Anchors of Reform: Public Black Colleges and Progressive Organizations in the Early 1900s

• In Event: Race and Higher Education

Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of black progressive organizations and their relationship to public black colleges. Amid violent disfranchisement in the early 1900s, black education activists collaborated with other educators to host conferences, develop programs, and mobilize delegations on broader issues of concern to black Americans, especially rural southerners. Using the case of Edward Blackshear, who led Prairie View Normal and Industrial College in Texas from 1897 to 1915, I argue that school leaders’ organizational activities during this period constituted a form of southern black progressivism that was anchored in public black colleges. This research reveals how black progressivism operated publicly in the South and underscores public black colleges’ enduring value in the Jim Crow era.

Author

• Leigh Soares, The Pennsylvania State University