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Race, Gender, Philanthropy and the Politics of Knowledge

Part of: 60th Anniversary Forum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2020

Linda M. Perkins
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Extract

Historically, education has often varied by curriculum, access, and stature based on location, race, gender, economic status, religion, and time period. In addition, many educational institutions and much scholarly research have been significantly impacted by private foundation support. This essay discusses the politics of knowledge as it relates to gender and race as well as the impact of philanthropy on the production of knowledge with these groups. While many aspects of these themes have changed in the past sixty years, many of them remain highly contested.

Keywords

Politics of KnowledgeRace and GenderHigher EducationPhilanthropy
Type
60th Anniversary HEQ Forum
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , May 2020 , pp. 228 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 History of Education Society

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References

1 Anderson, James D, “Race, Meritocracy, and the American Academy during the Immediate Post World War II Era,” History of Education Quarterly 33, no. 2 (Summer 1993), 151–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dzuback, Mary Ann, “Gender and the Politics of Knowledge,” History of Education Quarterly 43, no. 2, (June 2003), 171–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, “The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation and the Formulation of Public Policy,” History of Education Quarterly 27 no. 2 (Summer 1987), 205–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, of the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859: repr., New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009). For a critical account of how racism shaped the “science” of intelligence testing see Stephan Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York. W. W. Norton, 1981).

3 Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for Girls (1873, repr., New York: Ayer Company, 1992).

4 See Bigglestone, W. E., “Oberlin College and the Negro Student, 1865–1940,” Journal of Negro History 56, no. 3 (July 1971), 198–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For a discussion of this topic see : Solomon, Barbara, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

6 Perkins, Linda, “The History of Black Women Graduate Students, 1921–1948” in The Sage Handbook of African American Education, ed. Tillman, Linda C. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009), 54Google Scholar.

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8 Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995); and Harry Washington Greene, Holders of Doctorates Among American Negroes; An Educational and Social Study of Negroes Who Have Earned Doctoral Degrees in Course, 1873–1943 (Boston: Meador Publishing, 1946), 219–220.

9 For more on this topic see: James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

10 Hamilton Bims, “Percy L. Julian's Fight for His Life,” Ebony 30, no. 5 (March 1975), 96.

11 Bims, “Percy L. Julian's Fight for His Life.” 102.

12 Will W. Alexander to Raymond Paty, March 22, 1938, box 416, file 6; Julius Rosenwald Fund Archives, Special Collections and Archives, Fisk University, Nashville, TN (hereafter cited as Rosenwald Fund Archives).

13 Alexander to Paty, March 22,1936, Rosenwald Fund Archives.

14 Paul D. Bartlett, letter of reference for Leila S. Green, to the Rosenwald Fund, February (nd), 1939, box 416, folder 6, Rosenwald Fund Archives.

15 William F. Ross, letter of reference for Leila S. Green, to the Rosenwald Fund, February, (nd), box 46 folder 6, Rosenwald Fund Archives.

16 Louis Fieser, letter of reference for Leila S. Green, to the Rosenwald Fund, February ( nd), box 416, folder 6, Rosenwald Fund Archives.

17 Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).

18 Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (Xenia, OH: Aldine Printing, 1892).

19 Perkins, “The History of Black Women Graduate Students,” 53–67.

20 R. B. D. Richardson to George M. Reynolds, March 21, 1941, box 416, folder 12, Rosenwald Fund Archives.

21 Richardson to Reynolds, March 21, 1941, Rosenwald Fund Archives.

22 Anderson, “Race, Meritocracy, and the American Academy,”

23 Linda M. Perkins, “The First Black Talent Identification Program: The National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, 1947–1968,” in Higher Education for African Americans before the Civil Rights Era, 1900–1964, ed. Marybeth Gasman and Roger L. Geiger, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012), 173–197.

24 Doris Goss, memorandum, Reference: The National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Studies, March 21, 1950, Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller Records, Educational Interests. 114. 1; box 4, folder 24. Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

25 Perkins, “The First Black Talent Identification Program,” 175–176

26 Perkins, “The First Black Talent Identification Program,” 193–194

27 Patricia Albjerg Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3, no. 4 (July 1, 1978), 759–73.

28 Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion,” 762.

29 Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995), 122. Some HBCUs advised married black women faculty members to retain their maiden names. Ruth Brett, interview by author, Baltimore, MD, June 17, 1987.

30 Dzuback, “Gender and the Politics of Knowledge,”180.

31 Dzuback, “Gender and the Politics of Knowledge,” 181.

32 Patricia A. Palmieri, “Here Was Fellowship: A Social Portrait of Academic Women at Wellesley College, 1895–1920,” History of Education Quarterly 23, no. 2 (Summer 1983), 195–214, 202.

33 Dzuback, “Gender and the Politics of Knowledge,” 185.

34 For more on this topic, see Linda Perkins, “The African American Female Elite: The Early History of African American Women in the Seven Sister Colleges, 1880–1960,” Harvard Educational Review 67, no. 4 (Dec. 1997), 718–57.

35 Perkins, “The History of Black Women Graduate Students.”64.

36 Anderson, “Race, Meritocracy, and the American Academy.”

37 Greene, Holders of Doctorates Among American Negroes, 219–220.

38 Perkins, “The History of Black Women Graduate Students,” 59.

39 President's Commission on Higher Education, “Education for All,” in Higher Education for American Democracy: A Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education: Establishing the Goals, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, Dec. 1947), 25–46.

40 Anderson, “Race, Meritocracy, and the American Academy,” 164.

41 “Negro Educator Chosen to Head Department at Brooklyn College,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 1956, 1.

42 Linda M. Perkins, “Merze Tate and the Quest for Gender Equity at Howard University: 1942–1977,” History of Education Quarterly 54, no. 4 (Nov. 2014), 516–51.

43 Rayford Whittingham Logan, Howard University: The First One Hundred Years, 1867–1967 (New York: New York University Press, 1969).

44 James D. Anderson, “Northern Foundations and the Shaping of Southern Black Rural Education, 1902–1935,” History of Education Quarterly 18, no. 4 (Winter 1978), 371–96; and Lagemann, “The Politics of Knowledge,” 205–220.

45 Lagemann, “The Politics of Knowledge,” 209

46 Lagemann, “The Politics of Knowledge,” 209.

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49 Morris, “The Du Bois-Atlanta School of Sociology,” in The Scholar Denied, 55–99.

50 Morris, The Scholar Denied, 75.

51 David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 250.

52 Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 250.

53 See Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014); Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); and Joy Ann Williamson, Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

54 Ginsberg, Alice E., ed., The Evolution of American Women's Studies: Reflections on Controversies, Triumphs, and Change (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 See Villanueva, Margaret, “Ambivalent Sisterhood: Latina Feminism and Women's Studies,” Discourse 21, no. 3 (Fall 1999), 49–76Google Scholar; Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds., All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (New York: Feminist Press, 1982).

56 William Celis III, “College Curriculums Shaken to the Core,” New York Times, Jan. 10, 1993, Sec. A, 4; and Julie Carson, “Why Is the Core Curriculum So Eurocentric?,” Columbia Daily Spectator, March 27, 2013, https://www.columbiaspectator.com/2004/04/05/why-core-curriculum-so-eurocentric/.

57 Du Bois, W. E. B., “A Portrait of Carter G. Woodson,” Masses and Mainstream 3, no. 6 (June 1950), 24Google Scholar.