Classical Christian teachers are accustomed to reading educators like Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and Stratford Caldecott, but most would not know what to read from the host of Black Classical Christian educators who came before them. This workshop will introduce one writing each from Crummell, Scarborough, and Cooper and offer suggestions for how teachers and faculties might begin to recover and engage these eloquent defenders of the classical Christian tradition. The workshop will highlight excerpts from each text and make the full essays available at the end.

When Martin Luther King, jr., was asked which book besides the Bible he would take with him to a deserted island, he replied, “I would have to pick Plato’s Republic. … There is not a creative idea extant that is not discussed, in some way, in this work. Whatever realm of theology or philosophy is one’s interest—and I am deeply interested in both—somewhere along the way, in this book, you will find the matter explored.” Of course, King was not the first Black intellectual interested in the traditions of classical and Christian education. Before him were Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Maxwell Philip, Alexander Crummell, William Sanders Scarborough, W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, and many others. Their stories ought to be known and their writings ought to be read. This brief talk will introduce some of these classical educators and authors who helped pass on the classical Christian tradition we now enjoy.