Joan Malczewski. Building a New Educational State

Northern philanthropic educational organizations such as the General Education Board (GEB) and the Julius Rosenwald Fund (JRF) form the core of many scholarly monographs that explore the growth of education in the South in the twentieth century. Historians contend that these foundations often benefited black and white schools and teachers, while others criticize foundations’ role in limiting education for African Americans. Although Joan Malczewski agrees that foundations rarely addressed educational inequality, in Building a New Educational State she insists that foundations nonetheless made significant contributions to state building by focusing on “interstitial collaboration” that “fill[ed] gaps in state policy and practice regarding education development for rural black citizens” (22). Interactions between private and public policies allowed some improvements in teacher training, facilities, and funding to occur in the South during the Progressive Era. To show this, Malczewski explores some broad achievements of the main foundations such as the GEB in the South. Recognizing local community authority, foundations supported different education models for blacks and for whites in order to encourage support from southern whites and state authorities. Reformers knew that most white southerners staunchly opposed higher taxes and intervention from the federal government and moved cautiously. By the time of World War I, the GEB funded state agents in six southern states, and the number of Jeanes Fund teachers began to grow as well. Still, by the time of the Great Depression, teachers and students, notably black students, lacked access to training and a high school education.

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