The Mis-Education of the Negro

by Carter Godwin Woodson

Overview

Complete and unabridged text in the direct voice of Carter Godwin Woodson. Anyone studying influence, persuasion, or social controls would do well to study this book.

“When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945644436
Publisher:	Chump Change
Publication date:	04/04/1933
Pages:	72
Sales rank:	381,574
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Carter G. Woodson was the founder of Black History Week. He wrote The Negro in Our History, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, A Century of Negro Migration, and The African Background Outlined. He died in 1950. Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu is the author of Lessons from History and Restoring the Village. He lives in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword 3
Preface 3
Chapter I: The Seat of the Trouble 5
Chapter II: How We Missed the Mark 7
Chapter III: How We Drifted Away from the Truth 10
Chapter IV: Education Under Outside Control 13
Chapter V: The Failure to Learn to Make a Living 16
Chapter VI: The Educated Negro Leaves the Masses 21
Chapter VII: Dissension and Weakness 24
Chapter VIII: Professional Education Discouraged 28
Chapter IX: Political Education Neglected 31
Chapter X: The Loss of Vision 35
Chapter XI: The Need for Service Rather than Leadership 40
Chapter XII: Hirelings in the Places of Public Servants 43
Chapter XIII: Understand the Negro 47
Chapter XIV: The New Program 51
Chapter XV: Vocational Guidance 55
Chapter XVI: The New Type of Professional Man Required 60
Chapter XVII: Higher Strivings in the Service of the Country 63
Chapter XVIII: The Study of the Negro 66
Appendix 68

Editorial Reviews

Carter G. Woodson has been called the Father of Modern Black History. He was a central, commanding figure in the study, writing, and teaching of African American history and the first historian to successfully use sound scholarship to refute the prevailing myths and racist views about black Americans and their history. Among his contributions to American life is Black History Month (originally dubbed Negro History Week), which Woodson established to promote the study of African American history.

Woodson's 205-page monograph, The Mis-education of tbe Negro, reflects his profound concern for setting the record straight. His thesis, as outlined in his Preface, could well apply today: "The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker people." He was concerned with the way African American identity had been warped by racist approaches to history and education; he foresaw the ways that such a warped history would be internalized by black students who would never know of the achievements of their forebears, only of their humiliations and sufferings.

In the book's eighteen chapters, Woodson presents a systematic critique of the education system and offers a plan for change that would create a system that informs black students about their own history and addresses their unique challenges. The

current proliferation of African American studies programs, Afrocentric schools, and multicultural curricula all bear Woodson's stamp. Still, Mis-education remains a biting indictment of a public school system whose promise of education of the masses has still been left sadly unfulfilled.

Sacred Fire