New and Important Contributions to the Educational History of African Americans, Latino/as, and Native Americans

• Published in: Educational researcher 2002-04, Vol.31 (3), p.33-36
• Main Author: Span, Christopher M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African American Education; African Americans; American Indians; Armstrong, Samuel Chapman (1839-93); Biographies; Du Bois, W E B (1868-1963); Educational Policy; Educational Research; Native North Americans; Students; Woodson, Carter G (1875-1950)
• ISSN: 0013-189X; 1935-102X
• DOI: 10.3102/0013189X031003033

Watkins weaves a masterful discussion of how antebellum and postbellum political economy and ideology converged after the Civil War with regards to Black education and concomitantly demonstrates how the lives and actions of these men overlapped and aided each other. [...]as his foreword correctly asserts, "Watkins reveals how these men were shaped as much by Black struggles for freedom as by philanthropic idealism, New South ideology, Social Darwinism, Protestant beliefs, and liberal capitalist thought" (p. xii). According to San Miguel, Jr., such a position was "highly unusual because for many years activist Mexican Americans in Houston and throughout the country had viewed themselves as part of the white or Caucasian race in order to obtain social justice and equal educational opportunity" (p. xi). [...]under federal control, federal officials valued literacy for domestic and home living purposes-attempting to domesticate and acculturate Chickasaw women rather than empower them. Each publication increases our awareness of the complex and differing educational experiences African Americans, Latino/as, and Native Americans have historically faced in American society. [...]the books demonstrate the need for us to continue writing and rewriting these histories to better understand the aspirations and actions of people traditionally marginalized in our education system and society.