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Informationen zum Autor Hilary J. Moss is associate professor of history and black studies at Amherst College. Klappentext While white residents of antebellum Boston and New Haven forcefully opposed the education of black residents, their counterparts in slaveholding Baltimore did little to resist the establishment of African American schools. Such discrepancies, Hilary Moss argues, suggest that white opposition to black education was not a foregone conclusion. Through the comparative lenses of these three cities, she shows why opposition erupted where it did across the United States during the same period that gave rise to public education. As common schooling emerged in the 1830s, providing white children of all classes and ethnicities with the opportunity to become full-fledged citizens, it redefined citizenship as synonymous with whiteness. This link between school and American identity, Moss argues, increased white hostility to black education at the same time that it spurred African Americans to demand public schooling as a means of securing status as full and equal members of society. Shedding new light on the efforts of black Americans to learn independently in the face of white attempts to withhold opportunity, Schooling Citizens narrates a previously untold chapter in the thorny history of America's educational inequality. "Hilary Moss has made a major contribution to our understanding of the links between race, citizenship, and schooling in the antebellum era. Using a wide range of sources, from African American newspapers to employment records to census data, this clear and compelling account shows how black communities in both the North and the South pursued education as a key to citizenship, only to confront whites who viewed educated blacks as a threat to their own standing in the American body politic. Drawing readers into the daily life of three racially diverse and dynamic cities, Moss illuminates the shortcomings--and thus the deeper meanings--of the 'common school crusade.' Anyone who reads "Schooling Citizens" will be forced to grapple seriously with Moss's provocative assertion that, for some, the promise of schooling may have been a fiction from the start.'"--Adam Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison --Adam Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison Zusammenfassung As common schooling emerged in the 1830s! providing white children of all classes and ethnicities with the opportunity to become full-fledged citizens! it redefined citizenship as synonymous with whiteness. This title shows why opposition erupted where it did across the United States in antebellum America. ...
