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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2022
This paper examines the first mandatory Black history curriculum in a US public school system, implemented in Chicago Public Schools between 1942 and 1945. Researched and designed by Madeline Morgan, the curriculum supplemented existing social studies lesson plans with Black people's contributions to US society. How did she win approval for the curriculum in this highly segregated and inequitable city? The commitment of Morgan and her network of Black women educators to “intellectual emancipation” during the 1940s aligned with white schoolteachers and administrators’ interest in promoting interracial tolerance in the US during World War II.
1 In this article, I capitalize “Black” because it is used as often as “Negro” or “African American.” It is a proper noun that reflects the self-naming and self-identification of a people whose national or ethnic origins have been obscured by a history of abduction and enslavement. Similarly, “white” is not capitalized because it historically has not been used to identify ethnic or national origin, but rather as an indication of social domination and privilege.
2 Michael Hines, “The Blackboard and the Colorline: Madeline Morgan and the Alternative Black Curriculum in Chicago Schools 1941-1945” (unpublished PhD diss., Loyola University, 2017). Education historian Sherry Field also connects the Black history curriculum to World War II in her brief article; however, there is much more to be said on the topic. See Field, “Intercultural Education and Negro History during the Second World War,” Journal of Midwest History of Education Society 22 (1995), 75-85.
3 Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Williams, Heather Andrea, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009)Google Scholar; See Woodson, Carter Godwin, The Mis-Education of the Negro (North Chelmsford, MA: Courier Corporation, 2012)Google Scholar; Rickford, Russell John, We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Todd-Breland, Elizabeth, A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Givens, Jarvis R., Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021)Google Scholar.
4 See Bell, Derrick A. Jr., “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma,” Harvard Law Review 93, no. 3 (Jan. 1980), 518CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gadsden, Brett, Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation, and the Myth of American Sectionalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Todd-Breland, A Political Education; Sanders, Crystal R., A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCluskey, Audrey Thomas, A Forgotten Sisterhood: Pioneering Black Women Educators and Activists in the Jim Crow South (Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014)Google Scholar; Knupfer, Anne Meis, The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women's Activism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Loder-Jackson, Tondra L., “Hope and Despair: Southern Black Women Educators Across Pre- and Post-Civil Rights Cohorts Theorize about Their Activism,” Educational Studies 48, no. 3 (2012), 266-95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Lauri, “A Generation of Women Activists: African-American Female Educators in Harlem, 1930-1950,” Journal of African American History 89, no. 3 (Summer 2004), 223-40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Marie J. Lindhorst, “Sarah Mapps Douglass: The Emergence of an African American Educator/Activist in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1995).
6 The few scholarly works on Black women educators in the urban North during the twentieth century include: Knupfer, The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women's Activism; Ian Rocksborough-Smith, Black Public History in Chicago: Civil Rights Activism from World War II into the Cold War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018); Johnson, “A Generation of Women Activists”; and Lauri Johnson, ‘“Making Her Community a Better Place to Live’: Culturally Responsive Urban School Leadership in Historical Context,” Leadership and Policy in Schools 5, no. 1 (Aug. 2006), 19-36.
7 Brittney Cooper, Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017); Mia Bay, Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); and Kristin Waters and Carol B. Conaway, Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds (Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2007).
8 Pero Dagbovie, The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Jeffrey Aaron Snyder, Making Black History: The Color Line, Culture, and Race in the Age of Jim Crow (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018); LaGarrett J. King, Ryan M. Crowley, and Anthony L. Brown, “The Forgotten Legacy of Carter G. Woodson: Contributions to Multicultural Social Studies and African American History,” Social Studies 101, no. 5 (Aug. 2010), 211-15.
9 See Jarvis R. Givens, Fugitive Pedagogy, and chapter 5 of Dagbovie's Early Black History Movement.
10 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 75.
11 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 76.
12 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 75.
13 “Council Wages War on Unfair Shift System: Say Schools Are Crying Shame on Board of Education,” Chicago Defender, Dec. 30, 1939, 1.
14 “Overcrowding in Schools Hit by Bishop Bray: Says 2 and 3 Children Sit in One Seat,” Atlanta Daily World, March 28, 1942, 1; “Voice Frank Plaints of City Schools: Board of Education Told Bold Truth by Citizens at Public Hearing,” Chicago Defender, Jan. 24, 1942, 6.
15 Dionne Danns, “Thriving in the Midst of Adversity: Educator Maudelle Brown Bousfield's Struggles in Chicago, 1920-1950,” Journal of Negro Education 78, no. 1 (Winter 2009), 9.
16 “Council Wages War on Unfair Shift System,” Chicago Defender, Dec. 30, 1939, 1.
17 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 75.
18 “Council Wages War,” Chicago Defender, Dec. 30, 1939, 1.
19 John F. Lyons, Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education, 1929-1970 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 15.
20 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 76.
21 Lyons, Teachers and Reform, 15.
22 Danns, “Thriving in the Midst of Adversity,” 9.
23 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 80.
24 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 80-81.
25 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 81.
26 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 81.
27 “Double Schools, Double Divisions Are Discussed,” Chicago Defender, June 11, 1938, 17.
28 “‘Bob’ Robinson--45-Year Butlerite,” clipping in box 1, folder 15, M. S. Morris Papers, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library, IL (hereafter M. S. Morris Papers).
29 US Census Bureau, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910, 7B, National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication T624, 1,178 rolls), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives, Washington, DC.
30 Madeline Morgan, “Chicago Public Schools Project, 1942,” paper presented at the National Convention of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Atlanta, Georgia, Oct. 15-19, 1975, box 2, folder 12, M. S. Morris Papers.
31 US Census Bureau, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, 4B, National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives, Washington, DC.
32 Morgan, “Chicago Public Schools Project, 1942,” 2.
33 Madeline Morgan, “Autobiographical Sketch, c. 1943(?),” box 1, folder 4, M. S. Morris Papers. Morgan married Thomas Morgan in 1926, making her one of a few married teachers who worked in Chicago schools at that time. Although CPS did not have an official policy against hiring married women as in other cities, teachers were typically single. For more, see Lyons, Teaching and Reform, 14-15.
34 Morgan, “Autobiographical Sketch, c. 1943(?),” M. S. Morris Papers.
35 “Degrees, Transcripts, and Certificates, 1920-1981, n.d.,” box 1, folder 3, M. S. Morris Papers.
36 “Degrees, Transcripts, and Certificates, 1920-1981, n.d.,” M. S. Morris Papers.
37 “‘Bob’ Robinson--45-Year Butlerite,” M. S. Morris Papers.
38 American Negro Exposition 1863-1940 Official Program and Guide Book (Chicago, IL: Exposition Authority, 1940), 1.
39 American Negro Exposition 1863-1940 Official Program and Guide Book.
40 Madeline R. Morgan, “Negro History in Chicago Public Schools,” Negro College Quarterly 1, no. 4 (1943), 100.
41 Morgan, “Autobiographical Sketch, c. 1943(?),” M. S. Morris Papers.
42 Morgan, “Chicago Public Schools Project, 1942.” Morgan was the basileus of the Mu Chapter. “Miss Madeline Morgan Heads Sorority Unity: Phi Delta Kappa Has Review of Year,” Chicago Defender, Feb. 15, 1941, 18.
43 Madeline Morgan, “Untitled manuscript (Cooperation on Social Studies Curriculum), n.d.,” box 3, folder 8, M. S. Morris Papers.
44 Morgan, “Untitled manuscript,” M. S. Morris Papers.
45 Madeline Morgan, “The Intellectual Emancipation of the Negro,” The Councilor (Jan. 1944), 11, box 2, folder 5, M. S. Morris Papers.
46 Morgan, “The Intellectual Emancipation of the Negro,” 12.
47 Morgan, “The Intellectual Emancipation of the Negro,” 12.
48 Melanie Chambliss, “A Vital Factor in the Community: Recovering the Life and Legacy of Chicago Public Librarian Vivian G. Harsh,” Journal of African American History 106, no. 3 (2021), 425-428.
49 “George C. Hall Branch Library (1939),” box 3, folder 12, Hall Branch Papers, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library, IL.
50 Emily Guss, “Cultural Record Keepers: Vivian G. Harsh Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, Chicago Public Library,” Libraries & the Cultural Record 45, no. 3 (2010), 360.
51 Guss, “Cultural Record Keepers,” 360.
52 Morgan, “Chicago Public Schools Project, 1942.”
53 Beverly Cook, “Rollins, Charlemae Hill (June 20, 1897-February 2, 1979),” in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 765.
54 Cook, “Rollins, Charlemae Hill (June 20, 1897-February 2, 1979),” 765.
55 Madeline Morgan, “Chicago Schools Include Negro Achievements—a Suggestion for Your School,” Virginia Teachers Bulletin (1944), 7.
56 Morgan, “Chicago Schools Include Negro Achievements,” 7.
57 Morgan, “Negro History in Chicago Public Schools,” 101.
58 Dionne Danns, “Thriving in the Midst of Adversity: Educator Maudelle Brown Bousfield's Struggles in Chicago, 1920-1950,” Journal of Negro Education 78, no. 1 (2009), 4-5.
59 Danns, “Thriving in the Midst of Adversity,” 6-7.
60 “Former Baltimore Girl First Chicago Principal,” Afro-American, Jan. 14, 1928, 2; Danns, “Thriving in the Midst of Adversity,” 7.
61 “Principal Bousfield Tells How It Happened,” Chicago Defender, Sept. 23, 1939, 16; “Chicagoans Fete Mrs. Bousfield,” Afro-American, Nov. 4, 1939, 16; Deton Brooks Jr., “Mrs. Bousfield Was First Negro Principal,” Chicago Defender, May 15, 1943, 13; and Danns, “Thriving in the Midst of Adversity,” 10.
62 “Principal,” Chicago Defender, Sept. 13, 1930, 7; “Principal,” Chicago Defender, Aug. 10, 1935, 22.
63 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 77-80.
64 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 77.
65 Knupfer, Chicago Black Renaissance, 77; “Colman Faculty Honors Retiring Principal,” Chicago Defender, Oct. 10, 1942, 17.
66 Morgan, “Chicago Schools Include Negro Achievements,” 7.
67 Morgan, “Chicago Schools Include Negro Achievements,” 7.
68 Morgan quoted in Rocksborough-Smith, Black Public History in Chicago, 22.
69 Rocksborough-Smith, Black Public History in Chicago, 22.
70 American Negro Exposition 1863-1940 Official Program and Guide Book, 10.
71 Leah N. Gordon, From Power to Prejudice: The Rise of Racial Individualism in Midcentury America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 1.
72 Morgan, “The Intellectual Emancipation of the Negro,” 14; Morgan, “Negro History in Chicago Public Schools,” 106.
73 Morgan, “The Intellectual Emancipation of the Negro,” 14.
74 Gordon, From Power to Prejudice, 5; William P. Jones, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013): 38-39.
75 Morgan to Phi Delta Kappa Sorority, May 19, 1942, box 9, folder 46, M. S. Morris Papers.
76 Meier and Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980, 12.
77 Givens, Fugitive Pedagogy, 6.
78 Givens, Fugitive Pedagogy, 6.
79 William H. Johnson, “The Place of the Negro in the Social Studies, Chicago Public Schools,” School and Society 58, no. 1502 (1943), 283-85.
80 Johnson, “The Place of the Negro in the Social Studies, Chicago Public Schools,” 283-85.
81 William H. Johnson, “The Negro in History Books,” Chicago Defender, Sept. 26, 1942, A30.
82 Johnson, “The Negro in History Books,” A30.
83 Johnson, “The Negro in History Books,” A30.
84 Nahum D. Brascher, “Honor School Chief for New History Course Plan,” Chicago Defender, June 20, 1942, 7.
85 Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), xv.
86 Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 29.
87 “Six Die, 320 Hurt in Harlem: Property Damage Reaches $5,000,000 Mark in 16 Hours,” New Journal and Guide, Aug. 7, 1943, A1; Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 11.
88 Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 50.
89 Madeline Morgan, “Chicago School Curriculum Includes Negro Achievements,” 1, box 2, folder 9, M. S. Morris Papers.
90 Beth T. Bates, “‘Double V for Victory’ Mobilizes Black Detroit, 1941-1946,” in Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, ed. Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 17-33; Thomas Sugrue, “Hillburn, Hattiesburg, and Hitler: Wartime Activists Think Globally and Act Locally,” in Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Kevin M. Kruse and Stephen Tuck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 87-101; and Ronald T. Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000).
91 Morgan, “Negro History in Chicago Public Schools,” 99.
92 Morgan, “Negro History in Chicago Public Schools,” 99.
93 Morgan, “The Intellectual Emancipation of the Negro,” 14.
94 See for more Daryl Michael Scott, Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880-1996 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
95 Morgan, “Chicago Schools Include Negro Achievements,” 12.
96 Brascher, “Honor School Chief for New History Course Plan,” 7.
97 Zoë Burkholder, “From Forced Tolerance to Forced Busing: Wartime Intercultural Education and the Rise of Black Educational Activism in Boston,” Harvard Educational Review 80, no. 3 (2010), 293-327; Stuart Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
98 Burkholder, “From Forced Tolerance to Forced Busing,” 297.
99 Burkholder, “From Forced Tolerance to Forced Busing,” 297.
100 Sherry Field, “Intercultural Education and Negro History during the Second World War,” Journal of Midwest History of Education Society 22 (1995), 75-85.
101 Madeline R. Morgan, “Chicago Schools Teach Negro History,” Elementary English Review 21, no. 3 (1944), 108. The letters Morgan received about the curriculum can be found in box 2, folder 20 of the M. S. Morris Papers.
102 Morgan, “The Intellectual Emancipation of the Negro,” 14.
103 Morgan, “Chicago Schools Include Negro Achievements,” 8.
104 Morgan, “Chicago Schools Include Negro Achievements,” 8.
105 Morgan, “Chicago Public Schools Project, 1942,” 8.
106 Morgan, “Chicago Public Schools Project, 1942,” 8.
107 By that time, her name had changed to Madeline Stratton after her first remarriage to high school teacher and leader in the Black community Samuel Stratton; A note from an interview with Morris, included in her papers, provides the context for this note; “Anonymous Racist Note on Newspaper clipping, 1968 [with explanatory note, 2002],” box 6, folder 2, M. S. Morris Papers.
108 “Chicago Goes Forward with Madeline R. Morgan,” Negro History Bulletin 6, no. 5 (Feb. 1943), 112.
109 “Chicago Goes Forward,” 112.
110 Brascher, “Honor School Chief for New History Course Plan,” 7.
111 Brascher, “Honor School Chief for New History Course Plan,” 7.
112 Brascher, “Honor School Chief for New History Course Plan,” 7.
113 Brascher, “Honor School Chief for New History Course Plan,” 7.
114 Brascher, “Honor School Chief for New History Course Plan,” 7.
115 Anonymous to Morgan, May 12, 1942, 1, box 6, folder 2, M. S. Morris Papers.
116 Anonymous to Morgan, 1.
117 Anonymous to Morgan, 1.
118 “Council Wages War on Unfair Shift System: Say Schools Are Crying Shame on Board of Education,” Chicago Defender, Dec. 30, 1939, 7.
119 “Council Wages War on Unfair Shift System,” 7.
120 Grace Markwell to unnamed, n.d., box 9, folder 14, M. S. Morris Papers.
121 Grace Markwell to unnamed.
122 Grace Markwell to unnamed.
123 Corneal A. Davis, Corneal A. Davis Memoir Volume I, Illinois General Assembly Oral History Program, 1982, Norris L. Brookens Library Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield.
124 Sixty-Fourth General Assembly, House Bill No. 251, March 13, 1945, 1, box 9, folder 15, M. S. Morris Papers; Sixty-Fourth General Assembly in Senate, House Bill No. 251, May 16, 1945, box 9, folder 15, M. S. Morris Papers.
125 Morgan, “Chicago Public Schools Project, 1942,” 10.
126 “Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference,” 1962-1968, box 9, folder 11, M. S. Morris Papers.
127 Vernon Jarrett, “Past Is Important to Blacks’ Identity,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 16, 1972, 14, box 12, folder 2, M. S. Morris Papers.
128 It is also not clear what impact the decision to downgrade had on usage of the Black history curriculum. Sherry Field admitted that she was unable to ascertain the extent to which Chicago schools used the Black history units after 1945. Field, “Intercultural Education,” 83.
129 See Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
130 Rocksborough-Smith, Black Public History in Chicago, 18-19; Mary Owen, “Put Black Studies in Schools,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 1, 2008, 5.
