Description
Book SynopsisA richly illustrated volume presenting a comprehensive history of the education of African American students at Oberlin College.
Trade Review“Oberlin College holds a unique place in the history of higher education and in the history of African American education. Historians have probed bits of Oberlin’s relationship to black education, but Roland Baumann’s fine documentary history is the first to explore that history fully and critically. Historians, students, and lay readers alike will find much of value in this study.”
“Readers of
Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College will come away with a rich understanding of an institution that was a hybrid—neither a black college nor a wholly white college like many of its institutional neighbors…. Baumann has written an excellent book that adds to our understanding of American higher education in meaningful ways.” * Indiana Magazine of History *
“A new well-researched book by Roland M. Baumann, a professor emeritus of history at Oberlin College, offers a complete history of African Americans at the college. In addition to his own commentary and historical notes, Baumann presents the full text of memoranda, letters and other documents from the college’s archives written by students, administrators, and alumni discussing race relations on campus.” * The Defenders Online/A Civil Rights Blog *
“In 1835, Oberlin began admitting students regardless of race. Thirty first-person accounts that Baumann dug up—in the form of letters, petitions, board minutes, applications, student protest circulars, student senate minutes, letters to the editor, and memoranda, (among other documents)—paint a different picture, one that finds the implementation of its admissions policy as uneven.…(
Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College) shows that archivists and curators are more than collectors of minority history and the communities they represent.” * Archival Outlook *
“Oberlin College has had a history of being in the vanguard of racial progressivism in American life. And in degree it maintained such an identity, especially but not only during its first half-century. So the documents in this book, which often underscore the on-campus issues the institution and its leadership faced along the way, suggest again how challenging the nation's interracial project really has been—and remains.” * West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies *
