Commemorating fifty years of racial integration at Duke University, The Education of Ida Owens follows Ida Owens from her upbringing in rural North Carolina to her years at Duke University, where she became The Graduate School’s first African-American female to receive a Ph.D. When she reflects on the complicated cultural waters of her era, questions about identity, memory, and social activism surface. This personal exploration of Southern history, Duke history, and the civil rights movement brings to the forefront the past and its lingering effects.
