The Colored School

Abstract

Within the confines of their segregated social world, black children became aware of the color line at a very young age through racially coded messages, but also through taken-for-granted practices and institutions. This chapter traces the transformation in the black community along the grain of the civil rights movement through a close reading of the rise and fall of one of the institutions most beloved by the black community in Harlan County, Kentucky—the colored school. Brown shows how the black segregated school institutionalized and reproduced racial ideologies within the community. At the same time, she demonstrates how the colored school was a proud site of black cultural expression.