This book provides background for understanding contemporary issues and problems in multicultural education by examining the history of education of four dominated groups in the United States: Native Americans, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexican Americans. The book focuses on three concepts: deculturalization--attempts to strip away the cultures of conquered peoples and replace them, through education, with European American culture; segregation; and resistance and activism by dominated cultures in response to deculturalization and segregation. Chapter 1 outlines the history of education of Native Americans, including early federal Indian education policies; the Civilization Fund Act of 1819, which supported missionary schools; the success of Cherokee and Choctaw tribal educational systems; the development of reservations and boarding schools; and the Meriam Report. Chapter 2 discusses the colonization and Americanization of Puerto Rico, public school practices to build loyalty to the United States, and Puerto Rican resistance. Chapter 3 examines Black education during slavery and the Reconstruction Era; segregation of public schools to reconcile southern Whites and as a means of maintaining an inexpensive source of labor; and resistance to segregation by W. E. B. DuBois, a founder of the NAACP. Chapter 4 describes the treatment of Mexicans in conquered Mexican territories, the great Mexican immigration during the early 1900s, development of segregated schools with English-only policies, and support for bicultural bilingual education by LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens). Chapter 5 discusses educational aspects of the Great Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-70s; effects on the four minority groups; and development of bilingual, ethnocentric, and bicultural education. Contains references and an index. (SV)