The Treatment of the Negro in American History School Textbooks. A Comparison of Changing Textbook Content, 1826 to 1939, with Developing Scholarship in the History of the Negro in the United States.

Significant critique of racial omission in U.S. history education…

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First edition of Marie Elizabeth Carpenter’s dissertation, a systematic study of how African Americans were represented in U.S. history textbooks from 1826 to 1939. Carpenter documented the systemic erasure of Black agency and contributions in educational publishing. She examined the treatment of such central topics as slavery, Reconstruction, and the struggle for civil rights across more than a century of educational publishing, exposing patterns of distortion, omission, and ideological bias. Carpenter also found that textbooks cast Black Americans as passive figures, ignoring their roles in emancipation, military service, and cultural life. She urged use of broader sources and full integration of Black contributions into the historical narrative.

A methodical and early contribution to the historiography of African American education, likely informed by the concerns raised in Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s The Mis‑Education of the Negro (1933). This edition precedes the Menasha, Wisconsin printing issued the same year by George Banta Publishing Company.

Price: $85.00