“The Dissemination of the Truth”: Black Educators’ Continued Fight for Social Studies Curricula, 1940-1970

• In Event: Genealogies of Black Possibility within 20th Century Black Education

Abstract

Overview
This paper seeks to answer Brown and Au’s (2014) decade-old call to action — wherein they articulate their argument for the race-based gap within the historiography of curriculum development in the United States. Brown and Au (2014) argued that the historiography of curriculum development, theorization, and implementation, ranging from the 1900s to 2014, silences the contributions of Black educators and educators of color to curriculum development in the U.S. In order to further clarify the historical record, this paper follows a thirty-year genealogy of Black educators’ actions to provide and protect Black histories and accurate social studies curriculum within three spheres of racial-educational conflicts: at the sites of segregated Black schools in the 1940s via curriculum development, at the sites of desegregated schools in the 1950s and 1960s via litigation, and at the sites of Black Freedom schools in the 1970s via curriculum development. This paper explores the questions: How have Black curriculum orientations in social studies education — and the curriculum's subsequent effects on Black students — been identified historiographically? How might the expansion of this historical record affect modern Black liberation within modern U.S. history classrooms?

Historiographical Contributions
The historiography of Black educators' contributions to curriculum development in the 20th century has historically been inaccurate if not comprehensively absent (Watkins, 1993). The archival research in this paper seeks to further fill the historiographical gap within our understanding of history and social studies curriculum development in the U.S., through analysis of archival records of Black educators’ orientations in social studies and history curriculum throughout the height of curriculum movement from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Sources
This paper utilizes educational and legal histories to elucidate and nuance the ways Black educators are positioned in the historiographical context of history and social studies curriculum development — due to Black educators’ little documented instrumental contributions. The data sources include the use of legal records, court documents, Black teaching professional journals, academic articles, and newspaper clippings, located through the Legal Defense Fund’s Recollection legal archive, the Black Teacher’s Archive, the Journal of Negro History, and the Journal of Negro Education.

Scholarly Significance
In order to address problematic and harmful practices within social studies curricula and classes in 2025 and to identify a path forward to support students, we must be able to articulate how educators have aimed to protect students historically. This genealogy of Black educator’s practices and non-negotiables for social studies curricula, seeks to provide clarity so educators and researchers alike may better understand the tools previously used to support Black students for the liberation of our collective futures. This paper aims to understand Black educators and communities as consistent Black history knowledge bearers resistant to adversity and oppression, as historical producers of Black student well-being through social studies curricula, and as integral designers of social studies curriculum in the 20th century in the United States of America.

Author

• Ziyen Curtis, University of Wisconsin - Madison