Contingent Educational Institutionalization: Racial Conflict and Education in the 19th Century South

• In Event: 20880 - Historical Foundations and New Directions: 21st Century Sociology of Education

Abstract

Prior theories of educational institutionalization tend to overlook conflict and contingencies in the process and assume it is top-down and elite-driven. We use a case where educational institutionalization was slow and driven by lower-status groups to improve these theories. We analyze the expansion of basic schooling in the U.S. South after the Civil War, first testing the hypothesis that white schooling expanded in part as a competitive response to a surge of postwar black schooling. We use census microdata from 1860-1880 to derive county-level schooling estimates for white and black children, and leverage the locations of Union Army victories and “contraband camps” as instrumental variables. These were sites where many slaves fled during the war, and they often provided basic schooling that may have catalyzed subsequent schooling following the war. Findings affirm that these sites did significantly increase local black schooling by 1870. Two-stage least squares regressions provide evidence that these increases in black schooling induced heightened schooling among whites, consistent with a competitive response. This shows that institutionalization can be instigated by lower-status groups seeking mobility. Subsequent analyses test hypotheses that power holders constrained the institutionalization of education by shaping its integration into the occupational stratification system in ways that suited their own interests.

Authors

• Jeremy E. Fiel, Rice University

• Autumn Raynor, Rice University