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Sites of Education: Race, Memory, and the Conflicting Discourses of Learning in America, 1827-1914

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Sites of Education: Race, Memory, and the Conflicting Discourses of Learning in America, 1827-1914 Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2016 Sites of Education: Race, Memory, and the Conflicting Discourses of Learning in America, 1827-1914 Douglas Terry Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Terry, Douglas, "Sites of Education: Race, Memory, and the Conflicting Discourses of Learning in America, 1827-1914" (2016). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 6785. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/6785 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sites of Education: Race, Memory, and the Conflicting Discourses of Learning in America, 1827-1914 Douglas Terry Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in American Literature and Cultural Studies Michael Germana, Ph.D., Chair Timothy Sweet, Ph.D. Rosemary Hathaway, Ph.D. Brian Luskey, Ph.D. John Ernest, Ph.D. Department of English Morgantown, West Virginia Keywords: Race, Education, Antebellum, Educational Sites, Memory, African American, Storer College, Temple School, Textbooks, Freedom’s Journal Copyright 2016 Douglas Terry ABSTRACT Sites of Education: Race, Memory, and the Conflicting Discourses of Learning in America, 1827-1914 Douglas Terry This dissertation is a cultural study that challenges the handling of race in the history of American education by exploring how educational discourse shapes race. It argues that education itself is a manifestation of race, inseparable from the iterative processes of racial formation. While we take it as a prevailing truism that race is learned, this dissertation shows how the educational system itself is central to this learning. It explores race in the educational landscape in a similar way to how scholars explore tension between history and cultural memory. In this manner, the dissertation focuses on what it terms “sites of education,” the culturally designed points within schools and outside them where racial identity is negotiated at junctures where differing ideas about education converge. As participants are attracted to educational sites, the structures, texts, and social roles that reproduce race are likewise caught in their vortex. Educational sites could be physical places, like schools and classrooms, or they could be cultural sites such as the common school and industrial education movements. Their dynamics demonstrate not only how racial ideology underlies American education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but also how it recurs, manifesting across geographically and temporally distant sites outside schools, as well as within them. This project examines the overlapping discourses of race, education, and American nationhood across interrelated educational sites spanning the nineteenth century and early-twentieth century through the texts that they produce. Dedication To: Kyla, Ben, and Evie iii Acknowledgments Many people have supported and encouraged me over my years of graduate study. Dr. Michael Germana has been an unparalleled mentor and constant friend. When work on this project was at its most difficult, his guidance, patience, and insight helped me turn the corner and see it through. For him, I have unending appreciation and admiration. I offer him my deepest thanks. I also acknowledge Dr. John Ernest, who inspires me with his scholarship and his kindness, and whose teaching opened my eyes. Talking with him is like observing the Buddha hold up a flower. I thank him for his friendship and for guiding me through the beginning stages of this project. Likewise, I hold deep respect for the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Timothy Sweet, Dr. Rosemary Hathaway, and Dr. Brian Luskey. I thank them for their thorough reading of my chapter drafts, their discerning comments, and their invaluable advice. I’m especially grateful for Dr. Sweet’s publication workshop, which provided the motivation and the discussion for me to do my best writing. I also extend thanks to the librarians who maintain the West Virginia and Regional History Collection, particularly Michael Ridderbusch for his help with the Storer College archives. I show gratitude to my friends and colleagues Beth Staley, Dr. Courtney Novosat, Lisa Miller, Kristen Davis, Theresa Pershing, Lindsay Tuggle, and Dr. Jessica Queener for the lively discussions and the livelier laughter. Finally, my family has supported me in every way imaginable. Mary Terry, James Terry, Marcia Gonzalez, and Ellen Terry have shown me continuous encouragement and caring that has helped me through the project’s most trying periods. This project has further benefitted from Lindsay Hilton’s, Chab Guthrie’s, and Meredith Hilton’s compassion, generosity, and kindness. I’m grateful for the love they show me. Most of all, I convey profound appreciation to Kyla Hilton, Geneva Hilton, and Benjamin Terry, who have lived with this project for years, shared in its many challenges, and have greatly contributed to its success. They inspire me, and this work is as much theirs as mine. I’m so glad that we got through this together. iv Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………….iii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………...iv Introduction: Race and Performance at Sites of Education……………………………………1 Chapter 1: “The Silent Response of the Little Monitor Within”: Freedom’s Journal, Education, and Race in Everyday Life…………………………………………………………………….24 Chapter 2: Transcendentalists on the Threshold………………………………………………54 Chapter 3: The Agents of Standardization: Textbooks and the Common School Myth……...84 Chapter 4: Reading the Storer Record: Education, Race, and John Brown in the Storer College Student Newspaper……………………………………………………………………………117 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………....154 v Introduction: Race and Performance at Sites of Education Scene One: In 1828, David Walker recounts in an oration a moment involving race, education, and violent discipline. Walker tells about a slave owner beating one of his enslaved children for merely possessing a school textbook. “A slaveholder,” states Walker, “upon finding one of his young slaves with a small spelling book in his hand (not opened) fell upon and beat him almost to death” (2). As Walker explains, the master told the child that through the beating, “You will acquire better learning than I or any of my family” (2). Scene Two: In 2015, students attending an Algebra class at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina made cellphone videos of a white police officer violently disciplining an African American student. The videos were picked up and widely distributed by news organizations over the Internet, prompting protest and debate in the media that resulted in the officer’s firing, which led to subsequent protest and more debate in the media (Fausset). From various angles, the videos depicted the uniformed officer grabbing the sixteen-year-old student by her neck and forcefully yanking her from her desk, overturning the desk and flinging her to the front of the classroom. Repeatedly commanding her to “give me your hands,” the officer pinned the student face-down on the floor with his knee to arrest her (Southall). News reports stated that student had refused to leave the class after the teacher had observed her paying more attention to her phone than the math lesson (Robertson). 1 The discussion surrounding race and education in America often casts them as separate and opposed. Education, on one hand, is traditionally viewed as perhaps the most important catalyst to the realization of what is considered America’s central tenet of democratic equality. Race, on the other hand, is considered as a social problem that promotes inequality and impedes America’s democratic progress. In fact, it is ingrained in our popular discourse that education, specifically school, plays a central role in mitigating American inequality. This discussion articulates an underlying narrative that recurs throughout the nation’s past: the schoolhouse door acts as the entry point to citizenship and the classroom is the place where an individual’s concerns merge with those of the nation’s. Schooling acts, as Horace Mann put it in 1848, as the “great equalizer” in which “the schoolroom connects itself, and becomes identical, with the great interests of society” (669). It is, according to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education ending legalized racial segregation in public schools, “the very foundation of good citizenship” and the “principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values” (Brown). Greater access to schooling, President Barack Obama sums up in his 2015 State of the Union address, allows “everyone to contribute to our [the nation’s]
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