title: The discovery of southern childhoods: psychology and the transformation of schooling in the Jim Crow South.
abstract: Although the psychology of race in America has been the subject of significant research, psychological science in the principal region of racial interaction before Brown v. Board of Education-the South--has received little attention. This article argues that the introduction of psychological ideas about children by means of school reform in the South during the half-century before the Brown decision established a cultural foundation for both Black resistance to segregated schools and White determination to preserve them. In 1900, southern children and their schools were an afterthought in a culture more committed to tradition and racial stability than innovation and individual achievement. The advent of northern philanthropy, however, brought with it a new psychology of childhood. Although the reformers did not intend to subvert segregation, their premises downplayed natural endowment, including racial inheritance, and favored concepts highlighting nurture: that personality is developmental, childhood foundational, and adversity detrimental. Decades of discussion of children in their learning environment gave southern Blacks a rationale for protest and Whites a logical defense for conservative reaction.
authors.affiliation: Department of History, 108 Weaver Building, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. acr5@psu.edu
authors.forename: Anne C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Rose
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American / Q000266:history* / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D004493:Education / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D011203:Poverty / Q000266:history; D011287:Prejudice; D002666:Psychology, Child / Q000266:history*; D011822:Race Relations / Q000266:history* / Q000523:psychology; D012922:Social Change / Q000266:history; D015144:Southeastern United States; D044465:White People / Q000266:history* / Q000523:psychology