Schooling citizens
Subtitle: the struggle for African American education in antebellum America
By: Hilary J. Moss.
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9780226542492
Subjects: African Americans -- Education; Racism -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Educational equalization -- United States; Discrimination in education -- United States
Description: While white residents of antebellum Boston and New Haven forcefully opposed the education of black residents, their counterparts in slaveholding Baltimore did little to resist the establishment of African American schools. Such discrepancies, Hilary Moss argues, suggest that white opposition to black education was not a foregone conclusion. Through the comparative lenses of these three cities, she shows why opposition erupted where it did across the United States during the same period that gave rise to public education. As common schooling emerged in the 1830s, providing white children of all classes and ethnicities with the opportunity to become full-fledged citizens, it redefined citizenship as synonymous with whiteness. This link between school and American identity, Moss argues, increased white hostility to black education at the same time that it spurred African Americans to demand public schooling as a means of securing status as full and equal members of society. Shedding new light on the efforts of black Americans to learn independently in the face of white attempts to withhold opportunity, Schooling Citizens narrates a previously untold chapter in the thorny history of America{u2019}s educational inequality.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Education's inequity: New Haven, Connecticut; title: The emergence of white opposition to African American education; title: Interracial activism and African American higher education; title: Education's enclave: Baltimore, Maryland; title: Race, labor, and literacy in a slaveholding city; title: African American educational activism under the shadow of slavery; title: Education's divide: Boston, Massachusetts; title: Race, space, and educational opportunity; title: Common schools, revolutionary memory, and the crisis of black citizenship in the mid-nineteenth century; title: Conclusion: the great equalizer?; title: Appendix 1: index of occupational categories; title: Appendix 2: name, occupation, and address of identifiable petitioners opposing the proposal to build a school for black children on Southack Street.