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African American Educators’ Ideas and Practices for Increasing High School Graduation Rates, 1920–1940

Miyoshi B. Juergensen Emory University

This study explores African American educators’ ideas about school completion in the 1920s and 1930s as a way to begin to understand their contributions to the his- torical discourse on school completion. Using publications from African American professional teaching organizations, the author elevates and examines how African American educators both discussed and engaged in rhetoric around high school com- pletion. The study finds that African American educators primarily advocated for institutional adjustments when discussing ways to increase high school completion. Specifically, African American educators overwhelmingly encouraged schools and teachers to adjust the school day, differentiate the curriculum, and restructure guidance programs to address high school completion concerns. However, the author finds that high school completion did not exist as an isolated educational concern. Instead, the data indicate that African American educators viewed high school completion as part of a long-term strategy for racial uplift and economic advancement.

Keywords: graduation rate, education history, African American teachers

Existing historical research on graduation rates in the United States points to a signifi- cant increase for African American students in the postwar era continuing through the Civil Rights Movement. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (1991) and notable educational historians (Dorn, 1996; Rury & Hill, 2011), the gap between the African American and white graduation rates started to shrink in the 1940s. In addition, and largely ignored in the mainstream rhetoric of the day, Myrdal’s (1944) study of race relations in America found that African American students who were able to make it to high school were slightly more likely than their white counter- parts to graduate from high school and attend college. However, the contexts and processes by which African American graduation rates improved and outpaced the white graduation rate leading up to widespread desegregation have been left up for debate. The research is clear about an increase in African American graduation rates but less clear about how the increase was achieved, especially at the school level.

Most commonly, the increase in the African American graduation rate during segrega- tion has been discussed at the national and regional levels in terms of the increased availability of secondary schools for African American students (Anderson, 1988; Rury & Hill, 2011; Spring, 2011), the impact of Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, and the shifting landscape of the job market (Dorn, 1996). When local, school-level factors have been considered, they are couched inside the “Good Black High School” narrative (Rury & Hill, 2011) wherein African American students were under the supervision of caring and dedicated educators whose characteristics led to varying degrees of academic success (Kelly, 2010; Milner, 2006; Savage, 2001).

The impetus for this research exists in the space between these somewhat narrow lenses of African American educational history, African American educators, and African American students’ academic achievement.

This study seeks to address the need for a more robust history of African American education and educators by expanding understandings of the relationship between their ideas and practices and the educational outcomes that resulted for African American students, namely graduation from high school. In this article, the author presents research guided by the following questions: (a) How did African American educa- tors discuss and implement school and/or community practices to address school (in)completion as expressed through their professional written and published texts? And, (b) What is the relationship between African American educational ideas on school (in)completion found in their professional texts and the mainstream educa- tional rhetoric on school completion in the 1920s and 1930s?

Although the larger project expands to include data from 1940–1954, this article only reports data from 1920–1940. The study begins with the 1920s because it is the decade in which the High School Movement expanded to include more high schools for African American communities (Anderson, 1988; Goldin & Katz, 1997; Rury & Hill, 2011), which led to more pointed and frequent discussions about graduation than in decades prior. In addition, in much the same way as Hall’s (2005) notion of the “Long Civil Rights Movement” encourages consideration beyond the master narrative of the Move- ment to include its 1930s roots, beginning with African American educational ideas and practices in the 1920s provides a trajectory of educational thought that culminated in the shrinking graduation gap observed in the postwar era. By the 1940s, however, the educational landscape is set to shift drastically due to World War II and early rum- blings of school integration. In addition, the data reveal a significant decrease in African American educators’ discussions about high school completion beginning in the 1940s as compared to the 1920s and 1930s.

Conceptual Orientation During the Jim Crow Era, the educational experiences of African American students were determined by a legalized dual educational system that provided white students with educational opportunities superior to those of African Americans. The largely accepted historical narrative is that schools serving white students received more state funding, employed more qualified teachers, and offered better facilities. In contrast, African American schools were uniformly seen as inferior due to these inequalities as well as others, such as lack of transportation, overcrowding, poor student atten- dance, and shorter school terms (Baker, 2006; Tushnet, 1987; Siddle Walker, 2000).

However, research on the history of African American schooling complicates this narrative by arguing for the unintended outcomes of segregation. Following Henry Bullock’s (1967) claims in A History of Negro Education in the South: From 1619 to the Present, such scholarship explores the dimensions of African American education often excluded from the dominant inferiority discourse on African American educa- tors, students, and schools. Bullock (1967) stated,

The functions of any society have intended and unintended dimensions [emphasis his]… social functions of an unintended quality do arise and cause a society to veer in directions not necessarily set by the specific purposes of the majority. Events do occur ‘unofficially’ in time and place where those acting ‘officially’ never willed… bringing into existence new social orders and more revolutionary alignments of peoples. (p. ix)

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Speaking in general about race relations in America and specifically about de jure segregation, Bullock forces a deeper and more comprehensive examination of segre- gation and all its parts – the first of its parts being the larger historical, social, and political contexts.

Following Henry Bullock’s (1967) theory of “unintended dimensions,” what white officials in the South failed to recognize in their overt neglect of African American education is that these separate institutions became literal breeding grounds for racial pride, achievement, and agitation (Baker, 2006). In pre- and post-slavery, teaching and preaching were courageous acts that often resulted in harassment from whites – and sometimes death. The result, though, for African American children was a learning environment and community that shaped and encouraged them to fuel educational and equality initiatives. It is here that the scholarship on African American educators can be used to fill the gap in understanding what else African American educators were doing in the name of access and equality, including encouraging students to graduate from high school.

Literature Review The histories of school completion and African American educators during segrega- tion do not tell as much about strategies for keeping children in school until com- pletion as they could. However, the literature on the history of African American education suggests that African American schools experienced success on a variety of desired academic outcomes for their students. An exploration of the literature on African American teachers during this period exposes a distinct interest at the con- ceptual level, and, in case studies that look at specific schools, a few concrete exam- ples of their attention to dropouts. Importantly, African American educators’ efforts to increase the graduation rate of their students need be located in the broader United States’ policy approaches to school completion.

Of course African American educators were not the only educators concerned with school completion. Nationally, progressive education reformers were making clear the value of attendance in America’s schools (Clawson & Hunt, 1975; Curti, 1959; Kaestle, 1983). Through the passing of compulsory attendance and child labor laws, the wide- spread belief that all school-age children should be enrolled and regularly attending school was evident indeed. School attendance, however, was not the only initiative on the Progressivism1 agenda; instead, it was a means by which to achieve the overarching goals of Progressivism. Progressives, in general, broadened the school program to include more holistic approaches to students, vocation, family, and community. As explained in Lawrence Cremin’s (1961) seminal work on Progressivism in education, it was “a many-sided effort to use the schools to improve the lives of individuals” (p. viii). Included in the efforts, then, were the first most concerted attempts to increase school attendance and completion since the origin of the public school.

African American Educators and High School Completion As discussed by several historians of African American education, African American educators in Southern segregated schools had clear ideas about developing caring rela- tionships (Foster, 1997; Siddle Walker, 1996, 2001, 2009, 2013), holding high expecta- tions of students (Morris & Morris, 2002), and involving themselves in the community

1 Of note, the Progressive Era is wrought with competing definitions from American and educational historians alike. The goals, purposes, and outcomes of the movement have been both been challenged and perpetuated in the historical and contemporary record (Reese, 2000). Regardless, progressives ultimately succeeded in creating a new way of thinking about education in white and African American schools (Cremin, 1961).

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as well as professional organizations (Baker, 2006; Kelly, 2010; Siddle Walker, 2005). Indeed, much of the scholarship on African American educators in the segregated South describes them as caring and having high character and academic expectations of their students that required them to perform better than their white counterparts (Foster, 1997; Morris & Morris, 2002; Siddle Walker, 1996, 2001, 2009, 2013). Though unquestionable evidence of these characteristics exists, these corrective histories do not fully link students’ academic success to the care, involvement, support, and high expec- tations espoused by African American educators during this time.

In one such history on African American education in the segregated South, Vanessa Siddle Walker (2009) suggested that African American educators embodied ideas and strategies around student retention without exactly naming it “dropout prevention.” For example, Siddle Walker recounted a specific program designed to help students achieve academic success and stay in school until graduation. According to the author, the program was designed to provide parental support to its seventh and eighth grade students. Specifically, the program’s goal was to increase the possibility of school completion by addressing students’ school habits before they entered high school. It required teachers to volunteer their time before and after school to tutor and mentor students, included military drills to instill discipline, and provided oppor- tunities for students to exhibit pride and develop self-esteem by performing for the entire school community. Excluded from Walker’s account, however, is the success of the program, how many students it impacted, or the degree to which teachers and other school staff contributed, thus adding to the gap in the literature on the larger impact of the program on the graduation rate of African American students.

In general, students who received the treatment and institutional care described in Vanessa Siddle Walker’s (1996, 2001, 2009) work often credited it to their own aca- demic success. In one example, a student attributed attending college to his teachers in his segregated school, stating that they encouraged him to graduate and pursue post-secondary education (Morris & Morris, 2002). Similarly, David Cecelski (1994) discussed how the teachers at Hyde County Training School in North Carolina “encouraged the children to finish twelfth grade and to continue their educations” (p. 64). According to Cecelski, students felt obligated to make contributions to the community that reflected the levels of care, concern, and expectations that their teachers held for them including graduating from high school. Much like similar research on African American education and educators though, these projects are case studies whose generalizability is limited in terms of conclusions regarding over- all academic achievement.

Even more, historians of African American education suggest that the curriculum and activities within these schools supported specific concerns about graduation and college attendance (Anderson, 1988; Fairclough, 2007). In the case of Treholm High School, Vivian Morris and Curtis Morris (2002) were clear to state that the school community experienced success because it embodied “what it meant to care for, nurture, educate, and protect their children from the ravages of racial segregation as well as the negative impact of school desegregation in their community” (p. 1). Indeed, students were regularly exposed to the achievements of prominent African Americans via a picture gallery located in the auditorium, which was the center of the school’s activities. As a result of the auditorium’s picture gallery, students were familiar with the accomplishments of the likes of Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Sojourner Truth. Students also experienced leader- ship development through visits from African American scholars and professionals such as George Washington Carver, as well as public speaking contests and a yearly trip to

African American Educators’ Ideas

Washington D.C. In addition, students were encouraged and expected to participate in co-curricular activities that encouraged academic success such as the Honor Society and Science Club. The authors argued that strategies such as these contributed to the levels of student success achieved within and beyond the schoolhouse. As probable as it is that these practices of African American educators and community members led directly to students’ desire to graduate from high school, still absent are data that sup- port a link between high school graduation rates and African American educators’ ideas and practices for successfully moving students through school.

Whether specific ideas and practices for increasing the graduation rate of their students were common in African American schools pre-Brown is essential to this project. As noted by Sherman Dorn (1996), efforts to keep students in school until graduation were primarily approached through dropout prevention programs beginning in the 1960s. If African American educators were implementing such programs at state- wide or regional levels prior to the 1960s, when dropping out became a trending con- cern for the nation (Dorn, 1996), then they were ahead of the national curve in a striking way. African American educators were not silent on the topic of school completion; it is simply that their ideas had yet to be identified and appreciated. So, while white officials “blocked off any consideration of Negro dropouts” (Dorn, 1996, p. 100), this study shows that African American educators addressed high school completion within their own professional communities and, thus, offers important context for the increase in African American graduation rates observed during the postwar era.

Methods In order to identify African American educators’ historical ideas and practices for increasing the graduation rate of African American students, the researcher used pub- lished and unpublished archival data from national and regional African American professional teaching organizations (see Appendix A). Data were collected and analyzed over the course of two years of archival research on the following organiza- tions: one national organization, the American Teachers Association (ATA); and one regional organization, The Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes (The Association). The advantage of working from both national and regional organi- zations is that ideas of African American educators from across the nation can be seen alongside those of African American educational leaders from a particular region, who often were members of the larger organization. In addition, given each organization’s intent to widely distribute their publications to their readerships in order to improve the state of African American education, articles within the publications were selected as exemplary models. A brief description of each organization is below:

• The American Teachers Association (ATA) was established to provide a platform for African American educators to discuss ways to increase the availability of high schools for African American students, improve curriculum and instruction, and increase the amount of graduates attending post-secondary institutions. After six decades as a separate organization, the ATA merged with its white counterpart, the National Education Association (NEA), in the wake of the Civil Rights Move- ment. Data were collected from the ATA’s official proceedings, reports, and journals found in several archival collections across the Southeast.

• The Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes’ (The Association) role was to develop and prepare Southern African American secondary schools and other institutions of higher education for accreditation in conjunction with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), which was the white counter- part. Data were collected from the organization’s proceedings and reports primarily located in the Manuscripts and Rare Books Library (MARBL) at Emory University.

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Methodologically, the researcher approached this project using methods set forth by intellectual historians. Broadly, intellectual histories (a) refer to what people have thought and believed, which can be inferred from what they have written (Fisher, 1999); (b) are designed to examine connections between historical ideas and past and present social experience; (c) make it possible to observe how a previous generation influenced and were influenced by a phenomenon; and, (d) typically examine a dis- tinct social group as they act out a collective belief system of which they are conscious (Gilbert, 1971).

Data Analysis This study primarily focuses on written documents. According to Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier (2001), written sources can be categorized in three ways: narrative or “literary,” juridical, or as social documents. Because the written documents being used for this project are the organizations’ official publications, they are considered examples of the third category, social documents. Howell and Prevenier (2001) explained, “these documents provide accounts of particular charges or agencies, of meetings, of business policy. Or they give a survey of an administrative structure, of a social struc- ture, or of a political administration” (p. 22). As such, the journals and documents are valid products of record-keeping done by both organizations and contain information of social, political, educational, and judicial import.

Documents were analyzed in a four-step process. First, I used a document summary form adapted from Miles and Huberman (1994) to review and identify relevant docu- ments for the study.2 I primarily searched archival sources for references to “atten- dance,” “enrollment,” “graduation,” “holding power,” and “early school leaving” to determine their relevance to the study. After completing initial review of the docu- ments, I utilized open coding to identify salient themes of African American educators’ ideas and practices for helping students graduate from high school. Next, I developed axial codes from the open codes to identify broader thematic relationships. Finally, I created the thematic categories that are presented as the basis for the article. Following these methods, data sources were able to provide examples of African Americans’ edu- cational thought and practice regarding school completion and the structures in which these were addressed.3

Results The findings of this study are consistent with the historical literature on African American schools and education with respect to the importance of professionalism (Fultz, 1995; Siddle Walker, 2001, 2005, 2009) and the creation of a comprehensive caring environment for students (Baker, 2006; Du Bois, 1935; Kelly, 2010; Savage, 2001; Siddle Walker, 1996, 2000). The findings of this study have been divided into

2 Due to the breadth and depth of each organization’s sociopolitical agendas, a substantial amount of what I encountered in the archives provided insight on the inner workings of the organizations and, to a lesser extent, educators’ specific ideas. Because the scope of this study does not include the data sources’ organizational histories, see also Vanessa Siddle Walker, Organized resistance and Black educators’ quest for school equality, 1878–1938 for more on organized activities of African American educators during segregation.

3 The decision to rely exclusively on archival material limits the scope of generalizability and makes absent the distinct voices of African American educators. By focusing on the organizations and not the individual educators in this phase of the research, I was able to construct a broad analysis of African American educators’ ideas on school completion. Also complicating my ability to make wider generalizations about African American educators as a group using these data sets is that both organizations included white members. Regardless, a majority of the memberships were comprised of African American administrators, teachers, supervisors, and academicians (Potts, 1978). As such, reasonable conclusions could nevertheless be attained about their intellectual approaches to school completion due to the significant number of African American educators who were professionally affiliated with each of the organizations used in this study.

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four sections that deal with (a) advocacy strategies and structures to increase the avail- ability of schools and improve the overall educational enterprise, (b) educational activi- ties that were couched in philosophies on caring relationships and Progressivism (c) pedagogical models and methods for improving and adjusting the curriculum also influenced by Progressivism, and (d) foundational ideological influences such as racial uplift and economic advancement.

The first section takes up the accreditation efforts of The Association as a key strata- gem in addressing school completion and includes an examination of similar organi- zational advocacy demonstrated by the ATA to increase the number and quality of schools for African American children. The next section shifts the conversation to the complex relational configurations between educational stakeholders that point to thoughtful, careful intent and impact on the school completion of African American students. Building on the thoughtfulness and whole-child approach from the previous section, the next section discusses African American educators’ ideas about instruc- tional, institutional, and guidance methods for keeping children in school over the course of their academic careers. Lastly, the final section addresses African American educators’ broader, foundational social, political, and economic interests in encouraging the school completion of African American students.

Advocacy Efforts According to the data, African America educators strongly considered their profes- sional organizations capable of addressing school completion by addressing the paucity of schools and the quality of education provided. Indeed, the data reveal that the educators were much like the educators in Vanessa Siddle Walker’s (2001) work who held a strong belief in the power of their professional organizations to improve the educational experiences of African American students and communities. Proceed- ings and reports from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools for Negroes detailed African American educators’ discussions about alarming trends in enroll- ment, attendance, and completion were major components in larger equality discus- sions about facilities, transportation, length of the school term, and the overall needs of the African American child.

As quoted in the ATA’s 1928 Bulletin by W.T.B. Williams, Field Director of the Jeanes and Slater Funds, just as the preacher “needs everything from [his] hat down, and from [his] overcoat in… equally general are the educational needs of the average Negro Child” (p. 12). At the turn of the twentieth century, the general needs of the average Negro4 child included, first, schools to attend. Second, the Negro child needed longer school terms. In some cases, Negro children were only in school two or three months, which was well below the reported national average of four months. Third, the Negro child needed more highly qualified teachers, which from the purview of the ATA, could be achieved in part by adjusting the teacher salary schedule. Lastly, and round- ing out Williams’ (1928) argument, was that the Negro child needed more accredited high schools in order “to compete on somewhat equal terms with the more fortunate boys and girls of his country” (p. 13). As stated by Williams, the needs of the Negro child would be met through attention to specific political items to achieve equality and, more importantly, the opportunity to even attend and graduate from quality, accredited schools in the first place.

4 Terms used to self-describe and describe African Americans have undergone several evolutions (Derrickson, Speight, & Vera, 1996). Throughout the publications, “Negro” is used to self-identify; and, thus, used to remain consistent with their own terminology. Considering that “African American” was advanced as the most recent iteration of racial identity labels, the study employs “African American” as well.

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As previously mentioned, improving the quality of African American schools through collective action was the first step in increasing the number of African American stu- dents who graduated from high school. W.A. Robinson of the ATA argued in the 1927 Bulletin that through organization, political prowess, and “constructive thinking” (p. 5), African Americans could get their “collective head” (p. 5) out of the lion’s mouth and into a safer position. According to Robinson, to be safer in the segregated system meant to secure certain markers of a quality education for African American students.

The following year, in the 1928 ATA Bulletin, W.A. Robinson made the link between the expansion of equal educational facilities and attendance even clearer; he stated that “wherever the Negro has been given a fair chance to improve himself… it is prob- ably that no instance can be cited to show that he has not accepted this advantage or that his school attendance has not increased” (p. 13). As a result, Robinson and the ATA advocated for items that would satisfy accreditation such as “improved school buildings, better roads, free transportation, opportunity schools, and the opera- tion of compulsory laws” (p. 13). Also on the ATA’s agenda was a strongly articulated need for longer school terms, a decrease in class size, and an increase in teacher salary. These agenda items were expected to both increase enrollment and encourage students to persist through school.

In summary, African American educational thought regarding school completion existed on a complicated continuum of organization, advocacy, and implementation—one not traditionally viewed in connection with high school graduation. Where African American educators clearly assigned value to formal organizational efforts to improve schools overall, the data indicate that they did so with the intention of putting structures in place that would lead to more African American students completing school. As a complement, then, African American educators’ ideas on school completion expanded to classroom teachers and the ways in which they kept children in school, once the fruits of their advocacy provided them with more quality schoolhouses. The next sec- tion more deeply explores classroom teachers and also discusses the variety of com- plex relationships educators held with parents and the community in working to keep African American children in school through graduation. It also touches on Progressivism’s idea of the whole-child approach.

Relationships and Retention The data indicate that a variety of student, parent, school, educator, and community relationships were being used with African American children to encourage school attendance and completion. Consistent with the literature on the importance of the community to African American schooling, African American educators were encour- aged to develop and nurture community-school partnerships in efforts to encourage and motivate students (Morris & Morris, 2002; Siddle Walker, 1996). For example, teachers were expected to both connect with the community and also to encourage their students to follow in kind. For example, in the ATA Bulletin article “A Princi- pal’s Program for a School Year, 1925–1926” (American Teachers Association, 1927), the unknown author described how teachers were instructed to model community engagement so that “pupils would desire to cooperate in activities of school, commu- nity, home, and church” (p. 21). The overall objective was to stave off students’ feel- ings of school and community alienation that could contribute to their withdrawal from school.

In another example of how an African American school might go about developing relationships with students’ parents, the ATA Bulletin published a copy of a message that was sent to parents from a principal and teachers at a school. In it, the school’s

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faculty begins with, “This school year is given to us to work with the children and the community. Your help is needed. Parents and teachers must work together if they wish to have well prepared boys and girls” (American Teachers Association, 1927, p. 14). The bulletin also encouraged parents to “teach children the value of coming to school every day” (American Teachers Association, 1927, p. 14). There was no com- mentary or analysis included; it was simply offered as an example to the readership of what other African American educators were doing to communicate with parents and the community. Albeit subtle, the ideas presented in the bulletin reinforce the impor- tance of communication and cooperation between the school and the community – particularly between parents and the school – in getting children to school.

Indeed, parental support and involvement come into view as a common strand of African American educators’ ideas about school completion. While significant research exists that shows African American parents’ efforts to increase enrollment and attendance by providing funds for school buses and other modes of transportation (Baker, 2006; Cicelski, 1994; Siddle Walker, 1996), few studies take up the more pragmatic ways in which teachers and parents worked together to keep their children in school (Kelly, 2010; Siddle Walker, 2001). In an editorial published in the April–May 1927 Bulletin, the unknown author asserted what teachers must know and believe in accordance with the convictions of the profession:

Teachers must have knowledge of matter, mind, and method. . . . We must believe in boys and girls as the men and women of a great tomorrow and, by forceful and inspiring leadership, lead them up to higher levels of thinking and doing. . . . We must follow up that conviction with the determination to convince every parent in our respective communities that he must educate his children or at least give them the opportunity. (American Teachers Association, 1927, p. 15)

Essentially, the author first linked the beliefs and tasks of African American educators to the overall performance of African American students. Second, and most impor- tant to this study, the author extended the teachers’ tasks specifically to persuading parents of the importance of education so that more children would come to school. As demonstrated here, African American educational thought about increasing atten- dance was viewed as a cooperative effort and espoused an understanding of school completion that required parental support.

In addition to parent-teacher relationships, findings indicate that African American educators’ ideas about school completion simultaneously included an emphasis on student-teacher relationships. The history of African American schooling in the South is saturated with accounts of student-teacher relationships that motivated and inspired students primarily through high expectations (Cecelski, 1994; Foster, 1997; Kelly, 2010; Siddle Walker, 1996, 2000). This study adds to those accounts insofar as African American educators also expressed high expectations in the pages of the publications examined here. Specifically, in a 1927 essay titled, “What Should George Know,” by J.H. Dillard of the ATA, Dillard explained that short school terms and absenteeism often kept George from knowing; thus, addressing these issues was the first step in getting George to know. Once George was in a school, however, “the school ought to beget and foster the habit of being painstaking and worthy, not the habit of expecting to get on anyhow… He ought to be reviewed and reviewed until he knows” (p.15). Dillard concluded his article with the phrase, “let us paint the words ‘Quality First’ in big bright letters over the doors in our schoolhouses” (p. 16). What Dillard elevated here is the integrity of standards – of a relationship dictated by high expectations for the student and the teacher who sets them.

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Apart from more expected relational configurations between educators, students, parents, and the community, the data also revealed an administrative relationship between high schools and colleges that African American educators included in their discourse on school completion. For example, in The Association’s 1936 Proceedings, the Report on the Commission of Secondary Schools recommended that “high schools and colleges work closely together to make the program of guidance most effective” (p. 32) in terms of encouraging students to complete high school and be successful at applying for and attending college. Heading into the 1940s, The Association con- tinued to press the importance of improving the connectedness between secondary and post secondary schools. Specifically, J.A. Tarpley, principal at Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, instructed that “high schools and colleges should arrive at common agreements” (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1939, p. 44) about cur- riculum, materials, and expectations to better prepare high school graduates for college.

Complicating the degree to which high schools and colleges worked together, T.D. Wilkinson of The Association used the 1936 proceedings to outline a pre-guidance program that necessitated “a more close, intelligent, and sympathetic relationship between pupil and teacher that should go with the student’s record to the college” (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1936, p. 31). Quite matter of fact, Wilkinson stated that high schools should do the following:

[E]stablish a Guidance Committee and take all students in hand at the end of their first year in high school, talk to them about life, and let them know that what they expect to be tomorrow depends on what they do today… Such a com- mittee would not only be helpful to the student by advising him through his high school career, but could secure literature for the college (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1936, p. 33).

While Wilkinson largely held high schools accountable for improving their guidance models, the responsibility of the pre-guidance relationship between the high school and the college was fairly distributed. For the colleges, Wilkinson charted a course to increase exposure to high school students by visiting campuses, mailing literature, financing senior class trips to college campuses, and involving alumni in college- exposure events. Though admittedly daunting, Wilkinson reminded his colleagues that it was their responsibility to “inspire young men and women to secure a college education, which is after all, the final objective” (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1936, p. 30) Through both the close relationships between (a) the teacher and the student and (b) the high school and the college, students were potentially better advised through completion of high school and colleges were better equipped to sup- port students through college due to the information provided by high school teachers.

In a deeper analysis of the complex relationships available from the data, it is also evident that African American educators considered it their responsibility to create and sustain relationships by going into the community, reaching out and utilizing parents, and encouraging their students through high expectations. Furthermore, the data show that such a sense of responsibility extended into official school policies and practices employed in schools. The following section takes up African American educators’ ideas about embracing their responsibility to students at risk of not gradu- ating from high school by examining how schools made institutional modifications to positively impact graduation rates.

Curriculum Improvement and Adjustment The data reveal that African American educators discussed differentiating the curricu- lum, altering the school day, and designing the guidance program in efforts to meet

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the varied needs of each individual child toward school completion. For example, The Association’s 1935 report from the Commission of Secondary Schools stated it was the responsibility of the school to “revise, remodel, and improve facilities in the school to bring back students” (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1936, p. 26) who left school without completing their coursework. From added class periods to models developed to follow children through and beyond school, institutional adjust- ments materialized as an overwhelmingly consistent theme in African American edu- cators’ ideas about countering the number of students who withdrew from school before graduating.

Forms of curriculum adjustment appear in the data particularly in reference to adjust- ing the school day. By adjusting the school day, African American educators thought they would be able to address the most frequent cause of withdrawal from school by tailoring the school schedule to students’ work schedules. In a 1924 ATA Bulletin, Leo Favrot of the Louisiana Negro Teachers Association laid out common reasons why Negro students often failed to attend school and were thereby not working toward completion. Favrot’s (1924) chief explanation was the harsh economic realities of Jim Crow that “kept children on the farm or doing other work” (p. 9) instead of coming to school. To this reality, Favrot suggested that “schools should make some adjust- ment to meet the situation… arrange the program so that [students] miss none of their daily recitations… or could come to school for one-half day” (p. 10). Even though Favrot conceded that such a compromise was not an ideal response, he stated, “it is better than that these [students] should stay out altogether” (p. 10).

Finally, the data suggest that guidance programs in Negro schools were widely recom- mended to keep children in school. According to a 1928 Bulletin article by Hattie Foger of the ATA, the objective of guidance counselors was two-fold: (a) to interrupt students’ discouraging feelings of “non-success” that often result in leaving school; and, (b) “to help the pupil find himself with respect to his interests and abilities” (Foger, 1928, p. 8). Both of these objectives were to be met through guidance in health, education, social adjustment, ethics, and vocation.

A 1928 Bulletin article used Holmes Jr. High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to illustrate the kind of exemplary guidance methods to be implemented. The first com- ponent of the model consisted of personal, remedial, civic, and cultural guidance that was accompanied through a number of student organizations and clubs carefully supervised by instructors. The second component was an added seventh period to the school day, known as the “guidance period,” for “teachers to familiarize them- selves with the data on each student’s grade card” (American Teachers Association, 1928, p. 11). Additionally, “each classroom teacher arrange[d] private conferences with those pupils in her classes who [were] having difficulty with their work in the subjects which she teaches” (American Teachers Association, 1928, p. 11) on the fourth Wednesday of every month. In the third and most important component, pupils who were failing were placed in “restoratory groups” that were “in the charge of the best teachers for those subjects.” Students not in restoratory groups met in their extracurricular clubs instead. According to a 1929 ATA article in The Bulletin, at this level of involvement teachers were provided institutionalized time to “be of service to their students by working with them, not for them” (American Teachers Association, 1929, p. 15). The importance of such a guidance structure cannot be overstated. Considering that teachers functioned as guidance counselors in this space, it not only satisfied curricular needs but also allowed teachers and pupils to come to know each other better through academic and social guidance. This had the potential to manifest in children deciding to continue with school.

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At the regional level, The Association introduced a guidance structure that not only guided students toward finishing high school, but also encouraged students to go to college. In The Association’s 1936 Proceedings, the Report on the Commission of Sec- ondary Schools recommended a general program of guidance that included university exhibits of “books, manuals, and pamphlets which might be of interests to educators and students” (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1936, p. 33) in their high schools. Through such exhibits, African American educators believed students’ close contact with university information and personnel would decrease intimidation about college and expose them to a range of educational and vocational options beyond high school. Following the Commission’s recommendations, The Association resolved to accept a “pre-guidance” agenda wherein high schools and colleges assisted students in “getting information about colleges; selecting a college to enter; preparing for college; taking the necessary steps to enter college; and, making progress in college” (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1936, p. 34). In so doing, the Association offered an intensive guidance strategy for increasing school completion that supported students through high school in a way that encouraged them to consider, attend, and complete college as well.

In another layer of complexity, the concept of following up with the student simulta- neously acknowledged the reality that a large amount of students would not finish school, but was also a strategy that sought to maintain the relationship between the school and the school leaver. In a 1928 ATA Bulletin, the author explained the follow-up method thusly: “the schools should not feel that their responsibility has ended when they found the pupil a job. They should follow him up, aid him whenever possible, and if he proves ill-adapted to the work . . . they should help him get adjusted into something else” (Foger, 1928, p. 11). As an additional outcome, following up with students often resulted in the student returning to school during the interim. In another example, the Report of the Commission on Secondary Schools during The Association’s 1935 proceedings stated the following:

Whether we wish it or not, our students do drop out of our secondary schools at an alarming rate and every facility of the school should be used in an attempt to help these former students to adjust themselves effectively to life about them, and this adjustment, for the vast majority of cases, is most successful when it includes the finding of a job for the student. . . . We feel that it is the function of the guidance program of the secondary school to continue a follow-up of all these young people whether they happen to be in colleges or in occupations. (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1935, p. 33)

As portrayed here, African American educators were exposed to a complicated view about school completion: one that embraced students in a way that offered continuous support even after withdrawal. In so doing, this study finds that African American educators espoused ideas about school completion that left the school door open instead of slamming it behind students who chose to leave school early. In addition, this study also finds that the onus of the said follow-up relationship was on the school and not the child, which is consistent with feelings of responsibility espoused by African American teachers in segregated schools in the historical literature (Foster, 1997; Siddle Walker, 1996, 2000, 2001). The concept of African American educators’ sense of responsibility, in this case then, illuminates an essential theme in African American educational thought on school completion – that of racial equality.

Racial Uplift and Economic Advancement African Americans have long considered education the path to equality, and the ideas of African American educators in this study correlate with this belief. At least since

African American Educators’ Ideas

Reconstruction, African Americans were exerting their belief in education as essential to their political and economic future in more formal ways5 (Banks, 1996; Mitchell, 2008). History records show, however, that once white supremacy becomes institution- alized in the South via Jim Crow legislation, sophisticated barriers were put in place to prevent African Americans and their children from exercising basic markers of citi- zenship (Baker, 2006; Mitchell, 2008). Thus, when the rhetoric of Progressivism takes over American educational discourse, this study overwhelmingly finds that African American leaders and educators saw an opportunity to co-opt the language for their educational and social purposes.

For example, in The Association’s 1937 Proceedings, W.A. Robinson, Associate Editor of the Bulletin at the time, penned “Progressive Education and the Negro,” where he discussed both the influences of and uses for progressive education rhetoric in the African American school and community. Specifically, Robinson stated, “For the Negro, as for any minority or submerged group in the American population, such interpretations of the nature of education have many far reaching implications” (Com- mission on Secondary Schools, 1937, p. 57). Chief among them, he articulated, was the potential for Progressivism to “influence social thinking and, necessarily, social practice” (p. 58) which was demonstrated by his emphasis on the importance of democracy and citizenship to American ideology. From this vantage point, Robinson called Progressivism “a source of hope for a better day in social thinking” (Commis- sion on Secondary Schools, 1937, p. 65) especially toward freeing African Americans from oppression.

W.A. Robinson then offered explicit examples of Progressive tenets that would best serve African American children, wherein he included ideas around attendance and school completion. Robinson was clear:

If we believe with the colleges that the possession of scholarly ability is the only justification for school attendance or for steady progress through school, we will continue both the practices which eliminate children from the secondary school, and the pretext that we are now permitting graduation only to a fortunate few. Or, if, on the other hand, we believe that there is much more to be acquired in our secondary schools besides factual erudition… we will make some adjustment of school practice that will conform to such a belief. If we believe that children vary in their interests as well as their capacity and speed of learning… we may follow the more reasonable if more difficult and radical procedure of learning to individualize our teaching practices… If we believe that children should enjoy doing things they ought to do as well as the things they ought not to do, we will make the business of going to high school a joyous experience. (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1937, p. 65)

In Robinson’s statements, the reader is reminded of previously discussed examples of ideas and strategies African American educators employed to address school com- pletion concerns such as curricula modification and differentiation. For Robinson though, the intent was grounded in being able to “provide children with a more rea- sonable opportunity to be truly educated” (Commission on Secondary Schools, 1937, p. 65). Truly educated for what, however, emerges as an expected point of contention amongst African American educators in this study and complicates their discourse on school completion.

5 For more on the informal ways in which African Americans acquired education even before Recon- struction, see for example Self-taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom by Heather Williams (2009).

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On using racial uplift to motivate students to complete school, N.B. Young, a contrib- utor to a 1929 ATA Bulletin, insisted that students had to be taught “to think Black. To have an abiding faith in themselves, in their ability to have and to hold… and withal to get from under the shadow of all ‘inferiority complex’ that darkens the path along which they are walking so unsteadily through life” (Young, 1929, p. 7). To this, the author added that schools for Negro children should “cultivate a sense of direc- tion that shall lead them into race efficiency and full citizenship” (Young, 1929, p. 9). The author was clear that full citizenship in a democracy could be achieved through ownership of property and business, so he asserted strongly the need for Negro youth to complete school despite how uncommon it was for African Americans to do so at the time. He stated, “Whatever is common to all forward looking people may not be alien to the Negro” and that by “think[ing] of themselves as highly as they think of others, that is thinking black” (Young, 1929, p. 9). Interestingly, this author, like other propo- nents of practical education, entered the discourse on school completion through a critique of secondary schools’ tendency to educate African American children toward literary and professional mindedness and not business skills. While arguing for stu- dents to stay in school, the author did so in a way that advocated for racial pride and economic independence on behalf of the student and the collective.

Summary of Results In response to research question one6, this study finds that African American educa- tional thought addressed school completion as an issue that required a multipronged approach. Drawing from ideas about collective action, institutional adjustment, and racial uplift, African American educators developed a comprehensive plan for keeping children in school that functioned both beyond and within the walls of the school- house and that was intentionally implemented from all levels of the African American educational enterprise. Their discussions about school completion in some instances took place across organizations and, in several examples, over the examined time period, which indicates a consistency in their thought about school completion in particular.

In response to the second research question, the data reveal that African American educators’ ideas about school completion in the 1920s and 1930s generally reflect mainstream educational rhetoric of the day, namely Progressivism. As a part of a larger humanitarian effort, progressives sought to use education as a catalyst for moral reform and social uplift, which bent well to the needs and goals of African American educators at the time (Alridge, 2007). As a result, much of their discourse echoes com- monly held Progressive beliefs about the “whole child,” curriculum differentiation, and education for citizenship in a democracy. While the findings suggest that main- stream social and intellectual currents such as Progressivism governed African American educators’ primary approaches to school completion, African American educators do not appear to follow these currents wholesale. This study finds that African American educators filtered their ideas about school completion primarily through the lens of Progressivism, but accepted, rejected, and/or repurposed aspects to apply more appropriately to African American students.

Discussion In a time when all schools, not just African American schools, struggled to increase their holding power, it is of little surprise that African American educators exchanged

6 As a reminder, the following research questions guided this study: (a) How did African American educators discuss and implement school and/or community policies to address school (in)completion through their professional written and published texts between 1920 and 1940?; and, (b) What is the relationship between African American educational ideas on school (in)completion found in their professional texts to the mainstream educational rhetoric on school completion between 1920 and 1940?

African American Educators’ Ideas

ideas about school completion. School completion initiatives in African American schools resembled much of what was occurring in white schools in response to low- achieving students at risk of not completing school. For example, white teachers and administrators also utilized policy, experience, and ingenuity to devise a variety of strategies that addressed struggling students (Cuban, Deschenes, & Tyack, 2001). Evi- dence exists of progressive ideas such as attendance campaigns, whole-child approaches, and adjusted curriculum in white educator circles as well (Dorn, 1996). Where they differ, however, is that few teachers in white schools desired to volunteer their time to difficult-to-teach children; thus, several programs that required additional teaching time and effort failed (Franklin, 2000). Additionally, it has been argued that white edu- cators did not reach ideological consensus on school completion until the 1960s (Dorn, 1996). While this may have been true at the national level, African American educators and intellectuals operating in a segregated system were largely in agreement about the problem of school incompletion well before it became a national crisis.

Examining African American educational thought on high school graduation during the age of segregation provides several lessons; the first is in direct relationship to the social and political inequities inherent to Jim Crow. For African American educa- tors, school completion was an integral component in the struggle for equality. With education, African American educators believed African American youth would be able to compete with their white counterparts. Competition, however, was only one piece of the larger equality puzzle. African American educators also expressed belief in the link between education and full citizenship. As evidenced by this study, with- out education – either for vocation or college – African American educators feared that students who dropped out of school would not be equipped with the tools to become economically independent in adulthood. As a result, addressing early school leaving was viewed as an opportunity to interrupt the economic, social, and political status quo for African Americans. Approaching African American educational thought on school completion from this understanding illuminates the driving force behind their efforts and methods for increasing their schools’ holding power and provides a lantern for navigating the complexity of their ideas.

By first identifying African American educators’ ideas around the overall importance of school completion, the data that reveal their advocacy offers another viable school completion strategy. The historical literature on African American education dis- cusses many of the ways African American educators organized and advocated for markers of quality education that included accreditation, teacher salaries, class size, and resources (Loder-Jackson, 2011; Siddle Walker, 2001, 2009). However, the litera- ture has been limited to discussions about school equality and effectiveness with very few interrogations into pragmatic outcomes such as school completion as a result of such advocacy. African American educators represented in this study were not so narrow in their thinking. The organizational publications and reports are clear: advo- cacy would lead to improved schools; improved schools would lead to accreditation; accreditation would lead to more students and more qualified teachers; and all of these together would lead to an increase in student attendance and completion.

Another lesson to be learned is that African American educational thought on school completion was as much about pragmatics as it was equality. The most significant conclusion drawn from their pragmatic approaches is the degree to which the school was held accountable for early school leavers as compared to the early school leaver him/herself. Even though African American educators were acutely aware of the social and economic reasons many children chose to withdraw from school, African American educators largely thought that low attendance and graduation numbers

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were a reflection of them and/or the school. As a result, conversations among African American educators occurred across organizations and time to inform principals, teachers, and guidance counselors of different strategies to increase their schools’ holding power. In the instance of this study, they used the pages of their publications to spread to their readership best practices from across states and the region. From curriculum adjustment, to improving guidance structures, to overall improvement of the instructional program, African American educators’ ideas about school com- pletion at the school level began with reforming the school and not the student.

Implications This study has attempted to move beyond both master and corrective narratives of African American educators in Southern segregated schools by presenting an exami- nation of African American educators’ specific ideas and practices for increasing opportunities for high school graduation. The combination of data from the ATA and The Association provides insight into the scope, complexity, and breadth of African American educational thought as it evolved from the 1920s to 1940. More importantly, though, the data from these organizations’ publications and documents light a way toward a more comprehensive approach to school completion heretofore neglected in contemporary discussions on how to keep children in school until graduation.

Engaging these findings, however, is certain to generate more questions than answers. To what extent did African American educators’ ideas about school completion, as represented in their official publications, influence the practices of the average African American educator? How did African American educators’ ideas evolve especially as the educational landscape shifted in response to the Great Depression? How might our historical understandings of increasing the African American graduation rate be expanded when disaggregating graduation data by gender, class, and region? Is there evidence of an African American intellectual legacy regarding school completion in current African American educators’ educational philosophy and/or practice – in current schools serving mostly African American students? To what extent, if any, are pre-service and in-service teachers exposed to African American educators’ historical ideas and success with positively impacting graduation rates of African American students in particular and all students in general? Any of these inquiries provides fertile ground for future work that reconsiders the trajectory and contours of one of America’s most enduring educational issues – increasing graduation rates.

As stated by Donald Warren (1989), “educational reformers, including policy makers, improve their chances of success when they devise goals in concert with teachers and when they have the experience of history at their disposal” (p. 1). Currently, African American students continue to struggle in the public education system as they are one of the most underachieving groups in the nation’s K-12 student popula- tion, and this is despite substantial restructuring of the educational system to address concerns about African American student outcomes (Gay, 2010; Howard, 2003; Irvine, 1999; Ladson-Billings, 2006). Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) has used “educational debt” as a concept to help explain the educational inequity African American commu- nities in particular have experienced as a result of “the legacy of educational inequities in the United States” (p. 5). America’s educational history is framed by persistent inequities based on race, class, gender, and location but none as much as race. Unfor- tunately, most research on dropouts does not consider the historical implications inherent to the dropout epidemic for African American students, which might explain the lack of progress in addressing it.

African American educators have been largely ignored in the history of high school graduation (Dorn, 1996), just as they have been considered in the mainstream history

African American Educators’ Ideas

of desegregation (Morris, 2001). With the mass firings of veteran African American educators during desegregation, myriad pedagogical and programmatic schooling strategies were lost (Foster, 1997; Morris & Morris, 2002; Tillman, 2004). In addition, valuable information about African American educators’ success with graduating African American students under the contentious circumstances of segregation has also been lost. That the graduation rate of African American students was steadily increasing when they were exclusively under the supervision of African American educators– a feat yet unparalleled in the contemporary moment – is scarcely considered in contem- porary educational research on how to keep more children in school until graduation.

Given the exacerbated social and economic outcomes of not holding a diploma for students who live in poverty and/or are members of disadvantaged groups (Orfield, Kucsera, & Siegel-Hawley, 2012), educators must be presented with every tool in the box to keep children in school until graduation. Research shows that an important his- torical moment has been missed in the education of African American children (Milam, 2010), a moment that could be used to assist all students in persisting through high school. Likewise, an opportunity to inform pre- and in-service educators of a rich his- tory of success that was largely the result of transformative and emancipatory educa- tion has been missed. To this effect, the hope is that, through revisiting what African American educators thought and did, current educators might be able to move toward increasing the graduation rates of this generation’s high schools as well.

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Appendix A

Data Sources

Data Source Data Collection Documents Years Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes (The Association)

Proceedings Reports

1935–1940

American Teachers Association

Proceedings The Bulletin (Official journal) H. Council Trenholm Collection National Education Association (NEA) Reports

1924–1940

African American Educators’ Ideas

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