On Wednesday, August 7, The Historic New Orleans Collection will host an evening panel that brings together writers and scholars illuminating the unique relationship between—and often difficult history involving—race and education in New Orleans.

Moderated by Xavier University’s David Robinson-Morris, founding director of The Center for Equity, Justice, and the Human Spirit, “Separate and Unequal: African Americans’ Struggle for Schooling before and after the Civil War” will explore educational history in New Orleans from the antebellum era through Reconstruction and the 20th century.          

The panel will feature Daniel Brook, author of the newly released book The Accident of Color: A Story of Race and Reconstruction (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019); author Fatima Shaik, whose first nonfiction book will examine the free men of color who established Economy Hall and will be published by THNOC in 2020; and historian Walter C. Stern, author of Race and Education in New Orleans: Creating the Segregated City, 1764-1960 (LSU Press, 2018). Each of the panelists has done extensive work in concert with THNOC. More information on the speakers is available below.

Admission to this event is free, and registration is required. Visit my.hnoc.org or call (504) 598-7146 to reserve seats. A book signing with Daniel Brook and Walter Stern will immediately follow the discussion. Both authors’ titles will be available for purchase. The Accident of Color retails for $27.95, and Race and Education in New Orleans is $49.95.

About the speakers

David W. Robinson-Morris is the founding director of The Center for Equity, Justice and the Human Spirit at Xavier University of Louisiana, assistant professor in the Division of Education and Counseling, and serves as the university’s director of corporate and foundation relations. With a PhD in Educational Leadership and Research, Robinson-Morris has focused his research on critiquing and/or deconstructing the current state of higher education.

Daniel Brook is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. His latest book, The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019), revisits the birth of the United States’ singularly narrow racial system, which developed alongside opposition to African American civil rights. It has received critical acclaim from Library Journal, NPR.org, and BookPage, among others. 

Fatima Shaik a New Orleans native, is an author and journalist whose writing explores the human spirit and the intersection of cultures. She has published multiple works of fiction for adults and young adults, and her first nonfiction book, about the free men of color who established Economy Hall, will be published by The Historic New Orleans Collection in 2020.  A former daily reporter for the Times-Picayune, Shaik has also been published in The New York Times, In These Times, the Root, Essence, and Black Enterprise, among others. She serves as an assistant professor of communications at Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey.

Walter C. Stern is assistant professor of educational policy studies and history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A New Orleans native, he earned his BA in American studies from Yale University and his MA and PhD in history from Tulane University. Stern’s research focuses on the historical intersection of race and education in the urban United States. He is the author of Race and Education in New Orleans: Creating the Segregated City, 1764–1960 (LSU Press, 2018), which received the 2018 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History.