Civil Rights, History, and the Left: Inventing the Juvenile Black Biography

Abstract

It is unique experience of Negro youth, playwright Lorraine Hansberry noted in left-wing, African American newspaper Freedom in 1955, from time he is born Negro child is surrounded by a society organized to convince him that he belongs to a people with a past so worthless and shameful that it amounts to no past at all(7). How were African American children expected to grow up with any hope for future--indeed, how could they possibly be inspired to struggle for equality themselves--when history, for them, was shorn of its power to enlighten or inspire? (Collins). School curricula and school textbooks generally supported racial status quo during years leading up to civil rights movement's full flowering in 1960s. But many children nonetheless were exposed, in and out of school, to pedagogy of civil rights. This essay highlights ways in which children's literature, that is, trade books (not textbooks) for children, became important vehicles for civil rights activism. Using cloak of history, personalized as biography, writers on left taught children African American history in a way that implicitly challenged postwar racial hierarchies, communicated radical ideas about citizenship, and made a direct connection between past struggles against slavery and present struggles for civil rights. Children's literature became a key medium for dissenting ideas during Cold War for a number of reasons. In this instance, anti-Communist civic education programs that developed after World War II ironically helped create a market for a genre of books that were a specialty of Communist left, that is, historical children's books, especially biographies, focused on African Americans. In fact, juvenile black biography was largely an invention of post-war US progressives or Communist, post-Communist, and fellow travelling left. (1) Contexts Between 1945 and 1965, early years of Cold War, more than a dozen writers on left--many of whom were African American or Jewish, most of whom were women--wrote and illustrated books for children about American history, often using medium of biography. (2) Focusing on four authors--Shirley Graham, Dorothy Sterling, Ann Petry, and Emma Gelders Sterne--this essay looks at pedagogical role of children's literature in movement for African American civil rights. Secondarily, it emphasizes role of Communist movement in civil rights struggle: through literature, leftists taught children to question logic of white supremacy. Writing in Freedom in 1951, teacher, left-winger, and union activist Alice Citron argued that children in Harlem's schools received a distorted view of African American history and culture, or no view at all: They will never learn that their people fought for freedom. They will never learn in public school that Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner raised torch of freedom high. They will never hear name of Frederick Douglass. They will hear instead that Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation were a mistake. (8) Shortly after this article's publication Citron would be fired from her teaching post because of her subversive beliefs. But her radical political convictions did not diminish truth of Citron's claims: she pointed to a real void in school curricula. A 1947 study of school social studies textbooks, done for liberal journal Common Ground, found almost no discussions or illustrations of African Americans. Textbooks that did include some discussion of African Americans diminished or simply ignored their historic achievements as well as those of other minorities. Aubrey Haan, author of study, noted that the texts omit positive contributions of Negro people to physical upbuilding of nation, their creation of an original music, their part in all wars United States has fought, their importance in labor and political history, and their development of educational institutions (3-5). …