2023/02/01 by Amato Nocera
Social Sciences · #Aesthetics #African american #African-American literature #Anthropology #Art #Critical Race Theory in Education #Curriculum #Education Methods and Practices #Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy #Gender studies #History #Identity (music) #Law #Pedagogy #Period (music) #Political science #Race (biology) #Racialization #Racism #Representation (politics) #Sociology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/heq.2022.41
openalex publication_date 2023/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract This article examines children's literature written by African American teachers during the first part of the twentieth century. Drawing on theories of racialization, I analyze children's books written by two African American teachers: Helen Adele Whiting (1885-1959) and Jane Dabney Shackelford (1895-1979). I argue that their books represented more than an effort toward greater Black representation in schools; they also served as a contribution to a larger discourse on Blackness and identity that emerged during the “New Negro” movement. In this view, African American teachers were not mere passive recipients of an outside Black culture, but rather intellectual actors involved in the production of racial identity during the interwar period.