(Image source: iStock)
This summer, Oklahoma announced that it will require public school educators to teach the Bible in their classrooms. Louisiana declared that the Ten Commandments will be posted in public schools. These pronouncements come in response to social and racial justice movements and demographic changes. Candidates running for political office have articulated U.S. voters’ hopes and fears—many of them racialized—in terms of children and their futures. This is not the first time the United States has seen such moves. Yet, why and how have so many turned to U.S. public schools and children to articulate their visions for the future, many of them using religious rhetoric? In my recent book, Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools, I explore this question in a specific time and place: New York City in the mid-twentieth century.
Below is an excerpt from the introduction and chapter six, where I set out the book’s aims and offer an example of how one educator engaged with religion and race to express her views on the possibilities of public education.
***
Educators reading the Public Schools of New York Staff Bulletin on September 9, 1963 encountered two pieces of seismic news. On the left side of the bulletin’s front page, an article announced that the city would follow the Supreme Court of the United States’ Engel v. Vitale and Abington v. Schempp rulings, which found school prayer and devotional Bible-reading unconstitutional in American public schools. On the right side of the page, a separate article laid out the city’s plan for racial integration. The side-by-side layout framed secularization and desegregation as separate stories, each of which related to public schools, but not to the other. However, it was no coincidence that public school secularization and desegregation were happening, and failing, simultaneously. Many of the programs and priorities of this era, from juvenile delinquency prevention to moral and spiritual values curricula and racial integration advocacy, straddled these supposedly distinct issues, tethered by the invented tradition—Judeo-Christianity—and its whiteness. Whiteness undergirded concepts of a “Judeo-Christian” America in areas relating overtly to religion, such as Bible-reading in schools, even as that religious tradition undergirded schools’ efforts focused on race, such as integration.
My work offers an as yet untold story about religion’s role in shaping twentieth-century American public education. Rather than existing in a separate sphere, religion structured government policies on race and everyday school practices before and after the 1962 and 1963 US Supreme Court decisions holding school prayer and Bible-reading unconstitutional. Using New York City as a window into a national story, I argue that these Supreme Court decisions failed to remove religion from public schools because religion—from the government-endorsed Judeo-Christianity to Pan-African theology—framed how Americans interacted with public schools far beyond prayer and Bible-reading, and continued to do so, through public education’s process of collective moral formation. Intersections of religion and race informed the major conversations about twentieth-century American public education, from school desegregation, youth crime, and multicultural education to government aid to religious schools, community control of education, and prayer and Bible-reading. Both secularization and desegregation in New York City public schools inculcated students into white Christian norms through a repertoire of ideas and practices, as part of their project of shaping students into citizens, at the same time that parents, teachers, and community members drew on, resisted, and reimagined that repertoire to create citizens of a different sort.
The history of race and religion in the urban North is the history of desegregation and secularization of public schools. Collective memory about desegregation and secularization of public schools often focuses on the southern United States. We hear about the (increasingly less) rogue school in the “Bible Belt” sponsoring prayer, or we read a sanitized history of Martin Luther King Jr.’s triumph over southern racism. The South shaped American racism and religiosity, but the South alone did not purvey white Christian supremacy. The North did, too, in its own way. Focusing only on the South reinforces stereotypes about Northern innocence, Southern religious fervor, and Black, southern, religious resistance.
Shifting attention to the North requires us to abandon stereotypes and to see how, while the contours differed, Americans revered the public school as a sacred site that produced religious and racial beings through educating the public. Recent decades have seen an influx in scholarship on the Northern Civil Rights Movement, centered in New York City. Reflecting national concerns about school inequality, New York City witnessed the largest school boycott of the American Civil Rights Movement, during which nearly half a million students stayed home. Moreover, a key way to understand racism in the North is to look at desegregation alongside efforts at secularization. Secularization efforts abounded outside the South, which showed that religion existed in public schools there, even as more than half the states had outlawed prayer and Bible-reading by the 1960s. The state-sponsored school prayer case, Engel, originated in New York State before landing at the US Supreme Court. The Bible-reading and prayer case, Schempp, consolidated cases from Pennsylvania and Maryland, the mid-Atlantic; not the Northeast, but not the South, either. Other significant mid-century Supreme Court religion and school cases began in Illinois and New Jersey.
As one of the most racially and religiously diverse, and one of the most segregated, cities in the country, New York City sheds light on a national story. The Great Migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow South, migration from Puerto Rico, and immigration from Caribbean countries earlier in the century had altered the city’s racial demographics. The racial diversity also contributed to the city’s religious diversity, with New Yorkers across racial demographics practicing Catholicism, Judaism, Yoruba traditions, Santería, Protestantism, religio-racial movements, various combinations of these traditions, and much more.
The roots of Black Liberation Theology and Pan-Africanism can be traced back to New York City, where they were practiced by some vibrant individuals. The city’s diverse demographics tested the American ideal of pluralism, shaping the terms of engagement for issues like segregation and religious establishment.
In the realm of education, New York City’s large school system became a battleground for desegregation efforts following the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Despite initiatives like the Commission on Integration, the Board of Education failed to effectively implement meaningful change. This led to grassroots movements like the 1964 Freedom Day School Boycott, community control experiments in three districts, and a prolonged teacher strike.
While community control did not achieve desegregation, it succeeded in promoting self-determination for Black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers. These grassroots alliances, drawing on Black churches, liberation theology, and Pan-Africanism, laid the groundwork for future social justice advocacy. Schoolteacher Edwina Chavers Johnson exemplified this approach, advocating for community control to create educational spaces that honored Black history and culture.
Chavers Johnson’s curriculum focused on honoring Black figures in American history through activities and commemorations, connecting the past, present, and future for students. By restructuring the school calendar to reflect a Black collective identity, she aimed to redefine America’s narrative. Through rituals and educational activities, she sought to empower students to create a new future based on their sacred race history.
Ultimately, the legacy of community control in New York City lies not in achieving desegregation, but in fostering a sense of self-determination and empowerment among Black and Puerto Rican communities. By infusing public education with their religious and racial worldviews, these communities paved the way for a more inclusive and representative approach to schooling.
In September, we can highlight Hiram Revels, the first Afro-American Senator, and James Forten, an inventor and abolitionist. September is also a great time to discuss Alain Locke and the Harlem Renaissance. By showcasing the broad range of achievements in different fields such as sports, government, industry, and arts, we aim to integrate Black history into the curriculum throughout the year, rather than confining it to a specific month. This approach seeks to challenge the notion that only white students should see historical figures who look like them, ultimately contributing to the creation of a new America redeemed by Blackness.
Chavers Johnson’s efforts to incorporate Black history into the curriculum faced resistance from the centralized Board of Education in New York City. Despite her work having stamina and potential to become an official document, she encountered obstacles due to what she perceived as “Uncle Tomming” by some Black individuals aligning with white interests. This experience led her to establish her own initiatives, reaching out to educators across the country from her home office.
Chavers Johnson’s focus on empowering Black teachers to educate about Black history and culture emerged as a response to the limitations imposed by the educational bureaucracy. She emphasized the importance of recognizing and utilizing the expertise of Black educators who possess a deep understanding of Black history. By collaborating with these knowledgeable individuals, she aimed to create educational resources that would empower Black communities and students.
Her commitment to community control stemmed from a desire to challenge the dominant white Judeo-Christian norm in education. By engaging with Black educators and leveraging existing materials written by Black authors, she sought to elevate the representation of Black history in school curricula. This grassroots approach aimed to instill a sense of belonging for Black children in America and ensure the preservation of Black history for future generations.
Chavers Johnson’s story exemplifies the complex negotiations and possibilities involved in desegregation and community control efforts in New York City. The resistance to the Judeo-Christian white moral framework in schools led to the emergence of diverse religious and racial worldviews that supported educational justice initiatives for years to come. Black and Puerto Rican communities continued to express their religious and racial creativity in public schools, contributing to a more inclusive and representative educational system.
Leslie Ribovich is Director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Public Policy & Law at Trinity College.
