Race, Gender, and Educational Innovation: Taking Over James Forten School, Philadelphia, 1888–1900

• In Event: 33.030 - Case Studies of Educators: Interrogating the Role of the Individual

Abstract

In Philadelphia in the late 1880s, enthusiasm for industrial education intersected with increasing concerns about the need for “radical improvement” at James Forten Elementary School, one of the city’s oldest “colored” schools. Several white, female philanthropists—among the city’s most ardent supporters of African-American education and welfare—executed an energetic, coercive, and ultimately successful campaign to transform the James Forten into Philadelphia’s first primary-level industrial training school. This transformation occurred at the expense of the school’s first African-American principal and despite protests from African-American community members. This paper explains the complex ways in which race, gender, personal prejudice, enthusiasm regarding innovative pedagogical methods, and idealistic goals interacted in this instance to produce primarily negative outcomes for Black children’s education.

Author

• Deborah S. Valentine, Saint Joseph's University