Tribble, Isreal, Jr. 1940–

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Isreal Tribble, Jr. 1940–

Educator, administrator, consultant

At a Glance…

“Make Your Mark”

From Corporation to Education

Outlined Educational Philosophies in Books

Selected writings

Sources

From his office in Tampa, Florida Education Fund (FEF) President Israel Tribble, Jr., discussed historical and current trends in education during an interview with Contemporary Black Biography (CBB). Tribble believes that from its inception, the American education system has addressed itself to a “kind of European elitism.” As a result, it has never been designed to “accommodate” those who were “dark and different” in terms of race, gender, or class. When the educational system cannot “accommodate,” explained Tribble, it “alienates.”

One of the major areas of alienation, Tribble told CBB, can be seen in the way those who are “dark and different” are educated away from their “beginnings” by a curriculum that does not place value on the experiences and history of blacks, women, and the financially disadvantaged. Because of its very nature, Tribble said, the U.S. educational system of the 1990s “cannot close the deficit, the achievement gap” between people of color and the majority. This can only be done by a “community-based strategy to help empower individual students to overcome what it is that the school does by its very nature.” The FEF works to foster and encourage such community programs.

The vision behind the Florida Educational Fund’s tremendous successes is that of Israel Tribble, Jr., who explained to CBB that he knows first-hand of the failure of the U.S. system of education. He experienced the debilitating effects of the public schools’ practice of racial tracking. In his book Making Their Mark, Educating African-American Children: A Bold New Plan for Educational Reform, Tribble related that his “cultural background is not at all dissimilar to that of the majority of black youth in America.”

Tribble was born to seventeen-year-old Fannie Louise Thomas in a Philadelphia hospital in 1940. His father, whom Tribble met for the first time when he was 19, was an older married man who seduced and abandoned the young Fannie shortly after she arrived in Philadelphia from Cape Charles, Virginia. Tribble wrote in Making Their Mark that he understands why “the lack of positive black [male] role models is a serious deficit in [the black] community.”

Even though Tribble’s mother supported her children by working as a domestic and short-order cook, Tribble maintains she was “a devoted provider of my physical and

At a Glance…

Born Israel Tribble, Jr., September 4, 1940, In Philadelphia, PA; son of Fannie Louise Thomas and Israel Tribble; children: Ahsha Nateef, Aiyisha Natylie. Education: Montclair State College, B.A., 1962; California State University at Hayward, M.S., 1972; Stanford University, MA., 1975, Ed.D., 1976.

Plainfield High School, NJ, history teacher and wrestling coach, 1962-63; Pacific Telephone Management Achievement Program, Sunnyvale, CA, assistant manager, 1967-68; San Mateo Union High School District, CA, teacher and curriculum consultant, 1968-69; Mills College, Oakland, CA, instructor, 1969-74, special assistant to the president for minority affairs, 1969-72, director of Upward Bound Program, 1969-71, interim director of ethnic studies, 1971-72, assistant vice-president for college relations and development, 1972-74, assistant vice-president for special programs, 1975-76; Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach, FL, provost, 1977-78; Edward Waters College, Jacksonville, FL, vice-president and dean of academic affairs, 1978-80; U.S. Department of Education, special assistant to the secretary, 1980-81; American Association of State Colleges and Universities, consultant, 1981; U.S. Department of Defense, director of voluntary education, 1981-82; Board of Regents of the State University System of Florida, associate vice-chancellor for academic programs, 1982-84; McKnight Program in Higher Education in Florida, executive director, 1984-87; Florida Endowment Fund for Higher Education (became Florida Education Fund, 1993), president and chief executive officer, 1985—. Has also served as a consultant to various organizations. Military service: U.S. Army, 1964-67, served in intelligence and security; became captain.

Member: Member of numerous organizations, including Black Caucus of the American Association of Higher Education, Association of Black Foundation Executives, and Florida Statewide Advisory Committee on the Education of Blacks.

Addresses: Office —Florida Education Fund, 201 E. Kennedy Boulevard, Ste. 1525, Tampa, FL 33602.

emotional needs even as hers went lacking.” She had “mother wit,” he claimed, further noting that her “guidance and influence had largely been responsible for my performing well academically, for behaving, for being clean and neat, for being respectful of elders, including teachers.”

“Make Your Mark”

Tribble attributes the “philosophical centerpiece” of his educational blueprint to an incident when he was a sophomore at Vineland (New Jersey) High School. While in science class one day, he was playing his usual role of “class clown,” as he recounted to CBB, and was sent to the principal’s office to be reprimanded. When he returned to the classroom, however, his teacher, Marlin P. Krouse, said to him, “You can do better than you are doing. You can make a mark for your race.” By suggesting that he “could be somebody,” Tribble expressed in Making Their Mark, Krouse delivered to him “the message of hope and high expectation that every African-American youngster whose circumstances are mired in poverty needs to hear.”

Through Krouse’s intervention, Tribble was transferred to the college prep program and graduated 83rd out of his class of 283. At Vineland, Tribble was a member of the Monogram Club for varsity athletes, earning his letter for wrestling and football. He observed in Making Their Mark, “Organized sport had already provided me not only with positive black male role modes but also with opportunities for personal achievement and leadership.” However, he went on to say, “I am positive that we must develop ways of encouraging African-American males to define themselves through academic achievement rather than through sports only.”

After graduating from Vineland, Tribble attended Montclair State College in New Jersey and was one of ten black students out of 2,200 registered. He was also the first person in his family and extended community who had ever attended college. Earning a bachelor’s in social studies and physical education in 1962, he spent the next year teaching at New Jersey’s Plainfield High School, which had never before hired an African American to teach academic courses.

From Corporation to Education

After serving as a captain in the Intelligence and Security Branch of the U.S. Army in 1967, Tribble accepted a position with Pacific Telephone’s Management Achievement Program in Sunnyvale, California. He became the first black telephone company commercial manager in the state. One of his major contributions to Pacific Telephone was his co-authorship and instruction of a program designed to elevate the employability of seniors from local black high schools. Tribble experienced difficulty at Pacific Telephone, however. He told CBB that although the “higher executives” wanted to integrate the company, the “folks on the ground” resisted working with a black manager.

So in the summer of 1968, Tribble experienced a “metamorphosis” and began the process of educating himself in African and African-American history and culture. It was during his time on the West Coast that Tribble also began to be involved with civil rights activities and to prepare himself to “deal with this country and its [racist] signals.” The more he read, Tribble explained to CBB, the “angrier” he became and the more he “felt betrayed by the education he had received.” He began to understand the “necessity for nation- and institution-building.”

When Tribble accepted a teaching position at San Mateo Union High School in the fall of 1968 to teach black history, he did so as a self-taught instructor. Tribble told CBB that during his own years in school he had never been taught black texts or had a black instructor. When he himself taught history at Vineland High School, he said the world history textbooks distinguished between the civilizations of Egypt and Africa. Egypt was portrayed as the “cradle of civilization” and Africa as the “dark continent.” In Making Their Mark he opined, “The splitting of Africa and Egypt into two distinct cultures, when in fact they overlap, is a direct result of the institutional racism that permeates the worlds of university scholarship, public school education, and textbook publishing…. By setting up this Black African-Egyptian dichotomy, historians were able to perpetuate existing myths about the limited abilities of blacks.”

In addition to teaching the first black history course at both San Mateo Union High School and Capuchino High School, Tribble was also employed as an educational consultant for the San Mateo School District to aid other history instructors in properly integrating the social studies curriculum to reflect ethnic diversity. His first published article, “Trust: A New Approach to Student Unrest,” published in the December 1970 issue of Educational Leadership, is based on a racial incident at San Mateo High School, in which Tribble and other faculty were successful in helping students negotiate and achieve a resolution.

In 1969 Tribble began to teach history courses at Mills College, the San Francisco State University Extension, and the College of San Mateo. The next year he was asked to revitalize the troubled Upward Bound Program at Mills College and to become special assistant to the president, taking responsibility for minority affairs. By 1975 he held the title of assistant vice-president for special programs. Tribble told CBB that his tenure at Mills College was responsible for his “confronting his [male] chauvinism and gender bias.” During debates about whether or not Mills should be co-educational, Tribble said he began to understand how “a separatist environment gave [women] opportunities for leadership without having to compete with men.”

Tribble continued to work in higher education and for the United States government during the late 1970s and early 1980s, before taking on his role as head of the Florida Educational Fund. In 1977 he became Provost at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, and in 1978 was named vice-president and dean of academic affairs at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida. Tribble moved to Washington, D.C in 1980 to serve as special assistant to the secretary in the U.S. Department of Education, as consultant to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and as director of voluntary education for the U.S. Department of Defense. Two years later he returned to Florida to become associate vice-chancellor for academic programs for the Board of Regents of the State University System of Florida.

Outlined Educational Philosophies in Books

The evolution of Tribble’s ideas about American education is presented in his two books, Making Their Mark, published in 1992, and If You Can Talk You Can Sing, If You Can Walk You Can Dance: A Successful African-American Doctoral Program, published in 1994. The key to Tribble’s plan for educational reform is his commitment to institution-building. As he remarked, “The secret of the twenty-first century for African Americans is how we can turn from individual accomplishment to collective achievement.”

Making Their Mark includes chapters on the contribution of African cultures to world civilization, the root causes of the failure of African-American children in the U.S. public educational system, the failure of the U.S. education system to be “agents of change,” and plans for action that include “marshalling the considerable resources of the African-American community.”

In If You Can Talk You Can Sing, Tribble takes a more in-depth look at the importance of desegregating higher education in the United States by encouraging those who have been historically disadvantaged to earn doctorate degrees. He also discusses public policy obstacles to the achievement of doctorates among minority people and offers models for success. Drawing on the private-public sphere collaborative model instituted between the McKnight Education Program and the State of Florida, he encourages other states to consider its benefits in the higher education of minority students.

Tribble believes that the United States is at a crossroads: “The nineties is clearly a make or break decade,” he stated in Making Their Mark. “Businesses cannot continue as usual if America is to maintain the world leadership position that it has enjoyed since World War II. If this country is to achieve the incredible heights that are within its grasp both as a nation and as a member of the world community, Americans of all races must do better with the development of human resources.” To cultivate the human resource potential that the United States has at its disposal, Tribble argues, it is imperative to “develop the skills of minorities more effectively and in many new areas…. [Minority] people must be seen as part of the solution.”