A Context for the Birth of "The Journal of Negro Education".
2007; Howard University; Volume: 76; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2167-6437
Autores Tópico(s)Critical Race Theory in Education
ResumoThe Journal of Negro Education was born during the third decade of the 20th century. The Journal has reflected concern with race and racial discrimination as a central problem in the education of Negro people. During its 75th anniversary, the legacy of The Journal continues and has remained the educational, societal, and economic outlet for African Americans. This article chronicles the time frame in which The Journal thrived and highlights the social and economic status of the Negro. That man over there says that women need to be helped into carnages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? (Truth, 1851, as cited in Mabee, 1993, p. 76). It is a peculiar sensation, this this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls; two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one in one dark body; whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (Du Bois, 1903, p. 5). I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiver and liquids and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or their imagination in deed, everything and anything except me (Ellison, 1952, p. 3). The Journal of Negro Education was born at an interesting time in the history of the people of African descent in the western hemisphere. In the beginning of the third decade of the 20th century the Negro people in the United States were still struggling to be recognized as human beings. Sojourner Truth's plaintive plea could easily have come from the lips of any person of African descent as Am I not a person even though I am black? The Journal of Negro Education (JNE) from its beginning was an implicit response to Ellison's complaint of invisibility for the Black people. The Journal was needed because there were limited outlets for publishing scholarly articles concerning Negro people and written by Negro people. For the first thirty years of the life of The Journal, its list of authors was a virtual Who's Who of Black America, as it was a major publication outlet for members of the Negro intelligentsia. Reading through the contents of The Journal one is struck by the reflection of Du Bois's double consciousness, the bi-focal representation of the Negro as a Black and separate people and at the same time the selfpresentation as Negro American. These perspectives, reflected in the voices of Truth, Ellison, and Du Bois, captured the ethos of Blacks in America in the first quarter of the 20th century. These concerns were the ubiquitous context for the birth of JNE in 1932, and have had a continued presence throughout its 75-year history. The Journal of Negro Education came into being in the beginning of the fourth decade of the 20th century, a decade that followed a period of almost outlandish affluence for the upper classes in the United States. During the roaring twenties a small segment of the European American population enjoyed the benefits of the second real expansion of the American middle and upper classes. …
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