scholarly journals Using the Educational Histories of Individuals to Complicate Standard Historical Narratives about Expanding Citizenship Rights and Opportunity

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-163
Author(s):  
Valinda W. Littlefield

My History of Southern African American Education, 1865–Present class, a mid-level survey course, examines the history of education for African Americans in the South from Reconstruction to the twenty-first century. It draws a variety of undergraduate students, as it is cross-listed with the College of Education, Department of History, African American Studies Program, and the Institute of Southern Studies. We examine issues of power and privilege, and the ways that race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status interact with educational opportunities and achievement. A major objective is to help students understand the ways in which public education in the United States was shaped by competing economic, political, and ideological interests; this focus includes learning the ways in which schools reinforced and reshaped the larger society. Another objective is to use local, state, and regional educational issues to provide a background for understanding the history of education as well as patterns, trends, and changes in the larger historical narrative.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-64
Author(s):  
Andrea Smith

The history of education in the United States abounds with double themes and purposes for education: schooling for democratic citizenship and schooling for second-class citizenship. Conceived as a means for great equalization, history echoes the intense disapproval of formal education for African Americans since the conception of the United States. The article places the discussion against the larger backdrop of national events within a political, cultural, and economic context. It further offers fresh insights into the African American commitment to education as they persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires with the hope that their work would transcend generations to come.        


Author(s):  
Anthony B. Pinn

This chapter explores the history of humanism within African American communities. It positions humanist thinking and humanism-inspired activism as a significant way in which people of African descent in the United States have addressed issues of racial injustice. Beginning with critiques of theism found within the blues, moving through developments such as the literature produced by Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, and others, to political activists such as W. E. B. DuBois and A. Philip Randolph, to organized humanism in the form of African American involvement in the Unitarian Universalist Association, African Americans for Humanism, and so on, this chapter presents the historical and institutional development of African American humanism.


2011 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Rury

The distinguished Africanist Robert Harms once observed that “we historians are a practical people who pride ourselves on our attention to facts and our painstaking attention to detail.” If this is the case in other parts of the world, it is certainly true of American historians, who have been periodically admonished for their disinterest in questions of theory and purpose related to their craft. In this issue we have an opportunity to discuss the question of theory as it may pertain to the history of education, with particular attention to the United States. Regardless of whether one believes that historians should be ardent students of social theory, after all, there is little question about whether they should be cognizant of it. Indeed, there is danger in ignoring it. Quoting John Maynard Keynes, Harms suggested that practical people who feel “exempt from any intellectual influences” run the risk of “becoming slaves to some defunct economist.”


2021 ◽  
pp. 103237322110581
Author(s):  
Sandra Gates ◽  
Megan Burke ◽  
John Humphreys

Little is known about the contributions of African-American slaves in the histories of various business domains, including accounting. Some authors attribute this scholarly silence to ideological motives due to race-ethnicity and bigotry. Others note that this paucity reflects not only a lack of data but also an inability to adequately approach the contributions of minorities to the accounting profession. Consequently, there are hidden voices in accounting history that should be explored. One of those voices belongs to Benjamin Thornton Montgomery, a Southern slave who became a plantation manager and owner. Observing Montgomery’s practices through the unique historical lens of the ante-bellum period of the United States, we argue that he should also be acknowledged for his responsibilities as an accountant. Accordingly, we use an analytically structured narrative process to examine the compelling case of Ben Montgomery to inform a more accurate and balanced historical foundation of accounting practice in America.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Trent Shotwell

History of African Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots by Thomas J. Davis chronicles the remarkable past of African Americans from the earliest arrival of their ancestors to the election of President Barack Obama. This work was produced to recognize every triumph and tragedy that separates African Americans as a group from others in America. By distinguishing the rich and unique history of African Americans, History of African Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots provides an account of inspiration, courage, and progress. Each chapter details a significant piece of African American history, and the book includes numerous concise portraits of prominent African Americans and their contributions to progressing social life in the United States.


Author(s):  
W. Andrew Collins ◽  
Willard W. Hartup

This chapter summarizes the emergence and prominent features of a science of psychological development. Pioneering researchers established laboratories in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century to examine the significance of successive changes in the organism with the passage of time. American psychologists, many of whom had studied in the European laboratories, subsequently inaugurated similar efforts in the United States. Scientific theories and methods in the fledgling field were fostered by developments in experimental psychology, but also in physiology, embryology, ethology, and sociology. Moreover, organized efforts to provide information about development to parents, educators, and public policy specialists further propagated support for developmental science. The evolution of the field in its first century has provided a substantial platform for future developmental research.


Author(s):  
Laura Harrison

This chapter examines how discourses of race are influenced by the economic and reproductive imperatives of society at different historical moments. The author compares historical examples of racialized reproduction to contemporary examples with an analysis of two legal cases involving cross-racial gestational surrogacy in the United States: Johnson v. Calvert and, more recently, Marion County Division of Children’s Services v. Melinger. The specifics of these two cases vary dramatically; most notably, African American surrogate Anna Johnson went to court for custody of the child she bore, while the more recent case focused on the parental fitness of the white intended father. However, in both instances racial difference between the surrogate and intended parents served the interests of the racially and economically privileged parties. Like cross-racial wet nursing, cross-racial gestational surrogacy is part of a complicated history of racialized reproductive labor in the United States.


Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck

The introduction includes Bible verses cited by ministers to defend segregation and verses to oppose segregation. There are slices of the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and African American history. The southern states, where white ministers confronted segregation, are identified. The term “minister” is explained as well as the variety of labels given these ministers ranging from “Liberal,” Progressive,” “Neo-Orthodox,” “Evangelical Liberal,” “open conservative,” ‘Last Hurrah of the Social Gospel Movement” to “Trouble Maker,” “Traitor, “ “Atheist,” “Communist,” “N_____ Lover.” Rachel Henderlite, the only woman minister mentioned in the book, is identified. Synopses of the book’s seven chapters are included. Comments by historians David Chappell, Charles Reagan Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Campbell, and Thomas Pettigrew are cited.


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