Whitewashing the Data: Philanthropy's Use of Progressive-Era Methods for African American High Schools, 1918–1932

• In Event: Reassessing the History of Education Policy, Reform, and Philanthropy

Abstract

In the 1920s, White-led foundations began to invest in the development of public high schools for African Americans in the urban South. Borrowing from the social efficiency ethos of the Progressive Era, these foundations used new tools like the school survey to study what they understood as the problems of Black education and employment. With this data, they outlined vocational curriculum as the solution, to the objections of students and communities. This research builds on James D. Anderson’s seminal The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 by analyzing foundations’ changing research methods and subsequent proposals as a shift from the more blatant racism of post-Civil War philanthropy towards the start of a colorblind White liberalism.

Author

• Brett Gardiner Murphy, Graduate Center - CUNY