This encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference tool for researchers, teachers, scholars, students, and laypersons who need information under a single cover on significant issues, policies, historical events, laws, theories, organizations, institutions, and people incident to the education of African Americans. This population is unique in that its educational history includes as law and public policy the systematic long-term denial of the acquisition of knowledge. This reference tool contains several hundred topic entries in alphabetical order that provide local, regional, and national information, but biographical entries are fewer, largely because they are available in other resources. Each entry includes a selected bibliography. (Contains 294 references.) (SLD)