African American History and the Frontier Thesis

Abstract

Frederick Jackson Turner and other historians of the Progressive Era, such as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., and Charles Beard, found no place for race or gender in their perspectives on American history. To these historians, even slavery and Reconstruction were important primarily because of their impact on white America and white institutions. Schlesinger ignored black history in his writings but served on the Council of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and encouraged his black students, Rayford Logan and John Hope Franklin, who chose black history topics. In his scholarship, Charles Beard dismissed egalitarian and humanistic principles in regard to the Fourteenth Amendment, interpreting it merely as a conspiratorial move to promote and protect corporations; yet according to Richard Hofstadter, Beard boasted of a liberal Quaker heritage, a grandfather who harbored fugitive slaves, and a father who challenged racial prejudice. On the other hand, Turner came from unreconstructed Jacksonian stock (his father was named Andrew Jackson