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The late Professor Derrick Bell is renowned as the intellectual architect who drafted the blueprints that guided the initial development of critical race theory (CRT). Prior to the advent of CRT, Professor Bell wrote extensively on initiatives designed to improve the lives of African Americans. Among his most influential scholarship, "Serving Two Masters" from the 1976 "Yale Law Review" emerged as a seminal foundational piece for CRT. We found that Bell's post-"Brown" litigation and frustrations were captured in several powerful law review journals from 1970-1976. During this time, he wrote extensively on minority admissions programs, school litigation strategies, racial remediation, equal employment, and of course the "Brown" decision and its aftermath. These early works attended to the details of how legal remediation for racism in various forms could be considered and approached, but more often were ignored and denied. These same works showed the contradictions built into legal strategies. By working through the details of specific racial remediation strategies, Derrick Bell realized the ubiquity of the negative influences of post-"Brown" integration goals in all aspects of African American life, including the law. His seminal 1976 "Yale Law Review" piece emerged not from theory, per se, but from very specific engagements with reasoning about post-"Brown" policies and practices that failed to serve the interests of most African American families. For Bell, hope seemed to wax and wane as clarity emerged. This article analyses Bell's law review articles that were published between 1970 and 1976, when he began full-fledged writing that ultimately provided a blueprint for the CRT movement in the academy.

As evident in the title of this article, the authors want to suggest that democracy in U.S. society and, consequently, teacher education is an ideal that has yet to be fully realized and actualized. The authors are defining democracy in teacher education as an ideal and a tool to critically engage students in difficult and controversial issues related to power relations, matters of identity, social justice, and social transformation (Carr, 2008). In this article, the authors outline three priorities that are critical for teacher educators to consider in their preparation of teachers to more fully realize and actualize democratic ideals: (1) Prepare teachers to teach for student learning, not solely for test scores; (2) Prepare teachers to understand, teach for, and practice equity; and (3) Prepare teachers to recognize the assets of students. The authors believe that, taken together, these priorities are essential features for teacher educators to consider in their preparation of teachers while in pursuit of more democratic practices in teacher education.

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new editor of The Journal of Educational Foundations. I am honored to have this opportunity to serve the [...]