Abstract: African Americans have a long history of philanthropy in the United States. At the forefront of this philanthropy has been a focus on education and the promises education could bring for Black communities. In this paper, I focus on two questions: (1) Where and how did Black people engage in education philanthropy? and (2) What does this engagement with education philanthropy tell us about Black people’s resistance to the economic and political discrimination they faced over time? I argue that core to the resistance effort was the pooling of multiple resources to create and sustain educational opportunities. Black education philanthropy resisted the badges of inferiority perpetuated by the political and economic systems that coalesced to relegate Black people to the periphery of society. Select examples of Black education philanthropy represent a politics of resistance.
Jeremy I. Martin (Mon,) studied this question.