Historical Perspectives on the Education of Black Children

(Hardback)

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The African American heritage is interwoven throughout the history of the United States, but few educators are prepared to teach children about the events that shaped the African American experience. Most of the stories about slavery, the days when it was illegal to teach black children to read, and when blacks were not allowed to vote or own land, are part of the remembered oral history of black families. Morgan retells American history from the point of view of the events that effected blacksthe Great Depression, the WPA, and the federal policies that led to current Head Start programs, school integration in the 1950s and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the War on Poverty, and the IQ controversy. He shows how Aesop and the teachings of Socrates and Aristotle established the philosophical traditions perpetuated by the great black educators, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, with the purpose of providing black children with a better understanding of their heritage, their importance in American history, and their place in the world.

Reviews

"Morgan has given attention to a sorely needed aspect of Black education, learning, and self-help endeavors of people of color in the United States. Morgan not only revisits some of the familiar foundations that have influenced the education of Blacks, like slavery and Jim Crow, but he presents a fresh literary analysis of historical perspectives that have received little attention by scholars in describing Black educational institutions and in explaining self-help initiatives that have promoted Black learning, including both formal and informal strategies."-Galyn A. Vesey, Ph.D., Social Science Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Syracuse University
[M]organ illuminates a dramatic and largely hidden history in relatively few pages. He portrays the enduring resolves of Africans in America, in pursuit of not only education, but also assurance of their general civil rights, in the face of unrelenting opposition, the racism that seems to be rooted here permanently.-Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal
Morgan approaches the education of black children through related historical events, philosophers, theorists, and practioners.-MultiCultural Review
Recommended for students and faculty in teacher preparation programs.-Choice
"Morgan illuminates a dramatic and largely hidden history in relatively few pages. He portrays the enduring resolves of Africans in America, in pursuit of not only education, but also assurance of their general civil rights, in the face of unrelenting opposition, the racism that seems to be rooted here permanently."-Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal
"Morgan approaches the education of black children through related historical events, philosophers, theorists, and practioners."-MultiCultural Review
"Recommended for students and faculty in teacher preparation programs."-Choice
"[M]organ illuminates a dramatic and largely hidden history in relatively few pages. He portrays the enduring resolves of Africans in America, in pursuit of not only education, but also assurance of their general civil rights, in the face of unrelenting opposition, the racism that seems to be rooted here permanently."-Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal

Author Bio

HARRY MORGAN is Professor of Early Childhood Education at West Georgia College. He is the author of Social Work in Early Childhood Programs (1975) and The Learning Community (1973).