The quest for citizenship : African American and Native American education in Kansas, 1880-1935 Cover Image

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The quest for citizenship : African American and Native American education in Kansas, 1880-1935 / Kim Cary Warren.

Summary:

"In this engrossing comparative study, Kim Warren explores the education of African American arid Native American students in Kansas in order to make larger claims about the meanings and expectations of U.S. citizenship. The work she has done to unearth fresh materials, as well as to smartly reexamine well-known figures in the histories of black and Indian schooling, shines through in this illuminating book."--Tiya Miles, author of Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom.

"With clarity, insight, and understanding, Kim Cary Warren vividly brings to life the heroic educational struggles of African Americans and Native peoples as they embraced alternative conceptions of citizenship during a transformative period of American history."--William J. Reese, Author of America's Public Schools: From the Common School to "No Child Left Behind."

"Drawing on thorough research, Warren uses overlooked stories of Kansas schools for African Americans and American Indians to explore broader patterns of racism and identity construction. In doing so she addresses a neglected area ù the comparison, of African American and American Indian experiences in an age commonly called 'Jim Crow' for the former and 'assimilation' for the latter."--Wilbert H. Ahern, Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of History and American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota, Morris.

In The Quest for Citizenship, Kim Cary Warren examines the formation of African American and Native American citizenship, belonging, and identity in the United States by comparing educational experiences in Kansas between 1880 and 1935. Warren focuses her study on Kansas, thought by many to be the quintessential free state, not only because it was home to sizable populations of Indian groups and former slaves, but also because of its unique history of conflict over freedom during the antebellum period.

Alter the Civil War, white reformers opened segregated schools, ultimately reinforcing the very racial hierarchies that they claimed to challenge. To resist the effects of these reformers' actions, African Americans developed strategies that emphasized inclusion and integration, while autonomy and bicultural identities provided the focal point for Native Americans' understanding of what it meant to be an American. Warren argues that these approaches to defining American citizenship served as ideological precursors to the Indian rights and civil rights movements.

This comparative history of two nonwhite races provides a revealing analysis of the inter-section of education, social control, and resistance, and the formation and meaning of identity minority groups in America. --Book Jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 9780807833964
ISBN: 0807833967
ISBN: 9780807871379
ISBN: 0807871370
Physical Description: xiv, 229 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
Publisher: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, ©2010.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-223) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Origins, ideology, and racial hierarchies. Reformers: "friends of the Indians" and "friends of the Negroes" -- Curriculum: acquiring the habits of citizenship -- Strategies of negotiation. Students: Native American negotiations at Haskell Institute -- Parents: African American integration on the "plateau of uncertainty" -- New leaders in the twentieth century. Teachers: from industrial education to African American race pride -- Identity: Native American biculturalism -- Conclusion. Unintended consequences: the next generation.