Ghosts in the Schoolyard by Eve L. Ewing
Examines the Chicago Public School system, arguing that despite the racism, inequality, and distrust in Chicago's public school history, African American neighborhoods view their schools as distinctly theirs; and when Mayor Emanuel announced in 2013 that numerous schools would be closing due to budget cuts, parents, teachers, and students were outraged. The author then explores the fight to keep schools open and the ongoing struggle black people have in achieving an education and the battle for self-determination.
Review from School Library Journal Starred:
In 2013, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that dozens of Chicago's public schools would be shut down. Eventually 49 neighborhood schools in largely black sections of the Windy City closed, an unprecedented move that sparked immediate backlash. "A fight for a school is never just about a school," Ewing (University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration) notes in her bracing account of that turbulent time, relying on a blend of historical and ethnographic research to show how the closures were only the most recent manifestation of a decades-long pattern of disinvestment by Chicago Public Schools. In one chapter, the author describes how grassroots movements staged effective protests that ultimately led to one community saving their high school from the chopping block. In another, Ewing examines the grieving process that parents, students, and alumni undergo when their institutions are lost. Most important, this book effectively connects school closings in largely African American neighborhoods to the devaluation of black lives in general.