Education and the African Diaspora

Abstract

Countless historians have studied the African diaspora, but one topic that has been significantly understudied is education. This chapter documents how Africans in the diaspora came to learn, attend school, and advance their knowledge, both during enslavement and in the years thereafter, and how those educational experiences impacted Africans on and off the continent. It is a remarkable narrative. From the earliest schooling considerations in African kingdoms, to Haiti, the first black republic, and the Caribbean and the Americas, this chapter details how Africans used literacy and schools well into the twentieth century as a means to liberate themselves from enslavement and segregation by law and advance themselves as citizens in their new homelands and for uplift around the world.