Settler Projects, the Racial State, and Education in the Progressive Era

• In Event: The (Im)possibility of (Re)Indigenization: Indigenous Futurities Beyond Settler Structures

Abstract

Building on theories of settler colonialism, racial formation, and state-making, this study advances the concept of settler projects to critically analyze three interlocking processes central to U.S. state formation during the Progressive Era (1900-1930) – 1) Native land dispossession and the erosion of tribal sovereignty in the West, 2) the exploitation of Black labor and the fortification of an apartheid social order in the South, and 3) the paternalistic assimilation of Eastern and Southern Europe immigrants into the settler polity in the Northeast and the Midwest. Using data from various national and state archival sources, we map these settler projects’ spatial and temporal variation and their influence on education infrastructure. We find that in places where Native lands were being actively dispossessed and rapidly occupied by White settlers, teacher employment is exceptionally high. In contrast, in places with high levels of Black sharecropping, we find very low levels of employment and infrastructure in core areas of the early welfare state. We consider these findings alongside the development of social policy, state formation, and institution building more broadly and suggest that these deeply structural settler projects matter for contemporary social outcomes and racialized inequalities.

Authors

• Frank Edwards, Rutgers University-Newark

• Theresa Rocha Beardall, University of Washington