PA History Presents…
The Summer 2024 issue (91.3) of Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies is a special theme issue on “African Americans and the Urban Landscape,” guest edited by Samuel W. Black of the Heinz History Center. Mr. Black has chosen for “Pennsylvania History Presents” “Teaching Desegregation: African American Community Education and The Pittsburgh Courier 1954–1956,” by S. L. Akines, a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University.
Abstract: Scholars have examined the political influence of the Pittsburgh Courier and its contributions to labor relations, community building, and the social uplift of African Americans. Few, however, have investigated how the weekly newspaper used its pages to educate the Black community about how to interact with the public schooling system in the years immediately following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. This article examines three educational columns that appeared in the Courier between the autumn of 1954 and 1956. It argues that the editors of the paper created these columns in an effort to shift the Black community away from an educational strategy of racial solidarity and racial consciousness and toward what this author calls a “colorblind universalism” approach to education. After the Brown v. Board of Education II ruling in 1955, the hope of school desegregation somewhat faded, and the Courier editors eventually discontinued the educational columns.
“Pennsylvania History Presents” is an online feature of the Pennsylvania Historical Association’s (PHA) website. Begun in 2019, we offer for free public access one article from the current issue of its quarterly award-winning journal, Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies.