Museum of Education’s Publications
The Museum of Education’s Secondary School Study publications are distributed freely,
through grants from the Spencer Foundation and the Daniel Tanner Foundation,
in order to disseminate information about the Secondary School Study
to its participants (and their families), to local communities of the participating schools,
and to interested educators and researchers.

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We are pleased to release our Secondary School Study narratives publication, Becoming an African American Progressive Educator: Narratives from 1940s Black Progressive High Schools. Download the pdf file.
[Tablet users are encouraged to use the iBooks app.]

Becoming an African American Progressive Educator presents a rarely documented, behind-the-scenes view of classroom life in black, Southern progressive high schools during the mid-twentieth century and offers insights for understanding educational change at segregated schools during the Jim Crow era. This edited collection of 1940s creative nonfiction narratives—The Evolution of Susan Prim, Mrs. Parker: The New Teacher, and High School Was Like This—allows us to break free of today’s generalizations and simplicities about black schools and progressive education and to consider further what lessons can be drawn from the past.

“Resurrecting significant and lost voices of educators Miss Prim, Miss Parker, Mrs. Thomas, and graduating seniors Sarah and Herbert, this edited collection of rich narratives and creative nonfiction portrays elegantly what it meant to ‘become’ an African American progressive educator in the South in the 1940s and 1950s, animated by educators committed at once to equity, excellence, building character, and preparing students immersed in life journeys littered with racism. While much has been written on Jim Crow schools, segregation, the politics of white resistance, and the struggle for desegregation, this volume fills a haunting gap in our knowledge of black education in the mid-20th century South. A gift to students, teachers, and researchers, Craig Kridel catalogues in exquisite detail the thoughtful curricular decisions, pedagogical practices, and the deep culturally rich relationships engaged, in classrooms, by African American educators working with African American youth, from within the dangerous, damaging, and violent limits of white supremacy, a decade prior to Brown v. Board of Education, as they dedicated themselves full-body, mind and soul, to carving spaces for building skills, confidence, character, and dreams.”
—Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Women’s Studies, American Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Download the pdf file.
[Tablet users are encouraged to use the iBooks app.]

“In a time when discussions of education— particularly those concerning African American students—often center on school choice, academic achievement gaps, and the detriments of re-segregation, this volume adds insight and perspective on the forward-thinking teaching and techniques from an era that has been overlooked and unfortunately widely unsung in historical studies. Growing out of nearly a decade and a half of research that focused on some of the South’s many influential schools, students, and teachers of the 1940s, Craig Kridel captures the voice of these black educators, administrators, and community members and raises awareness about the strides, barriers, and curricular innovations of black schools, thereby enriching the narrative of what it meant to be a black educator and scholar in the years before the litigation of Brown v. Board of Education.”
—Cleveland L. Sellers, Jr., President Emeritus, Voorhees College, and former Director of the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina

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