History Books

History of Education Society
Brown-ing the American Textbook: History, Psychology, and the Origins of Modern
Multiculturalism
Author(s): Jonathan Zimmerman
Source: History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 1, A Special Issue on the Fiftieth
Anniversary of the "Brown v. Board of Education" Decision (Spring, 2004), pp. 46-69
Published by: History of Education Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3218110 .
Accessed: 21/06/2014 00:13
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
History of Education Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to History of
Education Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Brown-ing the American Textbook:
History, Psychology, and the Origins of
Moden Multiculturalism
JonathanZimmerman
In June 1944, a delegation of African-Americanleadersmet with New York

City school officials to discuss a central focus of black concern: history text-
books. That delegation reflected a broad spectrum of metropolitan Black
opinion: Chairedby the radicalcity councilmanBenjaminJ.Davis, it includ-
ed the publisher of the AmsterdamNews New York's major Black news-
paper-as well as the bishop of the African Orthodox Church. In a joint
statement, the delegates praised public schools' recent efforts to promote
"interculturaleducation"-and to reduce "prejudice" via drama, music,
and art. Yet if history texts continued to spread lies about the past, Blacks
insisted, all of these other programs would come to naught. One book
described slaves as "happy";another applaudedthe Ku Klux Klan for keep-
ing "foolish Negroes" out of government. "Such passages ... could well
have come from the mouths of the fascist enemies of our nation," the Black
delegationwarned.Even as Americafought "Nazi doctrine"overseas,African
Americans maintained, the country needed to purge this philosophy from
history books at home.'
The following year New Yorkers poured into the streets to celebrate
victory over Germany andJapan. Yet in the public schools, African Amer-
icans complained, children still used the same racist textbooks. Blacks took
special aim at White liberals who supported antiprejudice programs
but turned a blind eye to prejudiced texts.2Indeed, school superintendent
Jonathan Zimmerman is Director of the History of Education Program at Steinhardt School

of Education, New York University. He would like to thank RichardAltenbaugh, Bruce Nel-
son, and three anonymous HEQ readers for their help in improving this essay. The essay is
dedicated to Rose A. Zimmerman, a 40-year veteran of the New York public schools and the
greatest grandmother of them all. Readers may contact Jonathan Zimmerman at
JLZIMM@aol.com.
"Statement of Principle" (ms, 15 June 1944), frames 265-66; press release by Ben-
jaminJ. Davis, Jr., 15 June 1944, frame 264, both in reel 22, Part 16B, Papersof the National
AssociationFor the Advancementof ColoredPeople(Bethesda, MD: University Publications of
America, 1994).
2Following social scientists Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines, this essay
uses "liberal"to connote Americans who shared four basic values: "commitment to equality,
belief in the efficacy of government as a [sic] agent of social change, openness to change, and
Historyof EducationQuarterly Vol. 44 No. 1 Spring 2004

Brown-ing theAmericanTextbook 47
John E. Wade himself a strong advocate of "interculturaleducation"-

was the author of a text that extolled the KKK. The problem afflicted every
subjectin the curriculum,not just history. Music books featured songs call-
ing AfricanAmericans "darkeys";literatureanthologies repeatedly referred
to them as "coons" or "Sambos";and geography texts, including one book
by Wade's successor as city school chief, William E. Jansen, stressed the
barbarityof Africa."One need not go to the Southland to find that Negroes
are ill-treated in textbooks," despaired the New YorkAge, another Black
newspaper. "If gross misconceptions are learned by the children in the
schools of New York City ... what can one expect in other sections of the
country where many are still 'fighting the Civil War?"'
Over the next two decades, "the Southland"would answerwith a sin-
gle phrase, "Whites Only." Especially after the Supreme Court issued its
1954 challenge to segregation in Brownv. Boardof Education,Whites below
the Mason-Dixon Line stepped up their efforts to eliminate any mention
of African Americans from their own textbooks. In the North, meanwhile,
Blacks continued to struggle, with little success, to remove the slurs and
outright lies that still marred so-called "integrated" texts. Their efforts
would not bear fruit until the early 1960s when African Americans devel-
oped a new strategy of protest. Borrowing directly from Brown,they argued
that racisttextbooks,like segregatedclassrooms,were "psychologicallydam-
aging" to black children. Tempering their older concerns with white big-
otry, African Americans used the jargon of social psychology to argue that
textbooks injured Black self-concept, Black self-identification, and espe-
cially Black self-esteem. Quoting the prominent anthropologist Margaret
Mead, Philadelphia Black activist Horace Woodland declared in 1963," 'A
people classed as a minority group has a need for a place in history to sus-
tain their belief in their value."' Until textbooks provided a "positiveimage"
concern for the less well-off." Sniderman and Carmines, ReachingBeyondRace(Cambridge:

HarvardUniversity Press, 1997), 4-5. Before World War II, white liberals largely ignored the
many ways that racial segregation and discrimination violated their core principles. But the
global conflict against fascism-and, subsequently, the Cold War struggle against commu-
nism-brought this contradiction into broad relief, placing civil rights at the heart of the
American liberal agenda. Gary Gerstle, "The Protean Character of American Liberalism,"
AmericanHistoricalReview99 (October 1994): 1043-1073; Ronald Takaki, Double Victory:A
MulticulturalHistoryofAmericain WorldWar II (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 2000); Mary
L. Dudziak, ColdWar CivilRights:Raceand theImageofAmericanDemocracy(Princeton:Prince-
ton University Press, 2000); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the ColorLine:Ameri-
canRaceRelationsin the GlobalArena (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
3"Bigotry,Intolerance," New YorkAge, 20 Oct. 1945, p. 6; Lola Paine, "Superinten-
dent Wade on 'Poison' List as Author of Anti-Negro Textbook," unidentified clipping, 24
Dec. 1945, fiche 004.909-1; New York Teachers Union, Biasand Prejudicein Textbooksin Use
in New YorkCitySchools: An Indictment!(n.p., 1950), fiche 004-909-5, both in Schomburg Clip-
ping File [hereafterSCF], Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Pub-
lic Library,New York; "Unbiased History," New YorkAge, 17 Nov. 1945, p. 6.

48 Historyof EducationQuarterly
of African Americans, Woodland added, Black children would continue to

suffer a "sense of inferiority."4
The new textbook strategy reflected much deeper currents in Amer-
ican political culture, which increasingly defined public problems in terms
of their impact upon the individual psyche.5By 1967, even Vice-President
Hubert H. Humphrey would warn that racist textbooks were permanent-
ly scarring Black minds. "We have no way of knowing how many potential
Negro scientists, scholars, doctors, teachers, and businessmen have been
swept into the ditch of oblivion by the psychological backlashof the Negro
history gap," cautioned Humphrey, connecting the textbook peril to the
alleged "missile gap" between the United States and the Soviet Union.6
Like other Cold War liberals, Humphrey viewed domestic race issues
through the prism of international relations: To defeat "communist total-
itarianforces"across the ocean, he argued,America needed to insure "basic
civil rights" on its own shores.7As Humphrey's remarkson textbooks illus-
trated, meanwhile, liberals also framed racial discrimination as a scourge
upon the mental and emotional health of its victims. Whereas racisminjured
America's national image on the world stage, in short, it injured African-
Americans'self-image at home.
4Boardof Education of the City of New York, "To Publishers of Text Materials for
the Schools: Policy Statement on Treatment of Minorities in Textbooks" (ms, 9 Oct. 1962),
fiche 004.909-3, SCF; Horace Woodland, untitled ms, ? Feb. 1963, folder 16, Box 12, Floyd
Logan Papers, Urban Archives, Temple University, Philadelphia. On the use of psychologi-
cal evidence and "damage"imagery in the Brownv. Boardof Educationera, see Ellen Herman,
The Romanceof AmericanPsychology: PoliticalCulturein the Age of Experts(Los Angeles: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1995), 174-207; John P. Jackson, Jr., "The Triumph of the Seg-
regationists?A Historiographical Inquiry Into Psychology and the BrownLitigation," History
of Psychology3 (Aug. 2000): 239-61; Walter A. Jackson, GunnarMyrdalandAmerica'sConscience:
SocialEngineeringand RacialLiberalism,1938-1987 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroli-
na Press, 1990), 279-93; RichardKluger, SimpleJustice:TheHistoryof Brown v. Board of Edu-
cation and BlackAmerica's Strugglefor Equality (New York: Vintage, 1975), 315-45; and,
especially, Daryl Michael Scott, Contemptand Pity: SocialPolicyand the Image of the Damaged
BlackPsyche(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 119-36.
'For varied accounts of this trend, see Herman, RomanceofAmericanPsychology; James
H. Capshew, Psychologistson the March: Science,Practice,and ProfessionalIdentityin America,
1929-1969 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Race
Experts:How RacialEtiquette,SensitivityTraining,and New Age TherapyHijackedthe CivilRights
Revolution(New York: Norton, 2001); and Eva S. Moskowitz, In TherapyWe Trust:America's
Obsessionwith Self-Fulfillment(Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
6"VicePresident Humphrey Advocates the Study of Negro History by All Americans,"
113 Cong., 1 sess., Feb. 15, 1967, p. 3488. Published in NegroDigest, a popularAfrican-Amer-
ican periodical, Humphrey's remarkswere read into the Congressional Recordby Michigan law-
makerJohn Conyers.
7RuthFeldstein, Motherhoodin Blackand White:Raceand Sex in AmericanLiberalism,
1930-1965 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 73. On the complex links between civil
rights at home and the struggle againstcommunism abroad,see Dudziak, ColdWar CivilRights;
Borstelmann, The ColdWar and the ColorLine.

This article uses struggles over school textbooks to probe America's

postwar discourse about race, highlighting the shift towards psychological
modes of explanation and remedy. The first section examines debates in
the North during the 1940s and early 1950s when a new cohort of African-
American freedom fighters-the so-called "World War II Generation"-
faced off against liberal white educators.8Stressing the irrationalnature of
prejudice,Whites dismissedtextbooks as irrelevantto the formation of anti-
Black views; but Blacks themselves placed texts at the center of their anal-
ysis, claiming that schoolbooks helped justify and perpetuateWhite bigotry.
The focus of the article then shifts to the South where segregationists'
defense of all-white texts, and their resistanceto so-called "integrated"ones,
seemed to confirm the critical role of racist texts in fostering racist atti-
tudes. The final section explainshow AfricanAmericansrefocusedthe entire
textbook debate upon their attitudes, echoing the larger theme of Brownv.
BoardofEducation.Pressuringpublishersand school boardsacrossthe 1960s,
blacks brought forth a new set of texts that aimed to counter their alleged
sense of racial inferiority.
Their efforts also counter a popular historical narrativeabout the rise
of modern multiculturalism, which is frequently linked to a post-1960s
rejection of Brown'sintegrationist dream in favor of a divisive "identitypol-
itics."9 But concerns with racialidentity and self-esteem dominated the text-
book campaign from the time of Brownitself, which phrased its appeal for
integration in explicitly psychological terms.10The text campaign scored
8Recently,historians have emphasized the critical role of World War II in galvanizing

the black quest for civil rights. Indeed, the entire lens of civil-rights scholarship has shifted
backwards20 years, from the better-known "1960s generation"to their forebearsin the 1940s.
See, e.g., Steven F. Lawson, RunningforFreedom:Civil Rightsand BlackPoliticsin AmericaSince
1941, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 1-28; Takaki, Double Victory,22-57; Adam
Fairclough, Better Day Coming:Blacksand Equality, 1890-2001 (New York: Viking, 2001),
181-226.
9See, e.g. Todd Gidin, The Twilightof CommonDreams:WhyAmericais Wrackedby Cul-
ture Wars(New York:Henry Holt, 1995); ArthurM. Schlesinger, Jr., TheDisunitingofAmer-
ica: Reflectionson a MulticulturalSociety(New York: Norton, 1998); and Lasch-Quinn, Race
Experts,194-228. Stressing the 1960s quest for African-Americanidentity, other scholars see
continuity-not divergence-between the civil rights movement and present-day multicul-
turalism.See, e.g., Christine E. Sleeter, MulticulturalEducationas SocialActivism(Albany:State
University of New York Press, 1996); Sonia Nieto, "From Brown Heroes and Holidays to
Assimilationist Agendas: Reconsidering the Critiques of Multicultural Education," in Multi-
culturalEducation,CriticalPedagogy,and the Politicsof Difference,ed. Christine E. Sleeter and
Peter L. McLaren (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 191-220, esp. 192;
and Carl A. Grant, "Reflections on the Promise of Brownand Multicultural Education," in
Brown v. Board of Education: The ChallengeforToday'sSchools,ed. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann
and Lamar P. Miller (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), 107-21.
'?To be sure, a concern for racial identity marked textbook campaigns by Carter G.
Woodson-the so-called "Father of Negro History"-in the 1920s and 1930s. Woodson
focused his interwar efforts mainly upon segregated black schools in the South, where he pro-
moted special history texts (including his own monographs) for "Negro History" elective
courses. After World War II and the defeat of fascism, however, Woodson declared a new

some impressive victories, forcing the removal of racist slurs as well as the
insertion of new material about minorities. Yet the gains came at a cost.
Demanding a laudatory history that would heal the Black psyche, activists
sometimes pressed their own distortions upon the nation's textbooks. Even
more, they provided an unintended crutch for an old but resilient enemy-
racism. Increasingly, white conservatives argued that any negative materi-
al about their own past would harm their delicate mental health. So did
every other racial and ethnic group, each seeking its own immaculate stripe
in the multicultural rainbow. The result was a curriculum that celebrated
"race"and "diversity"but downplayed racism. Designed to heal the psy-
chological scourge of American prejudice, multiculturalism would help
repress its historical roots.
In the North: Black Americans versus Intergroup Education

In 1946, America's premier Black organization praised the nation's
burgeoning movement for intercultural education. Writing on behalf of
the National Associationfor the Advancementof Colored People (NAACP),
spokesman Roy Wilkins lauded school-based efforts to instill "an appreci-
ation of all the races which go to make up America.""1
Intercultural educa-
tion datedto the 1920s when pacifistRachelDavis DuBois designedscattered
school projectsand curriculaaroundthe country to underscorethe "gifts"-
by which she meant the cultures and achievements-of different ethnic
groups.12 In the wake of World War II, however, that movement shifted its
purpose for Negro History: to teach "brotherhood"across every race, not simply pride with-
in his own. If whites learned of the black contributionto national and world civilization,Wood-
son wrote hopefully, they would turn a deaf ear to bigots-"American Nazis," in Woodson's
rich phrase-who still despised African-Americans.From the acquisition of his Ph.D. at Har-
vard in 1912 to his death in 1950, meanwhile, Woodson also insisted that historical scholar-
ship and instructionshould seek shared,objectiveaccounts of the past. After Brown,by contrast,
textbook critics often privileged the psychological effect of history over its accuracyand objec-
tivity. Many contemporary multiculturalists reject the entire notion of an "objective"histo-
ry, presuming that "all knowledge reflects the power and social relationships within society,"
asJames A. Bankshas written. Jonathan Zimmerman, WhoseAmerica?CultureWarsin thePub-
lic Schools(Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 2002), 42-47; Carter G. Woodson, "'Negro
History Week' Stresses Race's Part in Civilization," New South 1 (Jan. 1946): 4; James A.
Banks,"The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and MulticulturalEducation, " in Mul-
ticulturalEducation,TransformativeKnowledge,and Action, ed. James A. Banks (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1996), 16.
"Roy Wilkins, "Next Steps in Education for Racial Understanding," Education(Jan.
1946), fiche 004.909-1, SCF.
2The standardhistory of interculturaleducation before World War II is still Nicholas
V. Montalto, A Historyof the InterculturalEducationMovement,1924-1941 (New York: Gar-
land, 1982). A more recent and sophisticated account appearsin Diana Selig, "CulturalGifts:
American Liberals, Childhood, and the Origins of Multiculturalism, 1924-1939" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of California-Berkeley, 2001), 100-168.

focus from ethnicity to race and, especially, to African Americans."3Two

million Blacks migrated to the urban North and West in the 1940s, which
crackled with tension and violence; in 1943 alone, social scientists report-
ed 242 "racialbattles"in 47 cities. Schools scrambled to respond, as sever-
al educators wrote, by sponsoring special assemblies and other activities to
spawn "good will and mutual understanding among different racial and
nationalitygroups."By 1946, more than 4,000 schools in 22 states had insti-
tuted some brand of intercultural education or, as it soon became known,
"intergroup education."'14
The differencewas not entirelysemantic.As fascismenvelopedEurope,
DuBois's notion of distinctive ethnoracial "gifts"bore a dangerous echo to
Nazi race doctrine. Even more, the rise of Nazism seemed to demonstrate
the irrational nature of racism itself. Rather than emphasizing the special
qualities of different Americans, postwar intergroup educators tended to
stress common national attributes. Like their cousins in the booming field
of social psychology, educatorsalso underscoredthe emotional, even reflex-
ive characterof "tolerance"and "prejudice"alike. "Knowledge alone does
not affect either our feeling or thinking as effectively as we assume,"warned
intergroup educatorsHilda Taba and William Van Til in 1945. In the class-
room teachers should design hands-on activities in "democratic living"-
via games, skits,and songs-and downplaytextbookswhich merely dispensed
"factualinformation." The new approach was neatly captured in the tide
of a 1954 workshop for teachers, social workers, and other professionals:
"People Are Our Textbooks."'15
H3According to historians of "Whiteness," World War II marked the final stage in the
transformationof European "ethnics"into White people. Whether or not these scholars exag-
gerate the degree of race-basedhostility that ethnics sufferedin the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, it seems clear that European immigrants became less noticeable-and more
"White"-in the World War II era. Dialogues on race concentrated almost exclusively upon
two supposedly undifferentiated populations, "Negroes" and "whites."Matthew Frye Jacob-
son, Whitenessof a DifferentColor(HarvardUniversity Press, 1998), 247, 2 58; Philip Gleason,
"AmericansAll," in idem., Speakingof Diversity:Languageand Ethnicityin Twentieth-Century
America(Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 155; Eric Arnesen, "Whiteness
and the Historians' Imagination,"InternationalLaborand Working-Class History60 (Fall 2002):
3-32, esp. 13-14.
14Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor,
Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement," Journal of AmericanHistory 75 (December
1988): 786; Harvard Sitkoff, "RacialMilitancy and InterracialViolence in the Second World
War," Journal of AmericanHistory 58 (December 1971): 671, 678-8 1; Administrative Com-
mittee on Interculturaland InterracialEducation to Warren E. Bow, 3 April 1944, frame 747,
reel 7, Part 17, NAACP Papers; Robert Shaffer, "MulticulturalEducation in New York City
During World War II," New YorkHistory77 (July 1996): 325.
"Selig, "CulturalGifts," 417,429; Hilda Taba and William Van Til, DemocraticHuman
Relations:PromisingPracticesin IntergroupandInterculturalEducationin the SocialStudies(Wash-
ington, D.C.: National Council for the Social Studies, 1945), 66-67, 343, quoted in Susan E.
Noffke, "MulticulturalCurricula:'Whose Knowledge?' and Beyond,"in The Curriculum:Prob-
lems, Politics,and Possibilities,ed. Landon E. Beyer and Michael W. Apple, 2nd ed. (Albany:

From its inception, AfricanAmericanswere strong supportersof inter-

cultural education. Rachel DuBois corresponded frequently in the inter-
war years with George Washington Carver(a centerpiece of her curriculum
unit on "The Negro's Contribution") and with NAACP officials William
Pickens and W. E. B. Du Bois. AfterWorld War II, meanwhile,the NAACP
threw its weight behind a wide variety of intergroup projects. The New
York office sponsored eighty-three meetings at junior high schools in 1946
to commemorate the recently deceased Wendell Wilkie and his "One
World" campaign; in Minnesota, NAACP representatives led student dis-
cussions about fair employment practices;and in severalother cities, branch-
es held assemblies based on the popular pamphlet The Races of Mankind.
Coauthored by anthropologist Ruth Benedict, that pamphlet used scien-
tific arguments and evidence to refute racial and ethnic stereotypes. Atop
the nationalNAACP, finally,officialsappointedfield secretaryNoma Jensen
to traverse the country on behalf of intergroup education. In 1945 Jensen
would visit schools in a dozen cities and deliver over eighty speeches.16
Within this intergroup nexus, however, one important characteristic
distinguished Blacks from their White allies-an overriding concern with
textbooks.Whereas Whites dismissedtexts as irrelevantto prejudice,Blacks
viewed the books as a chief cause of it. To African Americans, any success-
ful battle against bigotry would require the removal, or at least the revi-
sion, of racistbooks. "I do not say that a change in our anti-Negro textbooks
will kill prejudice, but I am convinced that it is a major step in that direc-
tion," Black journalist Frank Davis wrote in 1943. "The white youth [who]
grows to maturity learning the truth will not be disposed to impart the old
myths to his offspring, nor will he be a fertile field for white supremacy."
Across the urban North, Davis added, recent Black arrivalswere flooding
to the polls; between 1940 and 1948, the number of registered Black
voters doubled. If Blacks demanded "fair and honest textbooks," then
State University of New York Press, 1998),108; Stuart Svonkin,jjewsAgainstPrejudice: Amer-

ican Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997),
74-75.
'6GeorgeWashington Carver to Rachel Davis DuBois, 31 July 1927, folder 3; Rachel
Davis DuBois, Some Racial Contributionsto America:A Study Outlinefor SecondarySchools
(Philadelphia:Committee on Interests of the Colored Race, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of
Friends, n.d. [1927?]), folder 5, both in box 2, Rachel Davis DuBois Papers, Immigration His-
tory Research Center, St. Paul, Minnesota; Rachel Davis DuBois with Corann Okorodud,
All Thisand SomethingMore:Pioneeringin InterculturalEdu-cation(BrynMawr, PA: Dorrance
and Co., 1984), 48-52; AdministrativeAssistant to "Dear _," 18 January 1946, frame 798,
reel 6, part 17; NomaJensen, "Office Record"(n.d. [1945), frame 229, reel 16, part 19B; idem,
"Summaryof Intercultural Education Survey in Trenton, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, and
Minneapolis"(ms, 3 March 1945), frame227, reel 16, part 19B, all in NAACP Papers;Svonkin,
_ews Against Prejudice,52; Jensen, "Annual Report, Jan. 1, 1945-Jan. 1, 1946" (ms, 1946),
frame 796, reel 6, part 17, NAACP Papers. Rachel DuBois and W. E. B. Du Bois were not
related.

educators would have to take heed. "There is no sound reason why enfran-
chised Negroes with their White friends can't change this textbook situa-
tion," Davis concluded.17
Throughout the 1940s, African Americans pressured northern offi-
cials to alter racist texts. In New York City, the NAACP reviewed local
books and publicized their most hateful passages; in Albany it asked state
legislators for a resolution opposing bias in the texts; and in Chicago it
called upon the school board to replace "ex-slave-owners' histories" with
"scientific"ones. Contrary to Davis's predictions, however, White educa-
tors-even self-described"raceliberals"and "intergroupexperts"-ignored
these appeals.Citing new psychological research,some officials argued that
textbooks could not influence prejudice;others attributedBlack complaints
to "hypersensitivity,"itself a symptom of the psychological damage that
prejudicehad wrought. Confronted by an angry Black parent in 1950 about
a history text that defended the Ku Klux Klan, one educator asked the par-
ent, "Areyou sure you are not reading into the text something which was
not intended?" Another official scoffed at complaints against the elemen-
tary school folktale Little Black Sambo, a frequent character in elementary
school readers and a frequent target of Black attacks. "[S]he thought it was
cute," an outraged NAACP member reported, "and when she had read it
to her children they had been very sorry for Little Sambo."'18
As the last example indicates, Black concerns about American text-
books extended far beyond the history curriculum. In 1950, for example,
Blacks in New York blasted a geography text that praised colonialism in
Africa."Becausethe native people ... are very backward,"the text declared,
"the greater part of the continent has come under the control of European
nations." Other critics condemned biology textbooks, which often reflect-
ed eugenic theories of racial hierarchy. Still other Blacks attacked music
textbooks for including songs by Stephen Foster, complete with Foster's
originallexicon-"darkey," "nigger,"and so on. In 1952 the Illinois NAACP
invited Black opera legend Marian Anderson to attend a program on "the
Negro in music" at the state's annual convention. Besides entertaining the
7FrankMarshall Davis, "Now is Strategic Time to Start Improving Our School Text-
books," KansasCity Call, 6 April 1943, frame 119, reel 83, Tuskegee Institute News Clipping
File (Tuskegee: Carver Research Foundation, 1978); Korstad and Lichtenstein, "Opportuni-
ties Found and Lost," 786.
18Roy Wilkins to Noma Jensen, 22 April 1944, frame 257, reel 22, part 16B, NAACP
Papers; Earl Conrad, "Fascism Lives in New York Textbooks," ChicagoDefender,27 April
1946, p. 13; Faith B. Rich, "Summary Report of the 1946 and early 1947 Education Work
. . ." (ms, 1948), folder 39, box 2, Faith Rich Papers, Special Collections, Harold Washing-
ton Library,Chicago Public Libraries,Chicago; Mrs. E. K., "ATextbook in Race Hate" Daily
Worker,17 Feb. 1950, fiche 004.909-1, SCF; Adina Back, "Up South in New York:The 1950s
School Desegregation Struggles" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1997), 83.

54 HistoryofEducation
Quarterly
audience,that programaimed at "improvingthe school curriculaand reliev-

ing the children of all races ... from the Stephen Foster songs," an NAACP
official told Anderson.19
Blacks also registered frequent complaints about bigoted literature
books, starting with the infamous Little Black Sambo.No classroom text
caused more consternation among African Americans than this primary
school tale, which described the jungle adventures of a dark (and ostensi-
bly "Indian")boy who outwits several predatory tigers. Just like racist his-
tory textbooks, a Black leader in Washington, D.C. argued, Little Black
Sambo"violates one of the first rules of intercultural education: mutual
respect for the cultures involved." To White school officials, however, the
storywould promote-not inhibit-this very goal. "Farfrom castingridicule,
the story builds up better racial understanding," district school superin-
tendent Hobart M. Corning told the local NAACP. Besides, Corning added,
the story was "part of the racial heritage of America." If schools removed
every book "which might be construed . . . as derogatory to some groups,"
the nation would soon have very little "heritage"left.20
Here Corning received glowing plaudits from Washington's White
liberal establishment, including the WashingtonPost. The Post had long
fought "racialdiscrimination"in Washington, it proudly noted, endorsing
Black campaigns for equal facilities in public schools. Yet "there is such a
thing as damaging a good cause by pressing it to the point of absurdity,"
the Post warned, denouncing Blacks' "humorless touchiness" about Little
BlackSambo."Sambo"was based upon a novel about an Indian boy, the Post
noted, not a Black one; he was an "entirely sympathetic character,"out-
smartingseveralvicious tigers;and besides, everywork of literatureappeared
to offend one ethnic group or another. The Jonathan Swift masterpiece
Gulliver'sTravelsmocked Catholics and Anglicans, RobinsonCrusoe"seems
to disparage the social status of Carib Indians,"Mother Goosecontained "a
scandalous libel against the Welsh," and so on. "To insist that Negroes be
given equal rights with other citizens is one thing; to insist that their
9NewYork Teachers Union, Biasand Prejudicein Textbooks,18; Franz Boas to Harold

G. Campbell, 25 May 1942, "Campbell, Harold G" folder, Franz Boas Papers, American
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Cora M. Patton to Marian Anderson, 6 Aug. 1952, fold-
er 2, box 3, Rich Papers.
20StephenG. Spottswood to Washington Post, 3 Oct. 1947; "Prosand Cons Pop Around
Little Black Sambo, Still 'Just a Story' to Child," WashingtonPost, 28 Sept. 1947; "'Black
Sambo' Story Use Protested," ibid.,27 Sept. 1947; Hobart A. Corning to William Allyn Hill,
23 Oct. 1947, all in folder 871, box 78-44, Papers of the National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People-Washington, D.C. Branch [hereafterNAACP-DC Papers],Moor-
land-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. For black attacks
upon other literature texts, see, e.g. "AYD Asks Negro on School Board," Daily Worker,24
Jan. 1946, fiche 004.909-1; "How School Officials Poison Children's Minds," Daily Worker,
24 May 1951, fiche 004.909-2, both in SCF.

Brown-ingtheAmericanTextbook 55
particularsensibilities entitle them to exercise a kind of censorship is quite

another," the Post concluded.21
Among avowedly liberal textbook authors, finally, Black complaints
fell on deaf or disdainfulears. Starting in 1950, for example, AfricanAmer-
icans petitioned well-known race liberals Henry Steele Commager and
Samuel Eliot Morison to revise their popular textbook, Growthof theAmer-
icanRepublic,which declared that the American slave-or "Sambo,"as the
text called him-was "adequatelyfed, well cared for, and apparendyhappy."
Privately, the authors joked about Black complaints-"bushman squawks,"
Morison called them-against their book. "Felixthe nigger-baiteris funny!"
Morison told Commager, using the latter's nickname. Miffed by attacks
upon his own liberal credentials, Morison stressed that his daughter was
marriedtoJewish NAACP Presidentjoel Spingarn-and that "Sambo"had
been Morison'schildhood nickname. Eventually,Morison agreed to remove
the term "pickanninies"; in future editions, he quipped, Black children
would be described only as "nice litde seal-brown darlings."But he insist-
ed upon retaining "Sambo,""Uncle Daniel," and several other images of
slave docility. "I'll be damned if I'll take them out for ... anybody,"Mori-
son told Commager.22
Yet White liberals overlooked two important dimensions of the Black
textbook critique in the early postwar period. First, Blacks generally based
their complaints upon history-that is, upon scholarly knowledge-rather
than upon "emotion" or "sensitivity"as patronizing Whites often claimed.
Textbooks that sugarcoated slavery or praised the KKK were not merely
insulting,Blacks insisted; they were also inaccurate.In New York, for exam-
ple, NAACP members conducted a study that compared textbook accounts
of "happy,"Sambo-like slaves to scholarly works by Black historian Carter
G. Woodson. "This study was made not on a basis of racial sensitiveness
or pride," emphasized NAACP secretary Walter White, "but on the high-
est plane of historical accuracy and objectivity." Chicago text critics cited
W. E. B. Du Bois' 1935 classic Black Reconstruction,which undercut the
long-held shibboleth that Blackshad "looted"the South-and that the KKK
had "saved"it-after the Civil War. Blacks even pleaded with Du Bois's
2"Little Black Sambo," WashingtonPost,30 Sept. 1947, folder 871, box 78-44, NAACP-
DC Papers. For other white satires of the Sambocontroversy-accusing blacks of "censor-
ship" as well as "hypersensitivity"-see Everett T. Moore, "Censorshipin the Name of Better
Relations," AmericanLibraryAssociationBulletin,July-August 1961, fiche 004.909-3, SCF;
Phyllis McGinley, "Tiger, Tiger," New Yorker21 (26 Jan. 1946): 22.
22SamuelEliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American
Republic,4th ed., vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 537, 539; NeilJumonville,
Henry SteeleCommager:MidcenturyLiberalismand the Historyof the Present(Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1999), 147, 297n; Robert Bierstedt, "The Writers of Text-
books,"in TextMaterialsin ModernEducation:A Comprehensive Theoryand Platfornfor Research,
ed. LeeJ. Cronbach (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1955), 110.

56 HistoryofEducation
Quarterly
publisher to release a second edition of his book, which had gone out of
print in the early 1940s.23
Meanwhile, Blacktext activistsaimed mainly to diminish White prej-
udice rather than to protect Black egos, despite White charges of "hyper-
sensitivity." To be sure, Washington, D.C. Black leader Stephen G.
Spottswood admitted, Blacks resented the term "Sambo,"just as Italians
despised "Dago" and Jews detested "Christ Killer." But the real reason to
remove the LittleBlackSambotale from schools lay in its effect upon Whites,
not upon Blacks. If White children absorbed the story's message of Black-
as-buffoon, Spottswood argued, they would balk when African Americans
demanded the same rights and privileges as other citizens. But if children
learned that "all men are fundamentally equal," he added, then "the adult
problems of segregation, employment and educational and housing differ-
entials based on race will be resolved."Hardly a sideshow to the civil-rights
struggle, as liberal Whites claimed, text revision was a precondition for its
success.24
Below the Mason-Dixon line, ironically,Whites understood this rela-
tionship all too well. Indeed, southern segregationists condemned Com-
mager and Morison's Growthof theAmericanRepublic,the same book that
called slaves "happy,"as too friendlyto Blacks. The authors provided brief
discussions of racial segregation and campaigns against it, causing many
southern school districts to blacklist their book. Whereas Blacks fought
mostly in vain to remove slurs from northern books, Whites successfully
blocked any positive or sympathetic treatment of Blacks from southern
ones. White supremacistsclearly recognized the power of history to shape
racial attitudes, even if White liberals did not.
In the South: "Integrated Textbooks"and Massive Resistance

In 1952, outraged Whites in Alabama discovered that a state civics
text included a chapter entitled, "Minority Groups Should Share Equally
With All Others in the American Way of Life." Enumerating different
forms of modern-day racialdiscrimination,the chapter also provided a brief
description of the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). News
of the textbook soon reached the desk of Governor Gordon Persons, who
deemed it an insult to "Southern tradition." Ironically, the text's authors
had alreadytaken steps to mollify these Dixie sensibilities; in its discussion
23WalterWhite to John W. Studebaker, 10 May 1941, frame 70, reel 53, The Papersof
W. E. B. Du Bois(New York:Microfilming Corporation of America, 1980); Cora M. Patton
and Faith Rich to "Dear Committee Member," 30 Nov. 1947; HenryW. McGee to ?, 6 March
1947, both in folder 39, box 2, Rich Papers.
24StephenG. Spottswood to Washington Post, 3 Oct. 1947, folder 871, box 78-44,
NAACP-DC Papers.

of the FEPC, for example,the book stressedthat "some authorities"believed

that "you can't get rid of people's prejudicesby passing a law."In the White
South, however, any allusion to "prejudices"was one allusion too many. At
Persons' urging, the state board of education announced that it would drop
the textbook unless the entire chapter about minorities was deleted. The
publisher happily complied, and the text was quickly readopted by the state
of Alabama.25
The Alabama episode illustrated the central theme of southern text-
book politics. To maintain their supremacy,Whites had to delete any men-
tion of theirmisdeeds.Since the earlytwentiethcentury,to be sure,southerners
had fought to remove so-called "anti-Confederate"accounts of slavery, the
Civil War, and Reconstruction.26In 1954, however, the Supreme Court's
Brown v. Boardof Educationdecision accelerated the quest to purge such
viewpoints from the texts. As always, history books provoked the sharpest
controversy. A year after Brown,for example, one text critic told Georgia's
Boardof Educationthat its state history text-published, significantly,above
the Mason-Dixon Line-presented a "Yankee"perspective upon slavery
and segregation, stressing the evils of both systems and neglecting their
"positive"features. "[Niorthern publishers should not be given the chance
to lull southerners into a state of indifference through their version of life
in the south," the critic warned.27
After history texts, books for teaching civics sparked the most out-
rage among White southerners.As in Alabama,critics blasted even the most
tempered allusions to contemporary "social problems"between Blacks and
Whites. But they also bridled at civics texts for undermining the biological
basis of "race"itself. In Georgia, for example, Whites attacked a text that
attributed races' different economic circumstances to "geographic situa-
tion" rather than to inherent characteristics."The American Indian ... had
2"AubreyWilliams to Gordon Persons, 18 July 1952, frame 206; Southern Conference

Educational Fund, "Should all discussion of racial and religious intolerance be suppressed in
the school rooms of a Southern state?"(ms, n.d. [1952]), frame 207, both in reel 10, part 18C,
NAACP Papers; Ruby Hurley to Persons, 27 May 1952; Persons to Herman Talmadge, n.d.
[1952], both enclosed with Herman Talmadge to May Talmadge, 5 June 1952, folder 5, box
8, May Erwin Talmadge Papers, Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.
Established by executive order in 1941, the Fair Employment Practices Committee provided
a frequent flashpoint for white-supremacist dissent in the years before Brownv. Boardof Edu-
cation.Although the FEPC had little practical effect upon workplace discrimination, it sym-
bolized Yankee intrusion into Dixie's allegedly "natural"system of race relations. Dewey W.
Grantham, The Southin ModernAmerica:A Regionat Odds(New York:Harper Collins, 1994),
195-96; David R. Goldfield, Black, White,and Southern:RaceRelationsand SouthernCulture,
1940 to the Present(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 33-37.
26Forbrief accounts of these earlier textbook campaigns in the South, see Gaines M.
Foster, Ghostsof the Confederacy:
Defeat,theLostCause,and theEmergenceof theNew South(New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 180-9 1; Zimmerman, WhoseAmerica?,32-42.
27StateBoard of Education minutes, 12 Sept. 1955, p. 11, folder 5, box 33, Talmadge
Papers.

not emerged far from the level of savagerywhen the White man arrived,"
one angry critic told state officials. If students came to believe that "social
conditions are more important than heredity," the critic continued, they
would eventuallyabandonany distinctionsbetween racialgroups.The result
would be a "free and unhindered mixing of the races," he warned, eroding
the White birthright of genetic superiority.28
Southerners also assailed music textbooks, highlighting significant
regional differences in the postwar textbook controversy. Whereas north-
ern Blacks condemned music books for reprinting slur-filled songs by
Stephen Foster, for example,southern Whites often blasted the same books
for removing the slurs from Foster's songs. In 1955, Georgians attacked a
music text that had alteredFoster's "Old Folks At Home" to read "O, broth-
ers, how my heart grows weary" rather than "O, darkies, how my heart
grows weary."At first glance, one Georgia citizen conceded, "it may seem
a little absurdto ban a whole songbook because one word in one song was
changed."Yet White southerners "understandthe dangers of such things,"
he quickly added, even if other Americans did not. "'There is no place in
Georgia schools any time for anything that disagreeswith our way of life,"'
he concluded, quoting the chairman of the state school board. That board
eventually approved the songbook but only on the condition that its pub-
lisher produce a special "Georgia edition" that included Foster's "original
words."29
Meanwhile, White southern critics also attackedliteraturetextbooks.
Here, again, their complaints inverted the northern pattern;while north-
ern Blacks charged that literature texts slurred African-Americans,south-
ern Whites worried that the texts would bring the races closer together.
Southerners especially bridled at so-called "integrated"children's stories,
startingwithJerold Beim's "The Swimming Hole." In the story, two groups
of boys-one White, one Black-meet at a swimming hole, where they play
happily together. But one White child refuses to swim with the Blacks. He
eventuallyreceives a painfulsunburn,whereupon the other Whites reproach
him. "Suppose we would refuse to play with you now because your face is
red?" they ask the bigoted boy. The story sparked accolades across the
North but outrage in the South, where several states banned it from
the schools. "It is bad enough to have to fight against the Douglasses
and the Javitses and the Humphreys and the Cellers," declared Georgia
28"OurChanging Social Order" (ms, n.d. [1955]), enclosed with George C. Dean to
May Talmadge, 22 April 1955, folder 8, box 8, Talmadge Papers.
29StateBoard of Education minutes, 11 April 1955, p. 13, folder 3, box 33; State Board
of Education minutes, 2 May 1955, pp. 14-15, folder 4, box 33; "Name Withheld," "Opinion
Offered on Textbook Revisions,"AtlantaJournal, 16 May 1955, folder 5, box 50; State Board
of Education minutes, 24 May 1955, p. 9, folder 4, box 33; State Board of Education minutes
12 Dec. 1955, p. 1, folder 5, box 33, all in Talmadge Papers.

Brown-ingtheAmericanTextbook 59
segregationist CharlesJ. Bloch in 1959, condemning Beim's story, "but to

have to fight against the enemies in our own midst is worse." Significant-
ly, the politicians whom Bloch enumerated were all northern supporters of
racial integration. Just as the South resisted "mixed"classrooms, he urged,
so must it reject textbooks that promoted them.30
No children's story was safe from racist southern censors. Alabama
critics asked school officials to drop TheRabbits'Wedding,which described
the nuptials of a Black hare and a White one. The issue soon entered the
state legislature, where at least one lawmaker demanded that the story be
burnedas well as removed from the schools. A second book byjerold Beim-
Twois a Team,describing a pair of Black and White playmates-earned the
censure of Alabama's Ku Klux Klan, which deemed the new story "a lot
worse" than The Rabbits'Wedding.As late as 1964, finally, White parents
in Florida excoriated a new edition of The ThreeLittle Pigs for portraying
the black pig as "better"than the white one. Unlike northern liberals, in
short, southern segregationists never doubted the influence of textbooks
upon American racism. The White South would not stand idly by while its
schoolbooks impugned White supremacy.3"
Brown-ing the American Textbook:From History to Psychology

In 1955, a Black advocate for "integrated" history celebrated the
Supreme Court's most historic ruling about race: Brownv. Boardof Educa-
tion. Handed down the previous year, Brownrejected state measures that
had segregated Black schoolchildren from Whites. As the speakerwarned,
however, "realintegration"requiredchanged minds as well as changed laws.
"Legal gains and favorable court decisions . . . cannot complete the work
that must be done," he declared, "The spirit of legal justice must permeate
the undercurrents of community life." Specifically, he stressed, children
needed "accurateknowledge about ALL peoples, ALL races, and even ALL
classes and branches of human society"-in other words, an understanding
of history. Otherwise, White children would continue to despise Black
ones-no matter where Blackswent to school.32
30CharlesJ.Bloch to James S. Peters, 4 March 1959; May Talmadge to Bloch, 5 March

1959, both in folder 12, box 30, Talmadge Papers.
3Fred Thompson, "Textbooks and Racial Pressure Groups," Freedomof Information
CenterReportNo. 195, pp. 6-7, "Task Force-Readings" folder, box 2, Racism and Bias Task
Force File; "Pressures on the Libraries,"Freedomof InformationCenterReportNo. 134, p. 6,
"Censorship Materials 1964" folder, Censorship File, both in National Council of Teachers
of English Papers [hereafter "NCTE"], University Archives, University of Illinois, Cham-
paign, IL.
32"NegroHistory in the Curriculum,"Negro HistoryBulletin (December 1955), fiche
003-565-2, SCF. The unidentified speaker delivered his address to the annual conference of
the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, America's oldest and most influen-
tial black history organization. Founded in 1915 by Carter G. Woodson, the ASNLH would

Yet the Brown decision itself focused only upon Black psyches, not
upon White ones. Segregating Black children "generates a feeling of infe-
riority ... that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to
be undone," the Supreme Court intoned. Here the Court cited new "psy-
chological knowledge," starting with research by Harlem scholar Kenneth
B. Clark. In a series of experiments conducted with his wife, Mamie, Clark
demonstrated that Black children preferred White dolls and pictures to
Black ones. Although the Clarks did not show that this bias was more pro-
nounced among children in all-Black environments, the Court presumed
a strong link between Blacks' alleged "inferiority complex" and their seg-
regation in public schools. Nor did the justices take note of the Clarks'work
on White personalities, which were also found to suffer injury from racial
prejudice. In the Court's unanimous decision, the evil of segregation lay
solely in its evil effect upon African Americans.33
Emphasizinglegal separationof the races,Browndid not addressissues
of curriculum.But integrationists were quick to apply Brown'spremises to
textbooks, warning that "segregated"schoolbooks, like segregated schools,
would harm minority children. "The individual Negro is inhibited in his
thoughts, aspirations,and activities by his own mental concepts of himself
and his racialgroup,"wrote a Springfield,Massachusetts,guidancecounselor
in 1957. "[He] is unaware of a culture which can give him pride and self-
respect; he knows only a civilization in which the contributions of his race
... have been either discredited or forgotten." Springfield had been a pio-
neer in intergroupeducation,establishingsystem-wide"pro-tolerance"activ-
ities thatwere widely imitatedacrossthe nation in the 1940s. But the program
failed to alter feelings of resentment and inferiority among the "average
Negro," the counselor wrote, who "lacksthat pride of ancestrywhich other
minorities... find it necessaryto retain."Schools needed to pick up the slack,
lest AfricanAmericanssink furtherinto anger and self-hatred.34
Significantly, this essay appeared in the Journal of Negro Education
(7NE),a leading voice for Black civil rights since the 1930s. Before Brown,
the JNE and other African-American periodicals had emphasized the
change its name in 1972 to the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and Histo-
ry. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, BlackHistoryand the HistoricalProfession,1915-1980
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 14, 301.
33Brownv. Board of Educationof Topeka,Kansas,347 U.S. 483; Kluger, SimpleJustice,
318-19,353-56; Scott, Contemptand Pity, 229n; Herman, RomanceofAmerican Psychology,
183-84.
34WalterH. English, "MinorityGroup Attitudes of Negroes and Implicationsfor Guid-
ance,"Journal of Negro Education26 (Spring 1957): 99-100, 105. On the intergroup "Spring-
field Plan" and its influence in other cities, see Clarence I. Chatto and Alice L. Halligan, The
Stoiy of the SpringfieldPlan (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1945); Mordecai Grossman, "The
Schools Fight Prejudice: An Appraisalof the Intercultural Education Movement," Commen-
tary 1 (April 1946): 36.

corrosive effect of racist texts upon children of every race.35After Brown,

however, Black activistsbegan to emphasize the mental status of Black chil-
dren. Flooding into northern school offices and classrooms, Black text crit-
ics linkedtheir campaignto sit-in protestsin the South.Just as demonstrations
at lunch counters would free Black adults from oppressive laws, one New
York protester explained, text revision would liberate "the mind and heart"
of African-Americanchildren. "We regard ourselves as engaged in a fight
for the Negro's most precious possession-for any man's most precious
possession-his dignity," declared a Black activist in Detroit, condemning
a textbook that portrayed "happy"slaves. So long as Blacks could not "see
themselves" in their schoolbooks, a Los Angeles spokesman added, their
psyches would remain in chains.36
To these text critics, the mere removal of offensive material would
not suffice. Borrowing another term from social psychology, activistsinsist-
ed that Black children needed to "identify" with their textbooks. "What
would you think if you were a child born and brought up anywhere in
Harlem [with] textbooks which ignored your existence?"askedAmsterdam
News commentator Gertrude Wilson. "You would begin to think that you
didn't exist."Especially in elementary schools, all-White textbooks like the
"Dick and Jane" series-a relic of the 1920s-still predominated. "Text-
books simply do not present a picture of America as it is today," fumed a
Detroit critic. "They do not enable children to establishidentity or to devel-
op a measure of belief in themselves and their future."A 1962 cartoon in a
New York teachers' journal vividly captured this new critique. It showed
an African-Americanmother reading a textbook, labeled "The First Read-
er," to her young daughter, who asks plaintively, "Where Am I?"The car-
toon's title provided a stark and simple answer: "Still Missing."37
3"Foran example of earlier attacks on racist textbooks in the JNE, targeting the effect
of these texts on white as well as black readers, see Jack Abramowitz, "Common Distortions
in Textbook Treatment of Slavery,"journal of Negro Education18 (Winter 1949): 16-18; for
similar attacks in other black publications, see "Mississippi Takes the Lead," Negro History
Bulletin2 (November 1938): 12; "Negro Textbooks in the Public Schools," BlackDispatch,26
April 1939, frame 155, reel 63; "The Negro's Debut in Chicago Schools," ChicagoBee, 7 June
1942, frame 521, reel 78, both in Tuskegee Institute News Clipping File; "JustGive Her a
Generation," Negro Digest 1 (October 1943): 3.
36PearlWithers to "Dear Friend," 26 January 1962, fiche 003.560-2, SCF; Detroit
School Board minutes, 22 Jan. 1963, p. 389, "Task Force-Readings" folder, box 2, NCTE;
"Criticismof Land of the Free" (ms, 25 July 1966), p. 140, folder 842, California Department
of Education Records [hereafterCDER], California State Archives, Sacramento, California.
37GertrudeWilson, "The Text of our Textbooks," AmsterdamNews, 6 July 1963, p. 11;
Detroit School Board minutes, 25 June 1968, p. 681, "Task Force Readings" folder, box 2,
Racism and Bias Task Force File, NCTE; "Still Missing," New YorkTeacherNews, 10 Feb.
1962, fiche 004.909-3, SCF. For other comments about the need for black "identification"
with textbooks, see "UL Warns of 'Squandering' Child Potentials," Urban League press
release, 3 April 1963; "Harlem Parents to Write Primer,"New YorkTimes,27 December 1964,
both in fiche 004.909-3, SCF.

From the NAACP and the Urban League to the Congress of Racial
Equality and the Black Panthers, nearly every leading African-American
organizationjoined the push for textbooks that would promote Black "iden-
tity" in the 1960s.38Across the ideological spectrum, moreover, all of them
cited the psychological damage of bigoted texts upon Black psyches. "As
long as the mind is enslaved the body can never be free," Martin Luther
King, Jr. wrote in 1968, urging Blacks to reject history textbooks that had
stunted their confidence and pride. "With a spirit straining toward true
self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnega-
tion and say to himself and the world: 'I am somebody. I am a man with
dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history ... I am Black and come-
ly."' The following year, after King's murder, the Black Panthers invoked
nearly identical language in their own attack upon racist texts. "We want
education that teaches us our true history," the Panthers underlined. "If a man
does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the
world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else." Whatever their
differences,King and the Panthers both viewed history as a cause of Blacks'
old sense of inferiority; at the same time, they also saw it as a potential
source for a new Black identity.39
Meanwhile, taking note of the high school failure and dropout rates
among Blacks, African Americans increasingly linked these problems to
prejudicedhistory books. A 1968 cartoon by Black animatorBrumsic Bran-
don showed a class full of beaming White children and one bored, listless
Black boy. At the front of the classroom, the White teacher grinned as she
read from a textbook: "Then the good cowboy, all dressed in white, beat
up the bad guy, who was dressed in Black, put on his white hat, mounted
his white stallion and rode off into the sunset." The message was clear;
because the curriculum ignored or denigrated Blacks, as another critic
explained, they had little "motivation" to learn. "Anyone who is Black is
taught . . . that Negroes are not a civilization or culture," the prominent
38Theterm "identity" was most closely associated with psychoanalyst Erik Erikson,
who used it to describe the necessary process whereby individualslinked themselves to human
communities-in the past as well as in the present. A close student of Black literature and his-
tory, Erikson warned that African-Americansfaced an especially difficult task in this regard:
Blacks "are made to feel so inexorably 'different,"' he wrote, "that legal desegregation can
only be the beginning of a long and painful inner re-identification." Erikson understood that
Blacks across the political spectrum-not just in the "Black Power" movement-needed to
construct a black identity, and that each individual would do so in his or her own way. Her-
man, RomanceofAmericanPsychology,292; Gitlin, Twilightof CommonDreams, 127; Lawrence
J. Friedman, Identity'sArchitect:A Biographyof Erik H. Erikson(New York: Scribner, 1999),
261.
39MartinLuther King, Jr., WhereDo We Go From Here? Chaosor Community(Boston:
Beacon Press, 1968), 43-44; John Brown Society, An Introductionto the BlackPanther Party
(n.p., May 1969), p. 2, Black Power General File, Tamiment Library, New York University.

authorJames Baldwintold a 1968 Congressional hearing. "Youcannot edu-

cate a child if you first destroy his morale."40
New York RepresentativeJames Scheuer, co-sponsor of a bill to cre-
ate a national commission on Black history, had convened that hearing. He
reflected the growing consensus among powerful White liberalswho read-
ily embraced the African-American critique of racist textbooks. Whereas
an earlier generation of "interculturalists"had dismissed texts as irrelevant,
White liberalsin the post-Brownera chose to emphasize them. To Scheuer,
indeed, nothing less than the War on Poverty-and the fate of its largely
Black clientele-lay in the balance. "Until the American Negro student can
have an enhanced image of himself and his heritage and historical back-
ground,"Scheuer declared,"ourNegro fellow Americanswill remain alien-
ated, and our antipoverty, education, and job training programs will be
measurablyless effective."A similarargumentappearedin the Kerner Com-
mission Report on Civil Disorders, a landmark of 1960s race liberalism.
Although the report blamed "White racism"for urbanriots, it devoted most
of its analysis to the ways in which public institutions-including school
textbooks-supposedly scarredthe Black psyche. "Designed to serve a mid-
dle-class culture, much educationalmaterial appearsirrelevantto the youth
of the racial and economic ghetto," the Kerner Commission claimed.
"Reduced motivation to learn results."41
But winning actualmodifications in textbooks proved easier said than
done, as this burgeoninginterracialalliancewould soon discover.The Amer-
ican textbook industry, a multibillion dollar behemoth with a built-in aver-
sion to change, presented the biggest obstacle. Each new product required
an enormous investment of capital, one close observer of the industry
explained, "so that asking a text publisher to rewrite a history book is a lit-
tle like asking General Motors to design a new car."Publishers were espe-
cially wary of losing business in the South, where most textbook adoption
occurred at the state level, and the cancellation of a single contract could
cripple an entire firm. "When a publisher goes before an adoption com-
mittee in a southern state," an industry representative revealed in 1965,
"the first question he is askedis, 'Are there any pictures of Negroes in these
books of yours?"' Amid escalating complaints in the North, then, publish-
ers frequently published two editions of their textbooks: an "integrated"
40BrumsicBrandon,Jr., "Readin'Ritin''Rithmetic Racism," in Harlem:A Community

in Transition,ed. John Henrik Clarke (New York: Citadel Press, 1969), 228; Charles E. Stew-
art, "Correcting the Image of Negroes in Textbooks," Negro HistoryBulletin 38 (November
1964): 42; "H. R. 12962," 114 Congr., 2 sess., September 17, 1968, p. 27307.
41"Providing for Establishment of Commission on Negro History and Culture," 114
Congr., 2 sess., Sept. 16, 1968, p. 27016; Herman, RomanceofAmericanPsychology,220, 233;
Reportof the NationalAdvisoryCommissionon Civil Disorders(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968),
434.

version above the Mason-Dixon Line and an all-white (or "mint-julep")

volume below it. As late as 1967, the dual editions for one elementary-
school reader even sported different covers. The Northern cover displayed
two boys-one White, one Black-and a model of a ship; but the South-
ern volume airbrushed out the African American, leaving only the white
child and the ship.42
Widely reported in the press, the dual-edition phenomenon sparked
angry denunciations of the textbook industry across the urban North. By
tailoring their wares to southern racism, one educator wrote, publishers
sacrificed both "intellectual integrity and sound scholarship" on the altar
of "sectional interests." Other critics simply indicted publishers' worship
of Mammon. As one publisher of dual editions acknowledged, his compa-
ny aimed to "serve our existing customers";in the book business, he gra-
tuitously added, "the customer chooses." To critics, however, textbooks
represented one realm where the customer-at least the racist customer-
should not be allowed to choose. In a 1965 address to a conference of pub-
lishers, Urban League Director Whitney Young urged them to print "what
people ought to know," not just what would sell. "Don't approach inte-
gration like castor oil," Young pleaded. "For once, look at something not
as a problem but as an opportunity.... Let's be honest and report history
as it happened."43
Yet as Young went on to admit, newly "integrated"texts in the North
could contain their own distortions. To appeaseWhite supremacists,racist
textbooks had denigratedor ignored AfricanAmericans;but to satisfyurban
Blackconstituencies, Young delicatelywarned, revised texts sometimes gave
Blacks "too much credit for originality."The founder of civil disobedience
in the United States was not contemporary Black activistJames Farmer, as
one text implied, but rather Boston Tea Party sparkplug Samuel Adams,
Young noted. Nor had civil rights workers pioneered the "sit-in" form of
protest, which had been used by striking labor unions many years earlier.
Theoretically, no necessarycontradictionexisted between therapyand accu-
racy:one could choose materialsthat promoted "Blackidentity"and respect-
ed the historical record. But choosing subjects on the basis of identity
42DorothySterling, untitled speech (ms, 26 July 1967), pp. 11-12, fiche 003.560-5,
SCF; Helen Bailey, unpublished statement (ms, 1 March 1963), folder 16, box 12, Logan
Papers;Hillel Black, TheAmericanSchoolbook (New York:William Morrow, 1967), 119; Nation-
al Urban League, Textbooks,Civil Rights,and the Educationof theAmericanNegro (n.p., 1965),
p. 5, fiche 004.909-4, SCF; Harry Golden, "SegregatedTextbooks," NegroHistoryBulletin30
(Oct. 1967): 20-21.
43AaronN. Slotkin, "The Treatment of Minorities in Textbooks: The Issues and The
Outlook," StrengtheningDemocracy41 (May 1964): 2, folder 22, box 39, Philadelphia Fellow-
ship Commission Papers, Urban Archives, Temple University; Black, AmericanSchoolbook,
119; National Urban League, Textbooks,Civil Rights,and the Educationof theAmericanNegro,
p. 2.

imposed its own form of bias, as social studies teacher and future historian
Larry Cuban wrote presciently in 1967: "Selecting materials that will have
youngsters think well of themselves . . . implies a manipulative use of his-
torical sources to obtain a so-called desirable end. Such a maneuver bor-
ders on propagandizing and leaves oneself open to the charge of using
precisely the same methods employed by bigots."4
Inspired by Black protest, meanwhile, other racial minorities began
to demand textbooks that provided "all students"with "images and identi-
fication," as a Chicano/a spokesmanin Californiawrote. Texts that exclud-
ed Chicanos "generate in [their] minds feelings of inferiority and tend to
make them ashamed,"another activist added, closely echoing the rhetoric
of Brown v. Board of Education.To a team of Latino/a and Asian critics,
meanwhile, textbooks' new attention to African Americans reinforced the
"generalizedU.S. stereotype" that "only the Black man suffered from prej-
udice."Across the country, publishersdutifullyinserted new material about
Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. Yet here too, self-esteem and
group pride trumpedhistoricaltruth. Lest Hispanics take offense, for exam-
ple, texts shortened or removed their accounts of Indian massacres by the
Spanishconquistadors.Nor did most texts make mention of Africaninvolve-
ment in the slave trade, which might alienate Black constituencies. "The
principle that lies behind textbook history is that the inclusion of nasty
information constitutes bias even if the information is true," surmised
Frances Fitzgerald, in a 1979 essay focused largely upon textbooks from
the 1960s.45
Finally, even Whites adopted this new psychological rhetoric as a
weapon against textbook revision.Especiallyin history texts, Whites warned,
too much material about slavery, segregation, or Indian genocide would
harm their own children's mental health. "Psychiatristssay it is important
for children not to feel guilt for things that are not their fault," declared
one California parent, condemning a new text that was coauthored by the
Black historian John Hope Franklin. When White children encountered
the book, another parent feared, they would "be made to feel guilty over
the past over which they had no control, and about which they knew noth-
ing." Indeed, a third critic added,Franklin'stext was sure to provoke a "guilt
complex" within brittle White egos. "Education is getting a positive self-
image about oneself," complained a White parent in Michigan, blasting a
'National Urban League, Textbooks,Civil Rights,and the Education,p. 2; Larry Cuban,

"Not 'Whether?' But 'Why? and How?,"' Journal of Negro Education36 (Fall 1967): 435. See
also Thompson, "Textbooks and Racial Pressure Groups," p. 5.
45Eugene Gonzalez to Ellsworth Chunn, 3 April 1967, folder 843, CDER; "Textbook
Crisis in California," InterracialBooksforChildren4 (Winter 1972-73), pp. 1-2, 8-9, box 11
(no folder), Racism and Bias Task Force File, NCTE; Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised
(New York:Vintage, 1979), 96.

textbook that describedWhite attacksupon Blacksduringthe Chicago Race

Riot of 1919. "No child, White or Black, will get a positive image by read-
ing about stabbings, war, the problems."46
Once psychological health had been enshrined as a central goal of
American history instruction, in short, it became difficult, or even impos-
sible, to address a central theme of that same history-racism. To be sure,
many Blackscontinued to stress the effect of bigoted textbooks upon White
prejudice. In the same breath as he blasted textbooks for fueling Blacks'
"sense of worthlessness," Martin Luther King, Jr. also said that the texts
would "augmentthe anachronisticdoctrine of White supremacy."47 But the
new emphasis upon self-esteem prevented the textbooks themselves from
examining racism, a subject that could only injure the feelings of its per-
petuators as well as its victims. By the 1970s, Frances Fitzgerald observed,
texts depicted Blacks "struggling for rights"-but rarelynoted "whatthese
guys are struggling against."48 Lest any American group suffer a slight to its
psyche, American textbooks would celebrate all of them.
Conclusion: The Textbook Revolution and Identity Politics

In July of 1968, a publishing spokesman declared that America had
entered its "second textbook revolution." The first one occurred after the
1957 launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite, which sparkeda "thor-
oughgoing revision" of science textbooks. The other revolution surround-
ed the treatment of AfricanAmericans, especially in history books. Starting
with Brown v. Board of Education and picking up steam in the 1960s, the
campaign for "integrated" texts had produced "a whole host of new or
revised textbooks which give us a better picture of the Negro's role in our
country," the spokesman boasted.49
He was right. Textbooks underwent an enormous transformationin
the 1960s, first in the North and then, more remarkably, in the South.
4"Criticismof Land of the Free," 130, 142, 119; "New U.S. History Textbooks Putting
Stress on Minorities' Contribution to Building Nation," New YorkTimes,28 April 1974, fiche
004.909-4, SCF.
47King,WhereDo We Go From Here?, 41. For other examples of Blacks' continued
emphasis upon textbooks as a cause-and a potential remedy-for white racism, see "On the
Use of Biased Textbooks," Norfolkjournal and Guide, 3 Nov. 1962, fiche 004-909-3, SCF;
"Principal Urges Teaching Negro History to All Pupils," PhiladelphiaEvening Bulletin, 29
Feb. 1968, "Schools-Philadelphia-African-American-Studies" folder, box 204, Philadel-
phia Evening Bulletin News Clipping Collection, Urban Archives, Temple University; Hoyt
Gimlin, "American History: Reappraisaland Revision," EditorialResearchReports2 (5 Nov.
1969), fiche 003-560-8, SCF.
48Fitzgerald,AmericaRevised,101. On history textbooks' ongoing neglect of racism, see
James W. Loewen, Lies My TeacherToldMe: EverythingYourAmericanHistoryTextbookGot
Wrong(New York: Touchstone, 1995), 137-70.
49J.Anthony Lukas, "Educators Turn to a Balanced Teaching of Negroes' Role in
American History," New YorkTimes,8 July 1968, fiche 003.560-6, SCF.

Three decades later, it is easy to forget the insults that racialminorities suf-
fered from previoustextbooks;the resistancethat they met when they sought
to change the books;and the radicalimprovementsthat their effortswrought.
As early as 1962, a new edition of Commager and Morison's text replaced
their notorious "Sambo"passage with material about slave rebellions; by
1970, one reviewer surmised, most schoolbooks presented "a dramatically
different set of facts"about slavery,the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the
civil rights movement itself. A 1964 edition of Henry W. Bragdon's Histo-
ry of a Free People declared that slaves "were seldom cruelly treated";just
three years later, a new edition of the book said slaves "were treated like
cattle." Other texts added information about a host of African-American
luminaries,ranging from Denmark Veysey and FrederickDouglass to Mar-
tin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X. By 1967, the Wall Street Journal would
report that northern textbook buyers were "carefullychecking indexes" to
see how new products addressed, or ignored, the experience of Blacks and
other minorities.50
In the North, ironically, the rise of "integrated"textbooks reflected
the decline of integrated schools. Whites abandoned public schools for pri-
vate schools or the suburbs, creating a host of Black-majorityurban school
districtsand a powerfulmarketfor new history books. Thanks to strong fed-
eral oversight, meanwhile, southern schools would soon become more inte-
gratedthan their northern counterparts;by 1970, indeed, one-third of Black
children in the South would attend a majority-White school. Textbooks
integrated as well, sprinklingtheir pages with pictures and praise of famous
AfricanAmericans.As in the North, though, the revised books followed the
iron law of American textbook politics-offend no one. Despite new pas-
sages about Black freedom fighters, for example, southern texts still exalted
Robert E. Lee and the Confederate struggle against "invading"Yankees.
Just as Blacksneeded celebratoryhistory to heal the wounds of racism,whites
argued, so did Dixie's sons and daughtersrequire psychic compensation for
their "Lost Cause"in the Civil War. "ForGod's sake,"railed a White south-
ern school official in 1970, "give us some history to be proud of."5'
50SamuelEliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American
Republic,5th ed., vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 524-27;JuelJanis, "Text-
book Revisions in the Sixties,"TeachersCollegeRecord72 (Dec. 1970): 300, 293; Henry Wilkin-
son Bragdon, "Dilemmas of a Textbook Writer," SocialEducation33 (March 1969): 297; Peter
H. Prugh, "The Black Past: Civil Rights Movement Spurs Interest in Role of Negroes in His-
tory," Wall StreetJournal, 17 May 1967, fiche 003.560-5, SCF.
5Zimmerman, WhoseAmerica?,126-27; Gary Orfield, "The Growth of Segregation,"
in Dismantling Desegregation:The Quiet Reversalof Brown v. Board of Education, ed. Gary
Orfield and Susan Eaton (New York:New Press, 1996), 58; letter from Andrew Blunt, Times-
Dispatch[Richmond, VA.], 26 Feb. 1970, accession 7690-ac, Virginius Dabney Papers, Alder-
man Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

The final comment provides a convenient epigramfor America'spost-

war textbook revolution, which reflected an even broader revolution in
political culture. Swayed by the burgeoning discipline of psychology, more
and more Americans defined public problems in terms of individual men-
tal health. In the realm of race, psychologists initially focused on the dis-
eased,irrationalminds of "prejudiced" Whites. But Brown v. Board of Education
helped shift attention to the psyches of African Americans, who demand-
ed textbooks that would relieve their sense of inferiority and would protect
their nascent identity. Hardly a creature of modern-day multiculturalism,
as many accounts would imply, "identitypolitics"was rooted in civil rights-
era liberalism itself.52Prefiguring many multiculturalists today, textbook
activists defined their politics along racial or ethnic lines in order to make
each individual feel fixed, grounded, and proud.53
As historian Ellen Herman has reminded us, such psychological
approaches could be "politically enriching and liberating," especially for
women and racialminorities.54But they could also become politicallyimpov-
erished and constrictive, blinding Americans to the very racism that had
spawned identity politics in the first place. If every individual retained the
right to a "positiveimage," after all, no text could introduce a negative truth
about anyone-including White people. When Blacks won new material
about their triumphaldeeds, moreover, they clearedthe way for other groups
to do the same. So textbooks billowed to 700 or even 800 pages, giving
every group "some history to be proud of' but diverting them from the
painful history they shared.55
Nor was it clear that "positive"history actually improved minorities'
pride-or, especially,minorities'academicperformancein schools. By 1968,
indeed, America's most prominent Black psychologist would question
whether history could affect the Black psyche at all. "You cannot give
pride to an adolescent who is four or five years retarded in reading and
52According to historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, for example, the 1980s and 1990s wit-
nessed a "shift from civil rights universalism to the Black identity movement." In workplaces
as well as schools, she argues, "The [Black]therapeutic movement, with this ethos of empow-
erment, has trumped the civil rights movement, with its vision of the just society." Likewise,
Todd Gitlin chronicles "the swerve from civil rights, emphasizing a universal condition and
universalizablerights, to culturalseparatism,emphasizing difference and distinct needs." Both
authors date this development to the Black Power movement of the late 1960s, which opened
the way for a profusion of identity-based challenges to the civil rights ideal. As the textbook
debate shows, however, "identity politics" lay firmly inside the mainstream of 1960s liberal-
ism-not just on its radical fringes. Lasch-Quinn, RaceExperts,xii, 159; Gitlin, Twilight of
CommonDreams, 153, 128-34.
53This formulation closely follows the analysisin Doug Rossinow, ThePoliticsofAuthen-
ticity:Liberals,Christians,and theNew Left in America(New York: Columbia University Press,
1998),343.
14lHerman, RomanceofAmericanPsychology,312.
55Forfurther explanation and evidence of this point, see Zimmerman, WhoseAmerica?,
esp. 6-7, 214, 221-22.

understanding and using English by trying to teach him ... racial heritage
or racialidentification,"warnedKenneth B. Clark,in a meeting with Robert
F. Kennedy and several other leading White liberals. "Pride comes from
the ability of the individual to deal with the demands of his environment
competently and competitively."5i6 As chief academic architect of Brown,
Clark still maintained that segregation and discrimination had damaged
Blacks'mental health. But a lasting cure for the disease would require true
racial integration and equality, not simply a new set of reading materials.
No matter how many pages or peoples they added, it seemed, American
history textbookscould never bear the historic burdenthat Americansplaced
upon them.
"6"GhettoEducation," CenterMagazine 1 (November 1968): 51.


History Books

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

History Books

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

History of Education Society

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

In June 1944, a delegation of African-Americanleadersmet with New York

Jonathan Zimmerman is Director of the History of Education Program at Steinhardt School

Historyof EducationQuarterly Vol. 44 No. 1 Spring 2004

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

John E. Wade himself a strong advocate of "interculturaleducation"-

concern for the less well-off." Sniderman and Carmines, ReachingBeyondRace(Cambridge:

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

of African Americans, Woodland added, Black children would continue to

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

This article uses struggles over school textbooks to probe America's

8Recently,historians have emphasized the critical role of World War II in galvanizing

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

In the North: Black Americans versus Intergroup Education

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

focus from ethnicity to race and, especially, to African Americans."3Two

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

From its inception, AfricanAmericanswere strong supportersof inter-

State University of New York Press, 1998),108; Stuart Svonkin,jjewsAgainstPrejudice: Amer-

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

audience,that programaimed at "improvingthe school curriculaand reliev-

9NewYork Teachers Union, Biasand Prejudicein Textbooks,18; Franz Boas to Harold

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

particularsensibilities entitle them to exercise a kind of censorship is quite

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

In the South: "Integrated Textbooks"and Massive Resistance

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

of the FEPC, for example,the book stressedthat "some authorities"believed

2"AubreyWilliams to Gordon Persons, 18 July 1952, frame 206; Southern Conference

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

segregationist CharlesJ. Bloch in 1959, condemning Beim's story, "but to

Brown-ing the American Textbook:From History to Psychology

30CharlesJ.Bloch to James S. Peters, 4 March 1959; May Talmadge to Bloch, 5 March

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

corrosive effect of racist texts upon children of every race.35After Brown,

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

authorJames Baldwintold a 1968 Congressional hearing. "Youcannot edu-

40BrumsicBrandon,Jr., "Readin'Ritin''Rithmetic Racism," in Harlem:A Community

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

version above the Mason-Dixon Line and an all-white (or "mint-julep")

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

'National Urban League, Textbooks,Civil Rights,and the Education,p. 2; Larry Cuban,

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

textbook that describedWhite attacksupon Blacksduringthe Chicago Race

Conclusion: The Textbook Revolution and Identity Politics

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

The final comment provides a convenient epigramfor America'spost-

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

"6"GhettoEducation," CenterMagazine 1 (November 1968): 51.

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:13:15 AM

You might also like