Becoming an African American Progressive Educator: Narratives From 1940s Black Progressive High Schools

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Black Education: Ideology and Access

Abstract

The Secondary School Study, sponsored by the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes and funded by the General Education Board, was conducted between 1940-1946 to assist high school teachers in seventeen selected African American high schools with their administrative, curricular, and instructional methodology. Three reports/monographs were submitted by individual schools as creative, non-fiction narratives, describing specific classroom practices and portraying how faculty and students coped with the problems of program development. This paper introduces the three school narratives and analyzes the content for the intent of initiating change in black segregated schools in the American Southeast. These narratives offers new insights for understanding black education during the Jim Crow era.

Author

• Craig Kridel, University of South Carolina