Historical Perspectives on the Education of Black Children

The African American heritage is interwoven throughout the history of the United States, but few educators are prepared to teach children about the events that shaped the African American experience. Most of the stories about slavery, the days when it was illegal to teach black children to read, and when blacks were not allowed to vote or own land, are part of the remembered oral history of black families. Morgan retells American history from the point of view of the events that effected blacks—the Great Depression, the WPA, and the federal policies that led to current Head Start programs, school integration in the 1950s and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the War on Poverty, and the IQ controversy. He shows how Aesop and the teachings of Socrates and Aristotle established the philosophical traditions perpetuated by the great black educators, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, with the purpose of providing black children with a better understanding of their heritage, their importance in American history, and their place in the world.