William Crogman’s Daring “Race Textbook” of 1898

This is a guest post by Jordan Ross, a Junior Fellow in the Office of Communications this summer.

At the end of the 19th century, William Henry Crogman dared to think of a revolutionary idea: a textbook on African American history, achievements and survival for Black students both in and outside of the classroom.

Textbooks for Black children were rare and oftentimes impossible to develop in the era. Reconstruction had ended two decades earlier. “Black Code” laws targeted African Americans for police harassment and abuse. Racialized policies such as the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson mandated separate-but-equal facilities in public accommodations, effectively legalizing segregation. And instead of “equal” funding, legislatures spent little on educating Black children.

But Crogman’s 1897 “Progress of a Race; or, The Remarkable Advancement of the Afro-American Negro from the Bondage of Slavery, Ignorance and Poverty to the Freedom of Citizenship, Intelligence, Affluence, Honor and Trust,” written with fellow educator H.F. Kletzing, sought to fight that bigotry. (The link above is to a later, digitized edition with several editorial changes, including the title and co-author.)

It told the history of Black Americans as a heroic quest against overwhelming odds. It was advertised with tantalizing taglines such as “the information contained in this book will never appear in school histories.”

“Springing from the darkest depths of slavery and sorrowful ignorance to the heights of manhood and power almost at one bound, the Negro furnishes an unparalleled example of possibility,” wrote Booker T. Washington in the introduction. Washington’s intellectual rival in the era, W.E.B. Du Bois, also praised the book.

In this history, “Slavery” was just one chapter, while others dealt with the “History of the Race,” “The Negro in the Revolution,” “Anti-Slavery Agitation,” “Moral and Social Advancement,” “Club Movement Among Negro Women,” “Financial Growth” and so on.

The authors also portrayed it as a bold new step: “… to our knowledge there has been no attempt made to put into permanent form a record of his [Black peoples’] remarkable progress under freedom — a progress not equaled in the annals of history,” they wrote.

Containing over 600 pages with zinc engravings and beautiful pictures, the textbook caught on quickly, was heavily circulated and sold door-to-door through subscription for decades. A copy of the 1898 original textbook is preserved at the Library and a later edition is digitized.

Shortly after its publication, Daniel Alexander Payne Murray, one of the Library’s assistant librarians, had the foresight to include it on his list of books by Black Americans at Du Bois’ seminal exhibit the 1900 Paris Exposition, “The Exhibit of American Negroes.”

Murray’s bibliography, “Preliminary List of Books and Pamphlets by Negro Authors,” was not the first of its kind but probably the most influential. It included books on the emerging genre that Crogman’s “Progress” exemplified, often called “race textbooks” or what literary scholar Elizabeth McHenry has coined “racial schoolbooks.” These textbooks were subscription-based primers on African American history and progress throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Largely forgotten now, these textbooks were daring and innovative, drawing praise from across Black intelligentsia. These predated Carter G. Woodson’s 1922 landmark “The Negro in Our History” and contributed to the celebration of Black history almost three decades before Negro History Week debuted in 1926.

Who was Crogman, and how did he come to write such an influential work?

He was born free in 1841 on the small Caribbean island of St. Martin and was orphaned at age 12. He was mentored by an American sailor, though, and traveled with him as a seaman through various ports in South America, Europe and Asia.

Intellectually curious, he saved money during these voyages and enrolled at Pierce Academy in Middleborough, Massachusetts. He quickly completed his studies and then enrolled in the classical course program at Atlanta University in Atlanta. Again, he was a dedicated and talented student, completing his studies in three years instead of four and was a member of the university’s first graduating college class.

Now armed with his bachelor’s degree, Crogman became one of the first faculty members of another famous Atlanta institution — Clark University. He became the university’s first African American president. (The two institutions later consolidated to form Clark Atlanta University.)

Crogman’s academic passion was not only in the classroom but also in the wider public sphere.

In 1895, he and 14 other African American men developed a Negro exhibit for the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. The exhibit, centered around the 25,000-square-foot Negro Building at the fair, displayed different forms of African American life throughout the South and highlighted their intellectual achievements. Scholars think it likely that Crogman was inspired by this exhibit and decided to put these experiences into a textbook – “Progress of a Race.”

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