Boasians at War by Anthony Q. Hazard

Author:Anthony Q. Hazard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030408824
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Education in “Dependent Territories”

In late March 1944, Mead traveled to Chicago to attend a meeting of “seventy-five white and colored leaders” to help plan “the creation of a National Clearing House for Information on Race Problems.” Ruth Benedict had received an invitation as well but was unable to attend. The headliners of this two-day gathering included W.E.B. Du Bois, sociologist Charles S. Johnson, Ralph Bunche, Marshall Field, publisher of the Chicago Sun, and Edwin Embree.99 In the fall of 1944 Mead traveled to California on an invitation from Occidental College to deliver “a series of special lectures” on “national character” and race prejudice.100 In addition to attending conferences and leading symposia, Mead chaired the parental advisory committee at the Downtown Community School in lower Manhattan, which implemented a series of programs on “interracial relations” and enrolled an interracial student body in the fall of 1945. The school offered instruction for approximately 200 students through grade six, an afterschool care program, and adult learning on the issue of interracial relations. And impressively, Mead procured the teaching services of Eleanor Roosevelt and Eslanda Robeson for the school year 1945–1946.101

Mead’s interest in education continued as she and the country transitioned into the postwar period. Beyond the basic questions swirling around the black freedom struggle in the United States, the war had raised very pointed questions about the future of European colonialism, which were directly related to the domestic struggle. For Howard University educator, essayist, and activist Charles H. Thompson, World War II had provided an enormous opportunity for the US government and people to “be allowed to see whether we can make democracy work.” Writing as he did in early January 1942 just seven days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, “one of the basic problems of maintaining morale is found in the fact that a democracy must somehow win the war and save its own soul at the same time.” For Thompson, the stakes of World War II for the Negro and country were clearly high. He gathered that “no one expects the government to solve the race problem while fighting a war,” but “nor should we expect Negroes as a group to refrain from honest criticism of their treatment during the war, especially if such treatment violates the fundamental principles for which the war is being fought.”102

Throughout the war and into the postwar period, Thompson remained a staunch critic of racism in the United States and utilized his role as editor at the Journal of Negro Education to articulate his politics. He would also go on to serve as an expert witness in the NAACP’s efforts to desegregate higher education. His efforts there led to three landmark Supreme Court victories for the NAACP in 1948 and 1950, building precedent and momentum for the eventual Brown case in 1954. In his effort to strengthen Howard’s College of Education, Thompson founded the journal with university financial support, in 1932 with the goal of “collecting and disseminating facts about Negro Education in the United States,” and tackling larger inequalities and vestiges of racism.

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