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Horace Mann Bond's Negro Education in Alabama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Wayne J. Urban*
Affiliation:
Education and of history at Georgia State University

Extract

The recent opening of the Horace Mann Bond Papers to scholars, along with publication of an article on Bond's early career which used those papers, should spark renewed interest in the work of this noted teacher, scholar, and educational administrator. Visitors to the Bond Papers, housed at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will find a wealth of unpublished and published material relating to many notable events in the educational history of the twentieth century. Bond's interests were broad, encompassing both humanistic and social scientific approaches to the educational and social problems of blacks. He wrote noted critiques of the mental testing movement at several stages of his long career, did historical research for the plaintiffs in the Brown v. Topeka school desegregation suit, and traveled extensively to Africa and studied its civilizations in the later stages of his career.

Type
Retrospective
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1 Norton, RitaThe Horace Mann Bond Papers: A Biography of Change,“ Journal of Negro Education 53 (Winter 1984): 2940; Meloni, Barbara S. Norton, Rita and Emerson, Katherine The Horace Mann Bond Papers, 1830 (1926–1972): A Guide (Amherst, Mass., 1982); and Fultz, Michael “A ‘Quintessential American': Horace Mann Bond, 1924–1939,” Harvard Educational Review 55 (Nov. 1985): 416–42.Google Scholar

2 The reviews mentioned in the text appear in American Historical Review 45 (Apr. 1940): 669–70; American Sociological Review 4 (Dec. 1939): 907; Journal of Negro History 24 (Apr. 1939): 226–29; Journal of Southern History 5 (Aug. 1939): 404–5; and Mississippi Valley Historical Review 26 (Dec. 1939): 424–25. Also see Beale, Howard K. “On Rewriting Reconstruction History,” American Historical Review 45 (July 1940): 817.Google Scholar

3 Franklin, John HopeReconstruction and the Negro,“ in New Frontiers of the American Reconstruction, ed. Hyman, Harold M. (Urbana, Ill., 1966), 63; Franklin, Vincent P. “Introductory Essay: Changing Historical Perspectives on Afro-American Life and Education,” in New Perspectives on Black Educational History, ed. Franklin, Vincent P. and Anderson, James D. (Boston, 1978), 6, 11; and Neufeldt, Harvey and Allison, Clinton “Education and the Rise of the New South: An Historiographical Essay,” in Education and the Rise of the New South, ed. Goodenow, Ronald K. and White, Arthur O. (Boston, 1981), 252, 256, 262. One author who fails to cite or use Bond's Negro Education in a work that overlaps significantly with Bond's subject matter is Vaughn, William P. Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1865–1877 (Lexington, Ky., 1974). Vaughn does, however, cite Bond's 1934 volume, The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order, in his bibliographical essay on page 170.Google Scholar

4 For criticisms of stylistic matters, see the reviews in the American Sociological Review, 907, and the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 424–25. Also see Reddick, Lawrence D. to Dean [Bond], 4 Dec. 1936, Horace Mann Bond Papers, Archives, University of Massachusetts Library, series IV, box 89, folder 13D, hereafter cited as Bond Papers with Roman numeral for series number, Arabic number for box, and Arabic number (usually with a capital letter) for folder.Google Scholar

5 Reddick, to Bond, 4 Dec. 1936, Bond Papers, IV, 89, 13D; Bond to Laing, Gordon J. Dr. (editor, University of Chicago Press), 4 Apr. 1936, Bond Papers, VI, 177, 44; George A. Works to Bond, 1 June 1937, Bond Papers, III, 86, 389B; C. G. Woodson to Bond, 12 July 1938, Bond Papers, VI, 177, 44; and Bond to Woodson, 16 July 1938, Bond Papers, VI, 177, 44. The role of racial discrimination in accounting for the difficulties Bond had in getting his dissertation published can only be speculated upon. The well-known difficulties that black scholars had finding publishers in this period, as well as the fact that the book continues to be in print in the 1980s, lead one to make that kind of speculation.Google Scholar

6 Bond, to Schomburg, Arthur A. 5 Sept. 1936, Bond Papers, IV, 89, 13A. DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction (New York, 1935). For criticism of DuBois's dictatorship of the proletariat argument, see the review by Spero, Sterling D. in The Nation, 4 July 1935, 108–9. Bond's views on DuBois are taken from a letter to Kilson, Martin 9 May 1962, Bond Papers, III, 31, 85D.Google Scholar

7 Fleming, Walter L. Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905). On Fleming's career at Vanderbilt, see Conkin, Paul K. Gone with the Ivy: A Biography of Vanderbilt University (Knoxville, Tenn., 1985). Bond's critique of Fleming is found in a letter to Franklin, John Hope 10 July 1958, Bond Papers, III, 30, 79B.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The article version of Bond's treatment was titled “Social and Economic Forces in Alabama Reconstruction,” Journal of Negro History 23 (July 1938). The quoted material is taken from a speech by Bond, “An Interpretation of the Contribution of William Burns Patterson,” 9 Feb. 1960, Bond Papers, VI, 172, 12.Google Scholar

9 Bond, Horace Mann Negro Education in Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel (Washington, D.C., 1939; New York, 1969), 45. The significance of Bond's critique of Fleming on the issue of the debt is noted by Beale, Howard K. “On Rewriting Reconstruction History,” 816.Google Scholar

10 Rozwenc, Edwin C. ed., Reconstruction in the South (Boston, 1952).Google Scholar

11 Gillette, William Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869–1879 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979); McFeely, William S. Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn., 1968); and McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981). Bond's defense of the “humanitarians” is in Negro Education in Alabama, p. 29; his sensitivity to the economic aspect of the humanitarian's program is found on page 117.Google Scholar

12 Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 26. Wiener, Jonathan M. Social Origins of the New South: Alabama, 1860–1885 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 83, 155, 165.Google Scholar

13 Curti, Merle The Social Ideas of American Educators (New York, 1935). Bond wrote to Curti seeking clarification of a statement Curti made about Washington in Social Ideas; see Bond to Curti, 11 Nov. 1936, Bond Papers, II, 8, 6A.Google Scholar

14 Knight, Edgar W. Public Education in the South (Boston, 1922). On Knight, see Allison, Clinton B. “The Appalling World of Edgar Wallace Knight,” Journal of Thought 18 (Fall 1983): 7–14.Google Scholar

15 Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 192 argues with Knight, Education in the United States (Boston, 1929), 474. Harlan, Louis Separate and Unequal: Public School Campaigns and Racism in the Southern Seaboard States, 1901–1915 (1958; New York, 1968).Google Scholar

16 Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 273 278, is critical of the General Education Board and the Rosenwald Fund respectively. Contemporary criticism of philanthropy for black education can be found in Anderson, James D.Philanthropic Control over Private Black Higher Education,“ in Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, ed. Arnove, Robert F. (Boston, 1980).Google Scholar

17 Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 240–43, can be compared with the discussion of these issues in Anderson, James D.Education for Servitude: The Social Purpose of Schooling in the Black South“ (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1973); and in Carnoy, Martin Education as Cultural Imperialism (New York, 1974), ch. 6.Google Scholar

18 Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 217. Curti treats Curry and Washington in Social Ideas, chs. 7 and 8.Google Scholar

19 Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 217.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 210, 225. For a different evaluation of Bond's views of Washington, see Fultz, MichaelA Quintessential American,“ 437–39.Google Scholar

22 Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York, 1972); and idem, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

23 Herbst, JurgenBeyond the Debate over Revisionism: Three Educational Pasts Writ Large,“ History of Education Quarterly 20 (Summer 1980): 131–45.Google Scholar

24 Bond, Horace Mann The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (1934; New York, 1970). On Woodson, see August Meier and Rudwick, Elliott Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915–1980 (Urbana, Ill., 1986): 1–71. On Bond and Woodson, see Meier and Rudwick, Black History, 101–3.Google Scholar

25 Meier, and Rudwick, Black History, 34; and Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 12, 25, 141.Google Scholar

26 Meier, and Rudwick, Black History, 131–36, 157–58.Google Scholar

27 I have described Bond's participation in the Brown case in Urban, Wayne J.The Educational Historian as Advocate: Horace Mann Bond and the Brown Decision“ (Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the History of Education Society, Stanford University, 17 Oct. 1986).Google Scholar

28 Franklin, and Anderson, eds., New Perspectives on Black Educational History; Franklin, Vincent P. The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority Community, 1900–1950 (Philadelphia, 1979); Homel, Michael W. Down from Equality: Black Chicagoans and the Public Schools, 1920–1941 (Urbana, Ill., 1984); and Anderson, James D. “Education for Servitude,” and several articles taken from that dissertation, two of which can be found in Franklin and Anderson, New Perspectives. Google Scholar

29 Franklin, John HopeThe Dilemma of the American Negro Scholar,“ in Soon, One Morning: New Writing by American Negroes, 1940–1962, ed. Hill, Herbert (New York, 1963); and Meier, and Rudwick, Black History, 278–82.Google Scholar

30 Bond, Horace MannReflections, Comparative, on West African Nationalist Movements,“ Presence Africaine 17 (Sept. 1956), typescript in Bond Papers VI, 174, 23.Google Scholar

31 Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, xii.Google Scholar

32 Jordan, WinthropForeword“ to Johnston, James Hugo Race Relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South, 1776–1870 (Amherst, Mass., 1970), vvi.Google Scholar