Spring 2007 - College of Education - Michigan State University

Dunbar spends weekends helping Detroit Public
Schools students learn more about their community
and its issues.
“Each one,
teach one”
DUNBAR EMPOWERS STUDENTS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
>> Andrea Billups
Chris Dunbar sat on the front
porch of his Rochester, N.Y. home and
watched with near disbelief as chaos
engulfed his neighborhood. The year
was 1964, and the city was embroiled
in a racial riot that lasted three days
and led then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller
to call out the state’s National Guard
to protect the peace.
Four people died by the time
the riot was over, with 350 injured,
nearly 1,000 arrested and 204 businesses
looted as a result of the violent
protests. At issue: low-paying jobs and
substandard housing problems faced
by African-Americans, whose local
population had increased threefold
over the past decade.
The riot was a defining moment
in Dunbar’s life. It occurred when
he was on the cusp of adolescence,
and although his parents kept him at
home and away from the turbulence,
they could not keep him away from
the cause. As a child who was bussed
to help integrate the schools, Dunbar
was starting to understand the
struggle. As a teen who was spit on by
classmates because of his race, he felt
the sting.
“I knew we were different,” he
recalls of that time. “I felt detached.”
To combat the injustice, he and
his friends quickly joined a youth
group that was fighting for social
change within the community, a
teenage wing of the popular FIGHT
(Freedom, Integration, God, Honor,
Today) civil rights organization that
brought churches and civic groups
together to improve the quality
of jobs and housing in the city. It
allowed Dunbar to get involved in
issues facing his own neighborhood
and helped empower him to work
constructively for equality.
“We were advocates for our
community and advocates for kids,”
recalled Dunbar, now an associate
professor of k–12 educational administration
at MSU’s College of Education.
He and his buddies all wore blue
jackets to signify their unity, and
“through my involvement, I began to
develop as a young, black male. At 12,
13, 14, we became very active in the
civil rights movement and that continues
for me today,” Dunbar said.
“I’ve been an activist for really as
long as I can remember.”
Along with working on his own
research, which has focused on alternative
schools and African-American
students, the effects of zero-tolerance
policies (which often involve
removing students from school
permanently for certain offenses),
and alternative qualitative research
methods that illuminate experiences
of underrepresented populations,
Dunbar continues to inspire urban
youth in their own struggle for identity
and confidence.
He followed the advice of his factory-worker
father, who told him “You
can make a difference in your community
once you have an education.”
After his own stint working in a canning
factory and occasionally tending
bar, Dunbar eventually left Rochester
to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in education from California State
University in Los Angeles. He hoped to
be a teacher and he worked for a time
in an alternative school in the South
Central area of the city, where he was
stunned to see students warehoused
because they were deemed behavior
problems by the school system.
The need was serious. Many of
them could not read. All of them were
poor, lacked a family foundation and
had been labeled as nearly hopeless.
Dunbar fought to show them that
someone believed in their potential.
He bought them Hooked on Phonics
and decided he’d start from the
32
new educator