BOOK/MEDIA REVIEWS

Abstract

The Quest for Citizenship: African American and American Education in Kansas, 1880-1935 by Kim Carey Warren. Charlotte: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010, 223 pp., $26.95, paperback.Reviewed by Erica Neeganagwedgin, Athabasca University.Kim Carey Warren's study examines notion and meaning of what it is to be an American citizen from perspectives of African American and American peoples in Kansas against backdrop of a broader colonial American history where White reformers sought to place their own definition on both groups. Whether they were missionaries, government or teachers, Carey Warren reveals that White reformers of late-19th and early-20th centuries perceived Americans and African Americans as the other.The Quest for Citizenship has two stories to tell, but really only one message. Warren poignantly tells story of how Indigenous peoples came to be seen as outsiders in their own ancestral territories and ironically deemed inferior and foreign by newcomers to their ancestral lands. For Warren, African Americans, too, carry brand of being considered outsiders by dominant White group of newcomers. The dominant group, including liberal reformers among them, took it upon themselves to solve what they defined as Negro problem and Indian problem.As author explains, Native Americans and African Americans, at different times in American history, have been considered property, wards of state and enemies of U.S. army (p. 36). Warren provides reader with an in-depth analysis of Jim Crow era, during which African Americans were denied their rights as citizens and systematically marginalized through imposition of colonial laws that rendered them inferior vis-a-vis White Americans. Also during this era, Americans were subjected to an assimilation project and destruction of their lands.For Americans, and African Americans alike, assimilation project and destruction of family and community were at core of colonial project.Warren's work shows how race impacted formal education received by both Americans and African Americans, citing Hervey Peairs, a White reformer teacher, who noted that Whites defined citizenship as a complete assimilation and erasure of traditional cultures of Indigenous peoples (31 ). Therefore, at time, citizenship was analogous with assimilation into dominant culture and education was restructured by reformers to promote a particular kind of citizenship, one which took on both African Americans and Americans as peoples in need of salvation. Reformers sought to do this by taking over education of African American and American youth. Carey Warren believes most reformers felt that youth held greatest potential for citizenship roles and therefore a proper education as defined by reformers were at core of these races' salvation (p. …