Battle for the Black Mind” by Karida L. Brown, it’s what so many have fought for. In the months after the Civil War ended, it became apparent to both Black and white people in both North and South that education for four million suddenly-freed former slaves was “a matter of national security.” It was obvious that those citizens would require formal learning soon, maybe job training – but what kind and how much? While Mary Smith Peake had “laid the foundation” for Hampton University already by then, two white men with vastly different intentions traveled south after the war to seize control of Black education. Edmund Asa Ware, who became the first president of Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) built schools that “aimed at nurturing Black intellectualism and potential,” while General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who was the first president of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute...