This article provides a history of Black southern teacher associations and the civil rights agenda they articulated from Reconstruction through the desegregation of public schools in the 1970s. Black teacher associations demonstrated historic agency by demanding a fundamental right to an education, equal salaries, and the right to work during the era of desegregation. Black education associations thus served as a professional bulwark against institutional racism. The agency of Black teacher associations constitutes a unique though overlooked role in civil rights history that illustrates the latent potential of teacher associations to serve as bastions of civil rights-based reform initiatives.