Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards

According to oral historian Jerry Reynolds, who conducted the 60 interviews that comprise the heart of this collection, "The Archival interviews and research on the Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards fill a gaping empty page in the contemporary annals of Indian Country, and of America's social justice movement at large. The interviews contain a unique, otherwise unknowable history. From before its official incorporation in 1971 to its demise in 1981, the Coalition made unrivaled contributions to Indian parental and community control of Indian education. In 1974, in Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination Since 1928, scholar Margaret Connell Szasz wrote, 'In its first year, the coalition provided technical assistance in all aspects of education for Indian school boards, communities, and organizations, and served as a clearing house for information on legislation and other matters pertaining to Indian education. Less than two years after it was formed, CICSB was serving eighty-seven schools and organizations.' In the same year, Vine Deloria Jr. put the case for the Coalition in still stronger terms. Writing in 'The Indian Affair' that of the organizations forged to 'carry the fight to the Bureau' after the Bureau of Indian Affairs' decision to outflank self-determination on the battleground of educational programs and policies, Deloria states: 'The most important of these [organizations] is the Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards ... now working with over a hundred local Indian school boards in trying to take over the education of reservation and urban Indian children. The Coalition is the most efficient and sophisticated organization that Indian country has ever seen and is far more capable than the Indian political groups ... in getting changes made.' Deloria went on to describe the Coalition's successful lawsuit against President Richard M. Nixon's administration for the release of impounded Indian education funds. 'The Coalition thus accomplished more for Indians in one lawsuit than the activists have by any of their celebrated events, for the monies went directly into Indian controlled school districts and allowed the reservation people to begin development of their educational institutions. The year after Szasz and Deloria wrote their contemporary testimonials, the Coalition was the principal reason the '638' law of 1975 is entitled 'The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.'"

From the guide to the Coalition of Indian-Controlled School Boards Oral History Project Records MS 696., 1967- 2009, (Sophia Smith Collection)