Curriculum History
Chapters that reference this topic include:
Chapter 1: "Schooling the New Negro: Progressive Education, Black Modernity, and the Long Harlem Renaissance" by Daniel Perlstein
Chapter 2: "'A Serious Pedagogical Situation': Diverging School Reform Priorities in Depression Era Harlem" by Thomas Harbison
Chapter 4: "Cinema for Social Change: The Human Relations Film Series of the Harlem Committee of the Teachers Union, 1936–1950" by Lisa Rabin and Craig Kridel
Chapter 5: "Bringing Harlem to the Schools: Langston Hughes’s The First Book of Negroes and Crafting a Juvenile Readership" by Jonna Perrillo
In a blog post for the Association of Black Women Historians, Deirdre Flowers writes about Mildred Johnson and researching the Modern School as a former student. The story of the Modern School highlights the history of progressive education in Harlem.
The Modern School [link coming soon]
This website from the Harlem Education History Project contains a variety of materials from the sixty-year history of the Modern School, including oral histories. They give insight into Mildred Johnson’s educational philosophy, the school’s curriculum, and the experiences of Modern School students from the 1950s on.
The Brownies’ Book was a children’s supplement to The Crisis published by the NAACP. In chapter 1 of Educating Harlem, Perlstein writes, “The Brownies’ Book balanced progressive pedagogy’s vision of self-directed activity with the need to transmit an alternative to the identities that a racist world had assigned Black children.”
The Souls of Black Folk Chapter 3 (1903)
W.E.B. Du Bois, an author, intellectual, and activist who co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. It is comprised of sociological essays on race, and is a useful text for discussing Du Bois’s critique of Booker T. Washington’s plan for Industrial Education.
Wadleigh Junior High School Oral Histories and Yearbooks
These oral histories describe students’ experiences at a segregated school in Harlem in the 1960s and beyond, and they contain both similarities and differences from the discussion of Harlem schooling in the book. Many of them center on strong relationships with teachers. School yearbooks from the 1930s-1980s contain students’ creative writing and art, as well as photographs of students and staff. For more on Wadleigh High School and Junior High School see exhibits from the Harlem Education History Project.
“Voices of the Past: The Inclusion of Black History at Wadleigh” [link coming soon]
Select “Voices of the Past” from the Harlem Education History Project exhibit page. This exhibit by Melanie Levine explores how Black history was made part of the curriculum at Wadleigh Junior High School in the 1970s and 1980s. Levine shows how teachers and students work to include Black history in social studies classes, English readings, and school-wide events. Their consideration of what and how to teach these subjects built on the work of Langston Hughes and other Black writers and educators.
Association for the Study of African American Life and History, “Black History Themes”
In 1926, Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History founded the first Negro History Week (which later became Black History Month). Since 1928, each year’s commemoration has included a theme, which are all listed on the Association’s website.
Charlemae Rollins was a Black librarian in Chicago, where she was the head librarian of the children’s department and a key figure in advancing Black children’s literature. In 1941, she published We Build Together, a bibliographic guide to books for Black children, which was updated again in this edition from 1967.
Tracy McCracken Oral History (2019) (link coming soon)
Select Tracy McCracken’s oral history from the Harlem Education History Project. Tracy McCracken attended the Modern School (a Black private school explored in chapter 1 in the 1970s and early 1980s. In her oral history she discusses the presence and importance of Black history in her schooling.
This document is a section of a report by Evan Johnston, Pamela D’Andrea Montalbano, and David E. Kirkland of New York University’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. It defines and traces recent trends in culturally responsive teaching practices, including curriculum, which readers may compare to the work of Langston Hughes discussed in chapter 5. Key researchers cited include Gloria Ladson-Billings and Django Paris and H. Samy Alim.