Trends in the Psychological Index indicated a change in resources directed toward education between the early 1910s and late 1920s. By 1930, “educational” studies accounted for the highest percentage—about 25 percent—of 25, 472 articles in psychology, with studies in “abnormal” and “social” psychology accounting for respectively 21 percent and 19 percent. This trend, evident in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature as well, reflected an increasing popularity of psychotherapeutic knowledge and products in clinics, courts, hospitals, prisons, and schools. As a growth market, education offered resources and was viewed as the most promising institution in the United States for regulating normality. By the late 1910s, “educational psychology” was central to institutions of teacher training. Certainly, for psychologists, psychology was the “the source of fundamental assumptions” for guiding educational practice. Teachers' views were similar. In one survey in the mid 1920s, teachers recognized educational psychology as the most intrinsically valuable course in their university programs. In other words, within institutions like The Ohio State University (OSU), requirements in teacher training provided psychologists with a mechanism for demonstrating the uses of psychotherapeutic knowledge, products, and procedures. These trends beg a simple question: What was educational psychology?

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their students played a pivotal part in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. Private HBCUs, in particular, provided foot soldiers, intellectual leadership, and safe places to meet and plan civil disobedience. Their economic and political autonomy from the state enabled the institutions and their students to participate in activism without the constant fear of legislative retribution. Their private status did not shield them completely from the state's wrath, however, particularly when college aims collided with state interests. Some constituents argued that HBCUs should agitate for constitutionally protected freedoms; others maintained that HBCUs should shun politics and focus on purely educational concerns. Debates over the role of HBCUs raged on and off campuses. Those with the greatest degree of commitment to the movement faced severe penalties.

This conversation begins with two observations: first, the professional organizations—conferences and journals—need to play more self-conscious, activist roles in shaping scholarly canons. Second, whatever canon now presides over American higher educational history is an extremely tolerant one. So much of current scholarship seems to arise out of particularly local interests, narrow specializations, or anniversary celebrations. Even more, rich case studies of particular institutions often omit any connection with a wider discourse. Too many essays of colleges and universities with rather singular histories seldom probe current scholarly wisdom to assess how issues and generalizations might be changed because of their particular case. The cumulative effect of this scholarship “from below” tends to erode any general consensus on central problems. Should not the professional organizations hosting academic discussions probe this phenomenon and indeed suggest that subsequent scholarship explain the issues that their case illuminates? Should they not explain how their scholarship connects to existing scholarly canons?