Schooling the Race: Carter G. Woodson and the Black Educational Heritage, 1915-1950

• In Event: Black Educators, Freedom and the Intellectual Imagination in the 19th-20th Centuries

Abstract

Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was an educational theorist that informed Black teachers’ pedagogy at the height of Jim Crow; yet, traditional frameworks of Black educational history have underexplored his contributions and continue to rely on the Booker T. Washington-W.E.B Du Bois binary of classical vs. industrial education. While these frameworks fail to engage the cultural politics of White supremacy, Woodson argued that the ideological foundations of schools relied on a human history of the world that centered Whiteness and distorted the humanity of Black people. In this paper, I analyze archival materials that reveal how Woodson institutionalized this philosophy by publishing counter-instructional material (textbooks, classroom decorations, etc.) and partnering with Black teachers through their professional networks. Moving beyond traditional framings, I offer the Black Educational Heritage as a new analytical framework born at the intersection of education, freedom, and affectivity; it serves as an aperture that offers a more expansive understanding of the historical relationship between schooling and the lived experiences of Black people.

Author

• Jarvis Givens, University of California, Berkeley