We Fought Back: The Black Legal Struggle for Education in Oklahoma Territory author talk and book signing with Dr. Sara Doolittle

About this event

Author Dr. Sara Doolittle will present an free author talk and book signing at the Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library on Wednesday, September 2, at 6 p.m. The discussion will feature her new title, We Fought Back: The Black Legal Struggle for Education in Oklahoma Territory (The University of Oklahoma Press, 2026). Most people are familiar with the landmark 1954 US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which held that state laws mandating racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional. But what about the court cases that far preceded, and informed, this national ruling? They took place in smaller courts, in unsung parts of the United States, including in Oklahoma Territory. There, decades before Brown v. Board of Education, Black citizens worked to challenge legislation and local school board restrictions that segregated their schools. In We Fought Back, Sara Doolittle analyzes a rich array of previously unexplored court challenges during Oklahoma’s territorial period (1889–1907), revealing how Black residents’ cases reshaped understandings of race, citizenship, and the federal role in American schooling. About the author Sara Doolittle is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Sciences, Foundations, and Research at the University of Central Oklahoma. Her scholarship explores the intersection of law, race, and schooling, with a particular focus on 19th-century school segregation law. Her research on legal challenges to Oklahoma’s territorial segregation statutes has appeared in History of Education Quarterly, and her forthcoming book is We Fought Back: The Black Legal Struggle for Education in Oklahoma Territory. She is a recipient of both the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and Dissertation Research Award. Doolittle brings more than two decades of experience as a high school English teacher to her work. A proud product of public schools, she earned her BA from the…