A Different Brown Story: Black Teacher Recruitment to Navajo Reservation BIA Schools During the Desegregation Era

The 70th anniversary of the Brown decision provides an opportunity to shed light on the story of Black educators who were recruited to schools on the Navajo Nation after being fired in the transition to desegregated schooling. With the support of the Navajo Tribal Council, the 1954 Navajo Emergency Education Program established funds to create additional schools throughout the Navajo Nation. Contacted through Black newspaper and magazine advertisements and direct recruitment, hundreds of Black teachers, displaced from schools throughout the South, ended up at schools like Chinle Boarding School. We share one former student’s story and contextualize it within the broader Brown historiography.