"It's Hard in the World If You Ain't Got Your Learning": Migration and African American Faith in Public Schools, 1910–1940

• In Event: 35.036 - Parental Influence, Parental Advocacy

Abstract

Examining the autobiographies of African Americans schooled in northern cities between 1910 and 1940, this paper explores assumptions about the relationship between schooling and social mobility among the children of the Great Migration. While historians often point to African Americans’ unwavering faith in education and migrants’ great expectations of northern schools, migrants’ children heard competing tales about what schooling could accomplish. Although southern-born parents taught their children that education could produce middle class status, between 1910 and 1940 many northern-born African Americans learned that public schools could not mitigate the effects of racism. Though autobiographies generally tell success stories, moreover, many of the autobiographers examined came to believe they succeeded despite, not because of, public schooling.

Author

• Leah N. Gordon, Stanford University