“Change the Man and the Environments Will Be Changed by Man”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald K. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Black College ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Liberal Arts Education ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Public Entity ◽  
Training Institute

This chapter examines the creation of the National Religious Training Institute and Chautauqua (NRTIC), while also revealing a shift in Shepard’s approach to racial issues in North Carolina at the turn of the twentieth century. I analyze relationships that Shepard built with Benjamin Newton Duke and the Duke family and other philanthropists. Moreover, I discuss Shepard’s position on the Washington/Du Bois debate. Shepard is considered by scholars of NCC as a colleague of Washington while also garnering the respect of Du Bois. I reveal the influence and respect that Shepard had within North Carolina as NRTIC shifted from a private to a public entity and became the first publicly funded black college in the South that focused primarily on liberal arts education.

Between Washington and Du Bois

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald K. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
College Presidents ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black College ◽  
Academic Leaders ◽  
Cultural Biography ◽  
The North ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Training Institute

The purpose of this manuscript is threefold. First, it will serve as a cultural biography of Dr. James Edward Shepard and the National Religious Training Institute and Chautauqua for the Negro Race and later the North Carolina College for Negroes (which became North Carolina Central University). Second, it will argue that black college presidents of the early twentieth century such as Shepard were more than academic leaders; they were race leaders. Shepard’s role at the NRTIC/NCC was to develop a race through this institution. Lastly, this study argues that Shepard, like most black college presidents, did not focus primarily on the difference between liberal arts and vocational education. Rather, he considered the most practical ways to uplift his race. Therefore, this study will be more than a biography of an influential African American, but an analytical study of a black leader during the age of Jim Crow in the South.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald K. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
College Presidents ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black College ◽  
Academic Leaders ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Negro Race

The introduction provides an overview of the research and places James Edward Shepard in historical context by analyzing the discourse of race relations in North Carolina. I examine the dialogue of black Durham’s participation in the “race issue” of the early twentieth century and evaluate black higher education throughout the United States during this time period. I discuss the famous Washington versus Du Bois debate. This chapter also presents the main argument of the manuscript--that black college presidents of the early twentieth century were more than academic leaders. They were race leaders, as can be seen in the case of Dr. James Edward Shepard. For these presidents the real debate was not the struggle between liberal arts and vocational education but “what was the most practical way to uplift the Negro Race.”

Unveilings Through Transformative Pedagogy

2018 ◽  
pp. 206-224
Author(s):  
Shannon Marie Coffey
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Preparation ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Underrepresented Students ◽  
Teacher Preparation Program ◽  
Transformative Pedagogy ◽  
Liberal Arts Education ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Talented Tenth ◽  
Educational Paradigm

The following theoretical, reflexive investigation traces founding American sociologist, Civil Rights activist, and educator Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois' intellectual evolution from his initial propositions provided within “The Talented Tenth” into what Du Boisian intellectual Reiland Rabaka terms the “Guiding Hundredth.” Whereas Du Bois is typically seen as only advocating for a liberal arts education, his revised paradigm really sought access to both liberal arts and vocational training curricula. He especially wanted youth to have viable options for pursing either. The primary author provides reflexive insights into how the course of this investigation shaped her own understanding of her relationship to academia, her advocacy for underrepresented students, and her commitment to pursue secondary licensure and a Master's degree in education within a formal teacher preparation program. The investigation furthered her social justice-oriented commitment to strive for equity working toward the realization of Du Bois' emancipatory, transformative educational paradigm.

Trey Ellis's Platitudes: Redefining Black Voices

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Quan Manh Ha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Black Voices ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
One Year ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Trey Ellis has emerged as a prominent African American writer of the late-twentieth century, despite the small number of his published works. “The New Black Aesthetic,” an essay that he first published in CaUaloo in 1989, one year after the publication of his first novel, Platitudes, stands as a manifesto that defines and articulates his perspective on the emerging black literary voices and culture of the time, and on “the future of African American artistic expression” in the postmodern era.1 According to Eric Lott, Ellis's novel parodies the literary and cultural conflict between such male experimental writers as lshmael Reed and such female realist writers as Alice Walker.2 Thus, Ellis's primary purpose in writing Platitudes is to redefine how African Americans should be represented in fiction, implying that neither of the dominant approaches can completely articulate late-twentieth-century black experience when practiced in isolation. In its final passages, Platitudes represents a synthesis of the two literary modes or styles, and it embodies quite fully the diversity of black cultural identities at the end of the twentieth century as it extends African American literature beyond racial issues. In this way, the novel exemplifies the literary agenda that Ellis suggests in his theoretical essay.

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