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Dates: Tuesday, April 16th OR Thursday, April 18th
Location: Zoom! See your e-mail for the link!
Education in America
Education in America
This week we are virtually visiting the Mary McLeod Bethune National Historic Site. We will be examining the life of this trailblazer in education and civil rights. But first, let’s take a quick look at the events leading up to her lifetime and work.
1635 - First ‘free’ school opens in the Virginia colony
The Syms School was the first free school in the Americas. Various attempts would be made over the coming decades to provide schools for children in the colonies, with some focusing on conversion and education for Native children. Many children in the Southern colonies were educated at home, due to distance from any school houses.
1801 - The modern blackboard was invented
A teacher in Scotland named James Pillans invented the modern schoolroom blackboard by hanging a large slab of slate on the wall of his classroom. Prior to this, students had used small pieces of slate or painted wood to write their lessons on. A large blackboard allowed the teacher to present the lesson to the entire class at once. The blackboard would be classroom staple until the 1960s when it was replaced with a green board, named the “chalkboard”.
1817 - first school for the deaf is opened
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc co-found the Connecticut Asylum at Hartford for the Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons. It’s the first permanent school for deaf people in the United States. Gallaudet’s son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, helped to found Gallaudet University (formerly College) in 1864, which was the first college specifically for deaf students and it is still in operation today.
1837 - Horace Mann named Secretary of Massachusetts State Board of Education
Known as the “Father of the Common School”, Mann fought for every child to receive a basic education that was funded by local taxes. He worked for better public school funding and for formalized teacher training. To read more about this passionate educator, click here: https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/horace.html
1849 - Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from GEneva Medical College
Is anyone interested in having a class lecture on her? Let me know! Elizabeth became the first woman to graduate from medical school. She went on to champion women in education, specifically in medicine.
1856 - First kindergarten in the U.S. is opened
Margarethe Schurz founded the first kindergarten (the term deriving from the German words for children and garden) in Watertown, Wisconsin. Margarethe was a German immigrant who had learned the principles of kindergarten from its creator, Friederich Frobel. Her sister founded the first kindergarten in London in the 1850s. To read more, click here: http://www.watertownhistory.org/Articles/KindergardenFirst.htm
1869 - John Willis Menard is the first Black man elected to Congress, but he is never seated
John Willis Menard ran in a special election to succeed the late James Mann, who represented New Orleans in the House of Representatives. Though Menard received 64% of the vote, his opponent, Caleb Hunt, contested the election. The House deemed that neither candidate was qualified and left the seat vacant for the remainder of the session.
1870-1871 - The Force Acts
Also known as the Klu Klux Klan Acts, these Force Acts were passed by Congress in an attempt to combat the terrorist organization’s disruption of Black voting and increasing violence against Black citizens. The acts placed national elections under the control of the federal government and empowered the president to use armed forces to combat those who would deny Constitutional rights.
1879 - African American migration
Confined by Black Codes across the South and organized terror from the Klu Klux Klan, Black citizens began an exodus from the South. Sometimes referred to as ‘Exodusters’, many people moved to Kansas and other Western regions. This movement shifted Black populations that would shape cities for decades to come. To read more about the importance of these population shifts, check out this article here:https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/03/06/black-migrations-black-history-slavery-freedom/2807813002/
1881 - Tuskegee University founded
The beginning of this Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) can actually be credited to Lewis Adams, a formerly enslaved man, who never received a day of formal education, though he could read and write. W.F. Foster was running for Alabama Senate reelection and asked Adams to help him with the support of the Black community. Instead of asking for money, Adams asked that Foster help establish an educational institution for the Black population. To read more about this and how they recruited Booker T. Washington to teach at the Institute, click here:
https://www.tuskegee.edu/about-us/history-and-mission
1887 - A Study in Scarlet was published
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes detective story was published. Ultimately, Conan Doyle would write 62 stories about the famed fictional detective between 1887 and 1927. The stories include 4 novels and 58 short stories. To learn more about the series, click here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_62_Sherlock_Holmes_stories_written_by_Arthur_Conan_Doyle
1893 - Women in New Zealand can vote
New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote. However, while women were allowed to vote in Parliamentary elections, they were not allowed to actually stand for election until 1919. The colony of South Australia allowed women to both vote and run for election in 1894.
1902 - 4-H begins
A youth program in Ohio is considered to be the “birth of 4-H”. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 established 4-H as a national program for positive youth development through farming and related activities.
1905 - The Niagara Movement begins
A group of Black intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, formed an organization to call for civil and political rights for African Americans. The organization served as a frontrunner for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the civil rights movement. To read more about this group, please click here: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/niagara-movement
1909 - NAACP Founded
A wave of race riots and the increasing pressures of segregation prompted prominent Black citizens to form a more permanent civil rights organization. Increased lynchings and the reporting done by journalists like Ida B. WellsW.E.B. Du Bois and other leaders formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. To read more about this history, click here: https://naacp.org/about/our-history
1920 - Harlem Renaissance
During the 1920s, Black Americans flocked to Northern cities like New York. To read more about this explosion in art and culture, check out this overview from the Met: https://mymodernmet.com/harlem-renaissance/
To watch a 15 minute video on the period, click here: https://youtu.be/FIRdvFfpDIA
August 8, 1925 - The Klu Klux Klan marches in Washington, D.C.
Though the first iteration of the KKK was born in the wake of the Civil War, the second KKK was founded in 1915. Like its predecessor, it was deeply rooted in racism and violence. The ‘secret’ society had 3 million members by the early 1920s and they organized a march on the National Mall to counter rumors of faltering enrollment numbers. Roughly 40,000 Klan members, most of them with their faces showing, marched in Washington, D.C.
1929 - Stock Market Crash
Known as ‘Black Tuesday’, on October 29, 1929, investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange and billions of dollars were lost. Thousands of investors were wiped out and the United States, as well as the rest of the industrialized world plunged toward the Great Depression, the longest-lasting economic downturn up to that point in the Western world. To read more about the crash, its causes, and the aftermath, click here: https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/1929-stock-market-crash
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