An African School for African Americans: Black Demands for Education in Antebellum Boston

2021/11/01 by ShaVonte’ Mills
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #American History and Culture #Critical Race Theory in Education #Race, History, and American Society

paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/heq.2021.38

openalex publication_date 2021/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

Abstract This article examines Black parents’ efforts to establish and secure quality education for their children in antebellum Boston, Massachusetts. It situates the African School, a Black-owned cultural institution, within Black nationalist politics and reveals how the schoolhouse became a site of political tension between Black Bostonians and the Boston School Committee. Analyzing petitions, school records, and newspapers, this essay finds that the African School cultivated Black citizenship ideologies that prioritized political activism. This study invites new understandings of the political intersections of education and citizenship, and it illuminates the utility of Black nationalism in antebellum Boston.

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