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In Chicago, many African American pubic-history activists initially connected their work to struggles for racial justice partly in the tradition of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). In an effort to continue the public-history traditions of the ASNLH (such as Negro History Week, which later became Black History Week or Month), chapter 1 outlines how Chicago black public schoolteachers and some of their white allies took initiatives to promote black-history curriculum reforms in the context of wartime America. This chapter of the book examines the curriculum-reform projects of South Side Chicago teachers, like Madeline Morgan Stratton Morris and her husband, Samuel Stratton, who continued the pre<EN>-Cold War roots of the black-history movement in Chicago.

This chapter explores Reddick’s pioneering work in the fledgling field of black history. During the 1930s, Reddick worked as a professor of history at Kentucky State College and Dillard University, and he took a leading role in the black fraternity Phi Beta Sigma. He also completed his PhD in history from the University of Chicago, where he studied under the Lost Cause scholar Avery O. Craven. While tracking Reddick’s activities across these institutions, special focus is on Reddick’s contributions to Carter Woodson’s Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Reddick gathered the testimonies of former slaves and influenced the larger effort by the Works Progress Administration, published a landmark historiographical article in the Journal of Negro History, completed an innovative dissertation on the role of white newspapers in New Orleans in sowing divisions and helping provoke the Civil War, and documented racial discrimination at libraries, archives, journals, and conferences.

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the curriculum, ritual, teachers organizations and culture of African American schools in the segregated South with a particular focus on how the song Lift Every Voice and Sing was integrated into daily practices in the lives of children.

As an opinion journalist, Woodson wrote hundreds of newspaper columns on a variety of subjects. Some involved personal feuds. Others involved promotion of books he was publishing through Associated Publishers, his publishing firm, and his history movement through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. He also engaged readers on politics and an array of international issues. This chapter explores the themes of the columns for their news and promotional value and provides a rare listing of all his known newspaper bylines.