Michael Fultz

Historical Perspectives on African American Males as Subjects of Education Policy

The intent of this article is to frame the contemporary policy prescriptions concerning the plight and prospects of African American males in historical perspective. The authors argue that the emergence of African American males as a special subject of educational policy represents a more explicit rendering of a deeply rooted social and educational policy discourse in which African American males figured prominently but seldom as a targeted subject. Selected historical literature in African American education, sociology, and educational policy are reviewed, noting relevant trends over time.

Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation

The intent of this article is to present an overview and analysis of the development of public libraries for African Americans in the South during the era of de jure segregation and through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Written from the perspective of an educational historian, the essay seeks to discern salient continuities and discontinuities in the growth and desegregation of both public libraries and public schools in the South and within this broadened context to push both fields beyond the topical blinders that have too often characterized their separate historical investigations.

“As Is the Teacher, So Is the School”: Future Directions in the Historiography of African American Teachers

From the 1880s through the 1920s, the adage, “As is the teacher, so is the school,” was commonplace in the rhetorical repertoire of African American educators in the South. The essence of its meaning lingered throughout the period of de jure segregation. Its expression encompassed vital themes related to the need and demand for a “sound professionalism” among the expanding number of African American teachers in the region. Its significance flowed from a self-evident logic implicitly understood, and fundamentally contested, by both black and white southerners: the “fate of the race” depended on its schools; the quality of those schools depended on the quality of the teachers they had; and the quality of the teachers depended upon their character, dedication, and professional training. Ambrose Caliver, the first African American research specialist hired by the U.S. Office of Education, reduced the issues to a single sentence, “In the hands of the Negro teachers rests the destiny of the race.”1

Charleston, 1919-1920: The Final Battle in the Emergence of the South’s Urban African American Teaching Corps

Septima Clark, a Highlander School–trained activist prominent during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, recalls in her autobiography the frustration of having to leave her family in Charleston in 1916 for a teaching job on nearby St. Johns Island because, although a graduate of the local black Normal school, she could not gain a teaching position in her hometown. Mamie Garvin Fields went to school in Charleston in the 1890s and remembers that her teachers tried to “drill into us . . . the Rebel tradition.” Students were frequently required to sing “ ‘Dixie,’ the whole school in unison. . . . Then they were fond of songs like ‘Swanee River,’ ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ‘Massa’s in de Col’ Col’ Groun’. This is what they wanted to instill in us.” The situation that both Clark and Fields recalled later in life was one of the most anomalous in the urban South during the early twentieth century: white teachers in Charleston, South Carolina, teaching in African American schools as a matter of adamant school board policy. The circumstances in Charleston were particularly extraordinary because that city represented the last holdout in a drive urban African American communities were determined to win when not much else was winnable. Indeed, although marred by several problems of interpretation (including the erroneous implications of its title), Howard Rabinowitz’s pathbreaking article, “Half a Loaf: The Shift from White to Black Teachers in the Negro Schools of the Urban South,” is essentially correct in its conclusion that by the 1890s, African American public schools in the South were virtually wholly staffed by African Americans. Moreover, as the Atlanta Constitution put it in an 1887 article concerning the efforts in that city, “the white people are not trying to force colored teachers upon them [African Americans], for it is their own motion and desire that the movement to put colored teachers in . . . originated.” In some cities, the changeover—although not always from a completely all-white staff, as the presence of African Americans within the freedmen’s aid societies and as independent teachers in the South’s emerging systems in the early to mid-1870s has often been ignored—came fairly early. For example,

A "Quintessential American": Horace Mann Bond, 1924-1939.

In this article Michael Fultz provides a comprehensive study of one of the most cited but least studied authorities on black educational history, Horace Mann Bond. Fultzs in-depth account of this black scholar and educators formative years highlights both the social conditions which confronted all black Americans during the first three decades of the twentieth century and the black academic response of that time.

Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South@@@Growing up African American in Catholic Schools

African American schools in the segregated South faced enormous obstacles in educating their students. But some of these schools succeeded in providing nurturing educational environments in spite of the injustices of segregation. Vanessa Siddle Walker tells the story of one such school in rural North Carolina, the Caswell County Training School, which operated from 1934 to 1969. She focuses especially on the importance of dedicated teachers and the principal, who believed their jobs extended well beyond the classroom, and on the communitys parents, who worked hard to support the school. According to Walker, the relationship between school and community was mutually dependent. Parents sacrificed financially to meet the schools needs, and teachers and administrators put in extra time for professional development, specialized student assistance, and home visits. The result was a school that placed the needs of African American students at the center of its mission, which was in turn shared by the community. Walker concludes that the experience of CCTS captures a segment of the history of African Americans in segregated schools that has been overlooked and that provides important context for the ongoing debate about how best to educate African American children. African American History/Education/North Carolina |Walker recounts the history of the Caswell Training School, an African American school in rural North Carolina that faced enormous obstacles to stay open, operating from 1934 to 1969. She shows that the school placed the needs of the African American students at the center of its mission, which was in turn shared by the community. The result was a nurturing educational environment in spite of the injustices of segregation.