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This study reflects the experiences of four Black women who succeeded in gaining their General Education Diploma. Their experiences in high school are a poignant example of the way in which talented youth are displaced in formal school settings. Their stories of learning to live with a minimum level of education provide the background for the study of their motivation to succeed. The twenty-seven interviews reveal the reasons for dropping out of high school, the situations that led to them returning to school, and the results of them staying on long enough to complete the General Education Diploma. Also, the participants reveal character traits that make their commitment to overcoming obstacles a strong feature of their journey to higher educational credentials. Through the lens of the women's determination to succeed in formal education we are able to understand the formidable odds that they have had to endure as Black, female, and literate in this society.

This case study focuses on the experience of a Black woman who returned to school for her General Education Diploma (ged) certificate after 32 years away from formal schooling. Through the reflections of Montana and her social network, six women who supported her during and after the ged exam, we are able to see the way in which Montana changes the network and herself over time. We are also able to see some of the ways in which Montana positively affects her children and husband through her pursuit of the ged. The 11 interviews reveal the themes of improved literacy skills, heightened confidence, community activism, and youth leadership, as Montana circulates in her community and congregation a year after the ged. It is also possible to glean from the study the kind of opportunities that adult literacy educators may create by involving a students social network in the active support of increased literacy skills at the ged level.

This process-video on the topic of graduate students and junior faculty of color in higher education represents musings around the issues that are involved in racism and the assumptions that are a part of that ideology. Using the lens of Critical Race Theory as described by Bell (1987), the conversations that took place in a video-recording studio were analyzed for themes that represent the experience of being "the fly in the milk," at a White academic institution. "How do we talk to whiteness?" is the central theme that organizes this discussion of the videotape "Noises in the Attic: Conversations with Ourselves. "The participants talk about alienation, as described in sections called "Noises," "The White Man's Scrapbook," "Between and Betwixt," and "Filling in the?" A realization that there is a need to understand that White people operate from a different perspective than nonwhite people rounds off the discussion of being a noise in the attic of the White academic environment.