The post-Reconstruction period in the South, which witnessed the rise of the Jim Crow system, marked a time when American race relations are thought to have reached their nadir, with whites pursuing efforts to reassert hegemony over blacks on every front, from disfranchisement to school segregation.
The term Jim Crow is believed to have originated between 1828 and 1831, when Thomas Dartmouth Rice, considered the “father of minstrelsy,” developed a song-and-dance routine that mimicked an old, crippled slave named James Crow, This routine became immensely popular, and by 1838 the term Jim Crow had become synonymous with “Negro.” By the late nineteenth century the term, as used principally, by southern whites, had come to refer to a system of racial segregation and discrimination that was beginning to take hold in the South, a system designed to perpetuate the subjugation of African Americans that had occurred under slavery.
Firmly locked in place throughout the South by 1915, Jim Crowism had two cardinal features. One was the legalized separation of the races, which, under slavery, was not necessary because the master/slave relationship implied white supremacy and because the control of slaves was actually best maintained by a large degree of close master/slave contact. Once blacks were freed, however, their social status was unclear, and the white desire to continue to “keep blacks in their place” necessitated a new physical and social distance between the races. Thus, after Reconstruction, states and local communities passed laws that segregated blacks in virtually every aspect of public and social life (schools, trains, restrooms, water fountains, parks, dance halls, barbershops, penitentiaries, restaurants, theaters, hospitals, asylums, institutions for the blind and deaf, cemeteries). As early as 1870, Tennessee, regarded as having pioneered in effecting Jim Crow legislation, passed a law prohibiting interracial marriages.
The second feature of Jim Crowism was the disfranchisement of African Americans. But, this disfranchisement was gradual. Initially, whites opposed to black political equality did not always bother to disfranchise blacks; sometimes they simply used bribery, violence, intimidation, and ballot-stuffing to record black votes for the Democratic Party. In fact, there were enough black voters between 1877 and 1901 to enable eleven black southerners (all Republicans) to sit in Congress. In 1890, however, Mississippi became the first state to effectively disfranchise African Americans, using a literacy test (it required an interpretation of the state constitution) and a poll tax as its methods. Other legal methods used in the South were the grandfather clause and white primary; extralegal methods included violence and terror (for example, lynchings, riots) and the denial of credit and, employment to blacks. By 1915 the combined use of such methods had effectively stripped southern blacks of the franchise.
Efforts to eliminate black suffrage were basically inspired by the desire to remove the possibility that blacks would use any political strength to oppose the second-class citizenship status to which they were being relegated. The destruction of the Republican Party in the South thus became imperative. Another concern of those opposed to the franchise for southern blacks involved the rise in the 1880s of the Populist movement in the South. Essentially representing small white farmers against monied interests, its general desire for a more equitable distribution of wealth was reflected in such specific demands as the regulation of railroad rates, building of farmers’ cooperatives, cheap money, and decreases in taxes. Its principal organization, the Southern Farmers’ Alliance (SFA), despite restricting its membership to whites, believed that poor black and white farmers shared economic interests. Such sentiment helped lead in 1886 to the formation of a black SEA affiliate, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance and Cooperative Union, which, with 1,250,000 members, was perhaps the largest black organization of its time. This biracial cooperation of farmers spilled over into politics arid resulted in some black support for the People’s (Populist) Party (organized in 1892), making the black vote pivotal in some elections. This development greatly alarmed the Democrats, prompting them to negate it through the elimination of African American suffrage. Democrats also raised the specter of disfranchising poor whites farmers if the Populists continued their efforts at wooing African American voters. In response, Populist leaders (for example, Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman of South Carolina, and K. Vardaman of Mississippi) not only capitulated to the demands of the Democrats, but became the South’s shrillest and most virulent race baiters, in the process aiding those subsequent white efforts that virtually eliminated the black southern vote. This disappointing experience with the Populists made some blacks suspicious of political coalitions with whites for decades to come.
An increase in violence against African Americans, especially lynchings, accompanied the rise in Jim Crowism. During the 1890s, lynchings occurred with greater frequency than in any other decade. In 1892, for example, 161 blacks were lynched in the South, the highest yearly total ever (3,446 blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1964).
The epidemic of race riots that swept the nation in the early twentieth century added to black feelings of insecurity. Perhaps the most sensational instance of white lawlessness during this period took place in Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1906. Lashed into a fury of race hatred as an outgrowth of earlier efforts to disfranchise blacks, the city was paralyzed for four days as white mobs set out on a general destruction of black property and lives. Four African Americans were killed and many injured.
Helping to provide a philosophical justification for wholesale white terrorism was Social Darwinism, the pseudo-scientific application of Darwin’s evolution theories to human society. Thus, distinguished white scholars in the biological and social sciences argued that the Negro was the least intelligent of all racial groups – – a separate species next to the ape. Drawing on the notion of “survival of the fittest,” they also asserted that the evolutionary process had actually stopped for blacks who, in the face of an increasingly scientific, technical, and industrialized world, would become extinct. At a more popular level, anti-black, racist thinking was promoted through such works as Charles Carroll’s The Negro a Beast (1900); Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman (1905), which served as the literary basis for D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), a blatant cinematic appeal to white racism and sexual fantasies/fears about black men; Robert ShufeIdt’s The Negro: A Menace to Civilization (1907); and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novel Tarzan (1914), which became a movie series in 1918.
The ascendancy after Reconstruction of the idea of “the white man’s burden,” the mission of whites to “civilize” (rule) the darker and inferior peoples of the world, served to support southern racist sentiment. This belief in whites as “civilizers” coincided with the rise of European imperialism, especially in Africa (the 1884- 85 Berlin Conference partitioned the continent), and the emergence of the United States as an imperial power itself, mainly as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898 (through which its major acquisitions were Puerto Rico and the Philippines).
Two key decisions by the Supreme Court added to the difficulties that blacks faced during the post- Reconstruction period. In 1883 the Supreme Court invalidated the 1875 Civil Rights Act, contending that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to discriminatory acts by individuals or local governments. Even more far-reaching was its Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, which upheld a Louisiana law requiring separate railroad coaches for blacks. This ruling established the “separate but equal” doctrine that became the key legal sanction for Jim Crow laws.
One of the ways in which African Americans, especially the masses, responded to the rise of Jim Crowism and the “nadir” period was migration. In this sense their movement was a form of protest, one that, to the extent it involved movement out of the South, was opposed by leaders like Frederick Douglass, who felt that the salvation of blacks rested in struggling to achieve their citizenship rights in the South. The exploitive conditions of sharecropping and the violence attendant to political activities were the main motivating factors for this movement. One area to which blacks moved in large numbers was the rural Midwest. Through the Exodus of 1879, the first significant movement of blacks out of the South, approximately six thousand migrants from Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, trekked to Kansas, where they established, in one instance, an all-black community, Nicodemus (1879). Roughly a decade later, in 1890, about seven thousand blacks from Arkansas, joined the “rush” to Oklahoma. Black migration to Oklahoma, which occurred when the black-town idea was attracting considerable interest, also led to the founding of all-black towns (including Langston in 1891 and Boley in 1904), some established with the intent of forming the nucleus of an all-black state in the West. After Reconstruction five thousand other African Americans headed West to become cowboys, participating in the great cattle drives that linked Abilene, Texas, and Dodge City, Kansas.
A second post-Reconstruction black migration pattern was the movement to cities, both southern and northern. New Jersey cities such as Newark were among those in the North that attracted such migrants. One migrant from North Carolina, Timothy Drew, or Noble Drew Ali, established in Newark in 1913 the Moorish Science Temple, the first major expression of the Islamic faith among black Americans. Drew eventually moved this religious group to Chicago, and from it emerged the Nation of Islam of Elijah Muhammad.
Atlantic City, with only fifteen blacks in 1870, experienced the most phenomenal influx of blacks during this period as a result of its growth as a resort center that offered many service jobs traditionally filled by blacks (maids, cooks, butlers, porters). By 1910 it had roughly ten thousand African Americans, the largest black community in New Jersey.
Movement of southern blacks to New Jersey during this period also added one more all-black community: Whitesboro. Probably the last community of its kind established in the state, it was named after George H. White of North Carolina, who left Congress in 1901 as the last black congressman of the post-Reconstruction period. A group of African Americans decided to leave Wilmington, North Carolina, after a race riot in 1898, and White helped them find and purchase land in Cape May County in 1899.
Emigration to Africa also continued to appeal to some southern blacks. During the period about four thousand left the country and settled in Africa, principally Liberia. Several groups were responsible for organizing these repatriation efforts: they ranged from the American Colonization Society, to the International Migration Society of the AME Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, to Chief Sam, an alleged Ashanti chief, who in 1915 carried a few hundred blacks from Oklahoma to the Cold Coast (Ghana). These emigration activities provided a continuum for interest in emigration to Africa that was to appear more markedly shortly thereafter in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Black American leadership adopted essentially two divergent responses to Jim Crowism. Until 1910 the prevailing response was accommodationism which deemphasized the pursuit of social and political equality for southern blacks. It’s standard-bearer was Booker T. Washington, who as the founder of Tuskegee Institute in 1881, was from the time of his famous 1895 Atlanta Cotton Exposition speech (1895 Atlanta Compromise) until his death in 1915 the acknowledged leader of black Americans. (Frederick Douglass, the previously acknowledged leader, died in 1895.) Muting his criticism of Jim Crowism and the terror and violence against southern blacks that accompanied it, he counseled that through self-help, character development (work ethic, frugality, temperance), property accumulation, and industrial (vocational) education blacks would elevate themselves and eventually obtain their citizenship rights. Establishing the National Negro Business League in 1900, Washington held up the self-made black businessman as the model for the struggling masses. His principal antagonist was W.E.B. DuBois. A founder of the Niagara Movement in 1905 and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, DuBois was the most outspoken advocate of full integration and militant protest against white racial injustices. He stressed such measures as demonstrations and litigation. In contrast to Washington’s glorification of the black capitalist, DuBois argued that the talented tenth, an elite corps of educated blacks, would guide the future course of African American people. He thus stressed an academic education for blacks, one that emphasized the dignity of the mind — the importance of intellect in human affairs.
The debate between Washington and DuBois over the type of education African Americans should receive – – industrial education versus academic education — was in particular played out in New Jersey through the establishment in 1886 of the New Jersey Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth. Located in Bordentown, its founder, the Reverend Walter A. Rice, an AME minister, was a Washington disciple; the school, reflecting its emphasis on vocational training, came to be called the “Tuskegee of the North.” Also giving impetus to its establishment was a 1881 New Jersey law that prohibited forcing blacks to attend segregated schools, but allowed the continuation of the long-standing tradition of establishing such schools if they were chosen voluntarily by blacks. By far the most celebrated and famous of the state’s all-black schools, “Bordentown” was closed in 1955 as a result of the 1954 Supreme Court decision making racially segregated public schools unconstitutional. Throughout its existence it was New Jersey’s only wholly state-supported Jim Crow school.
Between the late 1870s and the early twentieth century the modern black community was born; the structure and shape assumed by the community during this period have lasted essentially to the present day. Free blacks and former slaves became politically and culturally fused, black institutions were built on an unprecedented scale, blacks became more urban and increasingly residents of all-black neighborhoods, and blacks undertook greater self-help initiatives in order to survive the de facto and dejure debasement received from all levels of white society. Among the social and economic changes was a decline in the size and status of an entrepreneurial class (such as caterers and skilled artisans) dependent on a white clientele and the emergence of a class of professionals (such as doctors and lawyers) and businessmen (such as undertakers and storekeepers) that catered largely to the black community. African Americans also established certain kinds of enterprises for the first time. The most notable of these were banks (the first two were founded in 1888), realty associations, and insurance companies (the first was established in Mississippi in 1889, and the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, currently the largest black insurance company, was established in 1905). Moreover, as blacks became more literate the black press flourished, and new organizations like the Greek-letter fraternities were founded (Alpha Phi Alpha in 1906 was the first). It was, however, the fraternal orders that enjoyed perhaps the most phenomenal success; through their “mutual aid” function, many served as incipient insurance companies. In the forefront of this growth were the Odd Fellows, the Masons, and the Knights of Pythias. In the religious realm the most striking development was the rise in the 1890s of pentecostal churches (Holiness, Sanctified), of which the Church of God in Christ, founded in Memphis, became the largest. It was through such churches, located mainly in the rural South, that certain slave religious practices rooted in African traditions (for example, shouts, hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and jubilee songs) were continued and expressed in forms of worship that included spirit possession, improvisatory singing, and the use of drums and other percussive instruments. Finally, the nation’s two oldest civil rights organizations were formed during this period. The previously mentioned NAACP, established in 1909 by blacks and white Progressives, used mainly litigation to win equal rights for African Americans. The Urban League was formed in 1911 to address the problems (notably employment and housing) that newly arrived black southern migrants encountered in northern cities.
African American women were very much in the vanguard of the struggle of the race against discrimination and oppression. Ida B. Wells-Barnett led anti-lynching campaigns and joined DuBois and others in organizing the NAACP. Mary Church Terrell established the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896 to protest disfranchisement and lynching. NACW’s formation gave impetus to the founding in 1915 of the New Jersey State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, the oldest statewide New Jersey black women’s organization. The Federation’s founder and first president, the Reverend Florence Spearing Randolph, was an AME Zion minister who, beginning in 1925, guided the growth and development of the Wallace Chapel AME Zion Church in Summit.
Black women also had a presence in entrepreneurial activities. One outstanding example was Madame C.J. Walker, a native of Louisiana. Her cosmetology business, which catered to black women, began in 1905 in Saint Louis and moved in 1910 to Indianapolis, where its manufacturing plant ultimately employed three thousand persons. By the time of her death in 1919, Madame Walker had amassed a fortune of a million dollars. A second notable woman was Maggie Lena Walker of Richmond, Virginia. Having successfully managed a black mutual benefit society, in 1903 she founded and became president of the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank; she was thus the nation’s first black woman bank president. The bank she established, which absorbed the other black banks in Richmond and became the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, is the oldest continuously existing black- owned and black-operated bank in the nation. Both Walkers were known for their liberal contributions to African American philanthropic causes.
Although the emergence of Jim Crowism in the South and numerous acts of violence against blacks explain why the years between 1878 and 1915 are considered the nadir in American race relations, the modern black community also begins to take form during these years. Nationally, free blacks and former slaves come together to expand black institutional life as part of an effort to cope with the rising tide of racism.
Materials and Preparation
Students should read either chapters 19-23 in The African American Experience: A History (“Miners, Farmers, and Cowhands, 1849-1880,” “African Americans in the New South, 1877-1910,” “Living in the Jim Crow World, 1877-1910,” “Advances in Education, the Arts, and Sciences, 1877-1910,” and “The Civil Rights Struggle, 1900-1941”) or chapters 25-29 in African American History (“Segregation Upheld,” “Blacks Pushed Aside,” “Industry and the Black Worker,” “A School is Born,” and “The Liberation Movement”).
Students should read the excerpt from Washington’s address at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton Exposition and the excerpt from Dr. W.E.B. DuBois’s article “The Talented Tenth”. Students and the teacher should read pages 45-54 in Afro-Americans in New Jersey: A Short History.
The teacher should read chapters 14, 15, and 20 in From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (“Philanthropy and Self-Help,” “The Color Line,” and “The American Dilemma”).
Each of the activities that follow will take one class period.
- Describe the key features of Jim Crow after it evolved as a system in the South. Lead the students in making a list of the areas of public and social life in the South that were segregated. Have the students indicate which form(s) of segregation they believe to have been the most harmful and most humiliating and why. Students, for example, might conclude that disfranchisement was the most harmful, while the refusal of service in public accommodations was probably the most humiliating. Or they might think that being forced to attend an all-black school was more onerous than being denied the vote.
- Evaluation: Have the students imagine they are late-nineteenth century journalists. Ask them to write a 500- word newspaper article about what they believe is the most humiliating Jim Crow practice in the South.
- Explain the ways in which blacks responded to the harsh conditions of racial segregation in the South from 1878 to 1915. Ask students to imagine they are blacks living in the South between 1878 and 1915. How would they respond to the racial segregation they faced? Would they speak out against laws of racial segregation and disobey them as did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1950’s and 1960’s? or would they simply keep quiet and obey the laws and customs of the Jim Crow system? Would they try to leave the South? In responding to these questions the students should bear in mind the prevalence of anti-black violence during this period. For example, tell students that the greatest number of African Americans lynched in one year, 161, occurred in 1892.
- Evaluation: Have students research and write a 500-word essay that identifies three all-black communities (including Whitesboro) that were established between 1878 and 1915. The establishment of these communities should be seen in the context of black migration as a response to the difficulties of life under Jim Crowism.
- Differentiate between the approaches used by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois in fighting racial injustice. Point out to the students that these men differed, among other things, in the kind of education they advocated for black youths. Washington favored an education that prepared blacks to work with their hands, to learn a craft or trade such as masonry, plumbing, or carpentry from which they could ultimately start a business. DuBois, on the other hand, favored a classical education that would create the “talented tenth” from which the leadership of the black race would emerge. In light of conditions in the South at the end of the nineteenth century, have students indicate which of these approaches best served the needs of the black race. Divide the class into two groups, one representing the industrial education championed by Washington and the other the academic education desired by DuBois. Each group should present the merits of its type of education. In presenting their positions, have the groups read the excerpt from Washington’s famous address at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton Exposition and the excerpt from DuBois’s views on the “talented tenth”. This will enable each group to be more familiar with its own position and that of the opposing group. Also have both groups discuss the implications for southern black migration and protest of Washington’s repeated exhortation to “Cast down your bucket where you are.”
- Evaluation: Have the students write a play in which the main characters are Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. Have the two men debate the issue of how best to educate black youth.
- Have students read Norman L. Crockett’s The Black Towns (1979) and prepare a 500-word book report on it.
- Take students on a trip to Whitesboro, an all-black community established in 1899 in Cape May County.
- Show students the film Booker T. Washington, a documentary that treats the life of the outstanding race leader and educator who founded famed Tuskegee Institute (30 minutes). It can be obtained from The Black Filmmaker Foundation, 375 Greenwich Street, New York, New York 10013 (212-941-3944).
- Show students the film Two Dollars and A Dream, which explores the life of Madame C.J. Walker, whose success in producing and marketing cosmetic products for black women made her one of the most successful businesswomen of the early twentieth century (56 minutes). It can be obtained from the Filmmakers Library, 124 East 40th Street, New York, New York 10016 (212-808-4980).
- Take students on a trip to Bordentown to visit the grounds of the old Bordentown School (New Jersey Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth). Known as the “Tuskegee of the North,” it was New Jersey’s most important educational institution for black students.
Noble Drew Ali (nee Timothy Drew). A North Carolinian who migrated to Newark, where in 1913 he established the Moorish Science Temple, black America’s first major Muslim group.
W.E.B. Dubois. A founder of the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, this advocate of militant protest against racial injustice was the foremost black American intellectual from the 1890s until his death in 1963.
Florence Spearing Randolph. An ordained minister who helped build the Wallace Chapel Zion Church in Summit, she organized in 1915 the New Jersey State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, the state’s oldest women’s organization.
Mary Church Terrell. She established the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 to protest disfranchisement and lynching.
Henry McNeal Turner. Bishop of the AME Church (1880-1892) and member of the Georgia legislature during Reconstruction (1868-1870), he was the leading advocate of emigration to Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Madame C.J. Walker. Based on her formula for treating the hair arid skin of black women, she became one of the most successful business women of the early twentieth century, amassing a fortune of a million dollars.
Maggie Lena Walker. A successful businesswoman in Richmond, Virginia, she was the first black woman to become president of a bank.
Booker T. Washington. The founder of Tuskegee Institute, he was the acknowledged black leader from 1895 until his death in 1915.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett. A fearless journalist who initiated the early antilynching campaign and helped found the NAACP.
George H. White. The founder of Whitesboro, he served in Congress from North Carolina until 1901; at his departure he was the last black congressman of the post-Reconstruction period.
Annotated Bibliography and Suggested Reading
- Bogle, Donald, 1973. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks.
- A study that examines the stereotypical and defiant black entertainers who performed in the movies and on the stage from the 1890s to 1970.
- Cronon, Edmund David, 1955. Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
- The first major biography of the founder and leader of the largest black mass protest movement ever established in the United States.
- Dickson, Bruce, 1989, Black American Writing From the Nadir: The Evolution of a Literary Tradition, 1877- 1915.
- This book, in treating the work of writers like Frances E.W. Harper, Charles Chestnutt, Pauline Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar, W.E.B. DuBois, and James Weldon Johnson, as well as a wide range of Iesser-known writers, sheds new light on the genesis of the mood that was expressed in the Harlem Renaissance.
- DuBois, W.E.B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk.
- In providing a view of America’s race problem at the dawn of the century, Dubois writes about his belief in racial “twoness” and the black elite’s vanguard role in creating change for the race.
- Frederickson, George. 1981. White Supremacy.
- This is a groundbreaking comparison of the rise of racist dogma and policy in Jim Crow America and South Africa.
- Harlan, Louis. 1972; 1983. Booker T. Washington, 2 vols.
- Definitive biography of the southern black leader, showing the breadth of Washington’s influence.
- Katz, William Loren. 1971. The Black West.
- Illustrated, pioneering narrative of the role African Americans played in settling the American West. Black heroic accomplishments are highlighted.
- Lewis, David Levering. 1993. W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography of Race, 1868-1919.
- The award-winning first volume of a projected two-volume biography by a noted historian who places DuBois in a global setting. A model of narrative scholarship and the most detailed study yet of the great black scholar’s impact.
- Logan, Rayford Whittingham. 1954. The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901.
- An excellent study of the political, social, and economic difficulties that black Americans experienced during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
- Meier, August. 1963. Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915.
- This study explores the major trends in the thinking of black leaders of the period and focuses in particular on the contrasting positions of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois on a variety of issues.
- Meier, August, and John H. Franklin, eds. 1982. Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century.
- This outstanding collection of studies by white and black scholars includes the major male and female leaders of early-twentieth-century African American life.
- Meier, August, and Leon Litwack, eds. 1988. Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century.
- This collection of biographies of African American activists of the nineteenth century is notable for its inclusion of rarely publicized leaders.
- Morton-Neverdon, Cynthia. 1989. Afro-American Women of the South and the Advancement of the Race, 1895-1925.
- A history of the major attempts of black women in five communities (Atlanta, Hampton, Tuskegee, Nashville, and Baltimore) to educate and improve the health of blacks, stamp out vice and immorality, and effect a rise in racial consciousness during the early part of the twentieth century.
- Rabinowitz, Howard. 1978. Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890.
- The author explores the southern black’s attempts to avoid rural reminders of slavery through migration and industrial, commercial, political, and self-help opportunities in the southern city. White reactions are also examined.
- Redkey, Edwin S. 1969. Black Exodus.
- A fine study of African American internal movements and back-to- Africa efforts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- Shapiro, Herbert. 1988. White Violence and Black Response.
- A far-reaching study of racial tensions and their physical results. The author looks back into American history and demonstrates the varieties of black responses to white violence, from accommodation and avoidance to militant assertiveness.
- Williamson, Joel. 1984. The Crucible of Race.
- This volume examines the psychosexual, cultural, economic and political roots and dynamics of American racism during the Jim Crow period.
- Woodward, C. Vann. 1974. The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 3rd ed.
- Woodward explores the de facto and de jure worlds of the beginnings of racial segregation in the late nineteenth century.
- Bundles, A’Lelia. 1991. Madame C.J. Walker: Entrepreneur.
- Part of the Black Americans of Achievement series.
- Crockett, Norman L. 1979. The Black Towns.
- This study examines five all-black towns established between 1879 and 1904: Nicodemus, Kansas; Mound Bayou, Mississippi; Langston, Oklahoma; Cleat-view, Oklahoma; and Boley, Oklahoma. The rationale for such communities as articulated by their founders and supporters is also provided.
- Dunbar, Paul Laurence. 1902. The Sport of the Gods.
- This story is about the Hamiltons, a close-knit black family that moves from the South to New York City in the mid-1890s after the father has been unjustly convicted of a crime and sent to prison. The city exacts its toll on the family. The son, Joe, falls in with a fast crowd, becomes an alcoholic, and goes to prison for murder. When the father’s innocence is discovered, he is freed and he rescues his wife and returns to their small southern home town.
- Durham, Philip, and Everett L. Jones. 1965. The Negro Cowboys.
- A vivid account of the black cowboys and pioneers who migrated west before and after the Civil War.
- Klots, Steve. 1994. Ida Wells-Barnett: Civil Rights Leader.
- Part of the Black Americans of Achievement series.
- Lester, Julius. 1972. Long Journey Home.
- This book of historical fiction consists of six short stories featuring such characters as a runaway slave (Louis), a black cowboy (Bob Lemmons), and a couple separated by slavery (Jake and Mundy).
- McKissack, Frederick and Patricia McKissack. 1990. W.E.B. DuBois.
- This biography emphasizes the dedication, determination, disappointments, and triumphs of the great African American writer, educator, historian, sociologist, and journalist who was an intellectual and one of the most important civil rights leaders of the twentieth century.
- Ritchie, Andrew. 1986. Major Taylor.
- This is the dramatic story of Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor, who, against enormous odds, in 1899 became a world champion cyclist and the first black American athlete to win a national title.
- Schroeder, Alan. 1992. Booker T. Washington: Educator.
- Part of the Black Americans of Achievement series.
- Stafford, Mark. 1990. W.E.B. DuBois: Scholar and Activist.
- Part of the Black Americans of Achievement series.
- Washington, Booker T. 1900. Up From Slavery: An Autobiography.
- This autobiography traces the upward path of its author from his slave origins to his position as the foremost African American leader and educator of his time.
Booker T. Washington– Excerpts from an address at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition (1895)
W.E.B. DuBois– “The Talented Tenth” .
Digitized by Deborah Mercer and Edith Beckett of the New Jersey State Library.
Copyright 2003 by the New Jersey Historical Commission,
New Jersey Department of State.
All rights reserved.
Please direct questions and comments to Deborah Mercer.
Updated:Friday, September 19, 2003


Cyberlearning spans in-school and out-of-school learning — and these days, a lot of meaningful learning is taking place outside of classrooms. Amateur designers, students, and artists are teaching themselves and each how to make their own electronic toys, program flying robots, or manufacture custom-designed parts with 3D printers and desktop milling machines. Families are doing science together through making backyard instruments to collect local environmental data and share their data online with other global citizen scientists (Anastopoulou et al., 2011; see Cornell Lab of Ornithology). Kindergarteners to senior citizens are combining traditional physical materials like paper, yarn and fabric, together with digital materials like electronics and sensors to create new homespun fashions, to design useful products, and to pursue their interests. (Buechley, Peppler, Eisenberg, & Kafai, 2013; Peppler & Glosson, 2013.) Important learning is also taking place in public libraries where librarians invite youth to author digital stories, produce new media, and publish personally-relevant stories while museums are hosting workshops to reach different audiences (IMLS, 2014; NYSCI, 2013). These learning experiences prove to be highly influential in the choices that youth make about further education, career pathways, and participation as citizens.
In contrast to traditional classroom learning, informal learning is often:
- interest-driven: learners engage based on their interests, not an externally mandated curriculum.
- learner-centric: adults help as guides, facilitators, coaches, and mentors, but the role is to support the learner, rather than to regulate the content, pace, and progress
- playful in approaches: informal experiences tend to engage participant’s imagination, encourage exploration, allow tinkering, celebrate teamwork, and take failure in stride, unlike traditional didactic school experiences
- multigenerational: participants often include be children, parents, and senior citizens learning side by side
- intrinsically assessed: outcomes tend to be tangible and readily appreciated by the participants, with less reliance on formal, standardized tests as outcomes
Informal learning institutions like museums with both structured and unstructured activities by themselves don’t guarantee a meaningful learning experience. Today’s informal learning more often also emphasizes:
- active engagement: the physical space provides unique affordances for doing, not just collections to be viewed
- building materials: the glass between the learner and the artifact is gone, learners are expected to construct not just appreciate
- multiple representations: learners are encouraged to engage with an idea through multiple media, such as storytelling, sketching, constructing, simulating, visualizing, role-playing, discussing socially
- learning trajectories: the informal experience is less contained to a specific space and time, but may span multiple visits or connect to home, to community, or to school.
The movement among “Makers” is one prominent example of today’s approach to informal learning and an important arena for cyberlearning advances. Making is “a class of activities focused on designing, building, modifying, and/or repurposing material objects, for playful or useful ends, oriented toward making a ‘‘product’’ of some sort that can be used, interacted with, or demonstrated. Making often involves traditional craft and hobby techniques (e.g., sewing, woodworking, etc.), and it often involves the use of digital technologies, either for manufacture (e.g., laser cutters, CNC machines, 3D printers) or within the design (e.g., microcontrollers, LEDs)” (Martin, 2015). Makers are people who openly share tools, knowledge, and materials who value learning and creativity over profit and social capital (Kuznetsov & Paulos, 2010). From creating new artifacts, hacking software, or repurposing objects, makers are highly motivated, interest-driven learners that seek out new experiences and actively share what they learn in a community. Informal settings, such as science museums, increasingly host making experiences and digital technology is frequently used to enhance the opportunities for learning in these experiences. Martin (2015) provides a comprehensive synthesis of making and argues against a tool-centric approach to bringing making into classrooms. He contends that in order to understand the promise of making in education, educators need to appreciate all three interconnected elements of making-“(1) digital tools, including rapid prototyping tools and low-cost microcontroller platforms, that characterize many making projects, 2) community infrastructure, including online resources and in-person spaces and events, and 3) the maker mindset, values, beliefs, and dispositions that are commonplace within the community” (p. 31).
This kind of informal learning aligns well with educational research about authentic, active education that happens in a social community. Education research has shown that meaningful learning is situated in authentic practices using inquiry-based approaches to solve relevant problems, sharing skills in a community of others, and making meaning through activity and action (Wenger, 1998). Whether using physical or digital materials, learning is mediated by multiple media representations and facilitated through direct experiences and interactions mentored by disciplinary experts, more expert peers and novices in a social community of practice (Lave, 1991). Episodic and distributed, learning is interest-driven, serendipitous, sometimes sustained with access to a network of human and technical resources in their community.
Technology is playing a big role in the maker community to enhance informal learning and to better connect informal with formal learning. The maker community leverages online information extensively from using tutorials, online forums, open shared code libraries, social media, and digital video platforms that connect different aged learners to contribute, discuss ideas, share tips, and self-publish instructional videos. Maker communities also use digital fabrication and a network of physical spaces like community workshops, FabLabs, and tech shops, that allow use of shared manufacturing tools to realize their digital imagined and physically implemented projects. These spaces host novice friendly software for programming, computer-aided design, and digital media production. These same tools and software enable control of microprocessors that are used by robotics clubs to get more fluent in coding and learn computer science concepts and computational thinking. Within blended learning environments, smart phones offer digital access to content and limitless knowledge via ubiquitous, wireless access to the Internet while makers meet in physical communities, festivals, and faires to build, experiment, and test their designs. Physical computing devices ranging from programmable maker technologies like Arduino, servo motors, 3D printers, to computer-controlled milling machines help foster new ways to learn through collaborative computer-aided design, online research, and documentation (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014; MakerEd, 2014; Martinez & Stager, 2013).
However, for technology use to reflect cyberlearning ideals, technology must be more than resource in a learning activity: it must enable the design of activities that connect to what we know about how people learn and thus enhance learning. Thus, a cyberlearning approach to maker activities does not over-emphasize the materials used or the thing made. A focus on the materials or things can sometimes lead to cookbook recipes, narrow instruction, and standardized expectations, ending up in an experience not much different from poor schooling. A cyberlearning view emphasizes the transactions among students, materials, and the social setting — and how those transactions provide students opportunities to explore, investigate, test, and refine their knowledge and abilities. Technologies provide more than a resource for building when they enable students to better represent concepts, to gather data and analyze it, to share knowledge with peers, to discuss theories and construct explanations, to critique and suggest improvements, and to reflect on their own learning.
Cyberlearning projects in informal learning can also go beyond maker experiences, too:
- Mobile devices can provide a layer of augmented reality as learners explore an important physical space
- Museum exhibits can invite visitors to learn via new modes of interacting with the setting and visualizing phenomena
- Sensors and cameras can enable citizen science investigations
Several aspects of learning theory are particularly useful to cyberlearning in informal settings for studying and understanding individual learning and learning that happens in a shared, public environment or social community. More specifically:
- Constructivism and constructionism provide long-standing ways to conceptualize learning through doing.
- Identity is concerned with how learners’ sense of who they are and who they can become is shaped through opportunities to explore their interests, values, commitments, and convictions in relation to their participation and engagement with others, new ideas, activities, and phenomena. Further, youth are drawn to expressing identity through new, social media.
- Embodied cognition considers how doing and experiencing in a bodily way leads to learning and connects with learning that may later become more de-contextualized and abstract, and can often involve tangible interfaces.
- Collaborative learning or more broadly, social learning, provides traditions for designing effective learning experiences for groups and for analyzing social interactions for insights about learning
Cyberlearning is poised to contribute to transforming STEM education by using learning theory and technology to enhance powerful grassroots movements in informal learning and develop entirely new informal experiences. Cyberlearning research is needed both to contribute to design, but also to document how people learn in these new experiences and how learning is improved. Further, cyberlearning is well-positioned to connect these informal advances to issues in school learning. For example, schools are looking to the maker community for ideas about how to teach science and design solutions to problem-based challenges. Teachers see making as way as to support inquiry, project-based learning, authentic problem-solving, and deeper discussions (Honey & Kanter, 2013). Educational leaders see the potential to engage greater numbers of underrepresented groups in STEM-related activities including encouraging more girls and women to pursue computer science to help develop a more diverse technological workforce (Fried & Wetsone, 2014).
Design and theory development. Because making is both a highly collaborative and mobile activity, making opens up new possibilities for exploring how different mobile technologies and apps can be used to support design work and documentation of individual and group projects. Using digital cameras, smart phones, and tablet computers, students self-document their work, monitor their progress, and contribute to online portfolios. New challenges and research opportunities arise in the assessment of design-oriented projects that are collaborative in nature, multi-disciplinary, and process-driven, accomplished intermittently or intensely over weeks and months with the help from multiple peers and educators.
Connections to other Contexts. A great promise of cyberlearning is that learning will be more connected across informal and formal spaces, such as science museums and schools. Much design research is needed to make this promise a reality, as the culture of school and the cultures of informal learning do not easily mix. It is unlikely to be a good idea to require informal spaces into produce standardized outcomes like achieving a particular curricular goal but also unrealistic to expect that schools can become as interest-driven as informal environments are. Considerable challenges of describing and documenting the learning that occurs in each setting in useful ways for other settings are likely to emerge.
Research Methods. Making is also driving changes to what is being researched and how research is accomplished. Researchers are exploring new ways to advance theories of social learning, interest, and motivation. The objects and artifacts created by learners serve as a reflection of their different selves, providing rich avenues for researchers to study identity formation and identities in practice (Ching & Foley, 2013; Tan, Calabrese-Barton, Kang, & O’Neill, 2013). With learning happening in physical, online, and blended learning environments, new research methods are being created to study these complex STEM-rich environments to examine new literacies, representations, dialogue, design-based learning, and collaborative teaming (Halversen, 2013; Ito, 2009; Litts, 2015).
Measurement and Assessment. Making akin to design-based learning is spurring new embedded assessment tools and cyber-enabled research tools to capture moment-to-moment, emergent learning in out-of-school settings. Rather than using high-stakes tests as measures of learning or teacher-graded work, teachers use digital portfolios, scaffolded peer critique, and documentation support to assess project-based learning from collaborative teaming, solving design challenges, and learner-centered making. Learning analytics and online traces are being used to capture multi-modal interactions, online behaviors, participation, and activity over long periods beyond school hours. Digital videos with high storage capabilities archive months and years of video data empowering researchers to conduct longitudinal, ethnographic studies to analyze-in-depth collaborative inquiry, learning conversations, and teaching practices (see Gutwill, Hido, & Sindorf, 2015). Individuals are not only evaluated for changes to their understanding of STEM disciplinary knowledge, but their inquiry processes, empowerment, and resourcefulness (Dixon & Martin, 2014; Brahms, 2014). Other researchers and their developers are exploring how to design better instructional supports, physical computing materials, programming languages, and design tools to support the development of computational thinking, data literacy, and modeling expertise (Blikstein, 2013.)
Professional Development. New models of professional development are needed to prepare peers, coaches, mentors, tutors, facilitators and other adults who support learners in informal spaces — and may be working with cyberlearning technologies in doing their work. Similarly, new approaches to professional development are also needed to meet the needs of teachers who want to learn how to better facilitate maker activities and to assess maker-style projects. For example, MOOCs and web-based video chats can offer mentors and/or teachers a way to join professional learning communities to discuss issues of practice, and learn ways to assess learning that happens in blended learning environments.
Lack of Diversity in the Maker Movement. Making is meant to bring playful designing and fabrication quite literally in the hands of the learner and is believed to be a democratizing force. However, it suffers from a serious lack of diversity, and underrepresentation of women in minorities. While Kneese & Rosenblat (2014) think this issue simply mirrors general Silicon Valley disparities, Lilypad inventor Leah Buechley believes that MAKE magazine has propagated an exclusionary culture in their choice of featured projects (mostly robots and vehicles) and makers (white men/boys). Clearly taking making into all schools and classrooms will help level the playing field.
Challenges Shared with Other Cyberlearning Areas. As learner engagement in spaces is captured digitally, issues about privacy and data security arise, along with new IRB issues. Likewise, as students create their maker artefacts, issues of copyrights, attribution, etc. can arise. Technological barriers to the flow of information across settings can arise (incompatibility between informal settings and school learning management systems, for example). As institutions tend to reflect societal issues, gaps in equity across gender, race, and other demographic characteristics may persist if not addressed.
Examples of NSF Cyberlearning projects that overlap with topics discussed in this primer (see project tag map).
Making learning tangible
- Broadening Participation for Remote Communities: Situated Distance Telepresence Mentoring through Embodied Communications
- Synthesis and Design Workshop: Principles for the design of digitally-distributed, studio-based STEM learning environments
- EXP: Paper Mechatronics: Advancing Engineering Education Through Computationally Enhanced Children's Papercrafts
- EAGER: Making with Understanding
- EXP: BodyVis: Advancing New Science Learning and Inquiry Experiences via Custom Designed Wearable On-Body Sensing and Visualization
More posts: making-learning-tangible
- DIP: Next Generation WeatherBlur: Expanding Non-Hierarchical Online Learning Community Models for Citizen Science
- DIP: Collaborative Research: STEM Literacy through Infographics
- DIP: ScienceKit for ScienceEverywhere - A Seamless Scientizing Ecosystem for Raising Scientifically-Minded Children
- DIP: Potential for everyday learning in a virtual community: A design-based investigation
- CAP: Towards Inclusive Design of Serious Games for Learning
More posts: citizen-science
- CRII: Cyberlearning: Lived Science Narratives: Meaningful Elementary Science through Wearable Technologies
- Data-Driven, Human-in-the-Loop Support for Facilitating Participatory Learning Activities
- EXP: Bridging Learning in Urban Extended Spaces (BLUES) 2.0
- EAGER: Collaborative Research: Virtual STEM Buddies for Personalized Learning Experiences in Free Choice Informal Learning Settings
- EAGER: Collaborative Research: Designing Digital Rails to Foster Scientific Curiosity around Museum Collections
More posts: informal-learning
Martin, L. (2015). The Promise of the Maker Movement for Education. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 5(1).
Informalscience.org web site, run by the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE)
Make: Do-it-yourself projects, how-tos, and inspiration.
References and key readings documenting the thinking behind the concept, important milestones in the work, foundational examples to build from, and summaries along the way.
Anastopoulou, S., Sharples, M., Ainsworth, S., Crook, C., O’Malley, C., & Wright, M. (2011) Creating personal meaning through technology-supported science inquiry learning across formal and informal settings. International Journal of Science Education.
Bevan, B., Bell, P., Stevens, R., Razfar, A. (Eds.) 2013, XIV. LOST Opportunities: Learning in Out-of-School Time. Explorations of Educational Purpose, Vol. 23. Springer-Verlag.
Blikstein, P. (2013). Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention. FabLabs: Of Machines, Makers and Inventors, 1-21.
Blikstein, P. (2013). Multimodal learning analytics. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK ’13), Dan Suthers and Katrien Verbert (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 102-106.
Buechley, L., Peppler, K. A., Eisenberg, M., & Y. B. Kafai (Eds.), Textile messages: Dispatches from the world of e-textiles and education (pp. 17–28). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.
Ching, C. & Foley, B. Constructing the Self in a Digital World. 2014. Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, C., & Martin, L. (2014). “Make to relate: Narratives of, and as, community practice.” In Polman, J. L., Kyza, E. A., O’Neill, D. K., Tabak, I., Penuel, W. R., Jurow, A., S., O’Connor, K., Lee, T., & D’Amico, L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2014. Boulder, CO (pp. 1591-1592).
Dubrov, A. (2015). Democratizing the maker movement. Huffington Post.
Fried, B. & Wetstone, K. (2014). President Obama at the White House Maker Faire: Today’s D.I.Y. is tomorrow’s ‘made in America [White House blog post].
Gutwill, J., Hido, N., Sindorf, L. (2015) Research to Practice: Observing learning in tinkering activities. Curator: The Museum Journal, 58 (2), 151-168
Halverson, E. R. (2013). Digital art making as a representational process. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 22(1), 121-162.
Halverson, E. R., & Sheridan, K. (2014). The Maker Movement in Education. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4).
Hidi, S., & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The Four-Phase Model of Interest Development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111-127.
Honey, M., & Kanter, D. E. (Eds.). (2013). Design, make, play: Growing the next generation of STEM Innovators. Routledge.
Institute of Museum and Library Services. (2012). Talking Points: Museums, Libraries, and Makerspaces.
Ito, M. (2009). Hanging Out, Messying Around, and Geeking Out. MIT Press.
Kafai, Y. B. (2006). Constructionism. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Kafai, Y. B. & Burke, Q. (2014) Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming. MIT Press.
Kafai, Y. B., Peppler, K. A., & Chapman, R. (2009) (Eds.). The Computer Clubhouse: Constructionism and Creativity in the Inner City. New York: Teachers College Press.
Kafai, Y. B., & Peppler, K. A. (2011). Youth, technology, and DIY: Developing participatory competencies in creative media production. Review of Research in Education, 35(1), 89-119.
Kafai, Y. B. & Resnick, M. (1996) Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kneese, T., Rosenblat, A., & Boyd. D. (2014). Technologically Mediated Artisanal Production. Open Society Foundations’ Future of Work Commissioned Research Papers.
Kuznetsov, S., & Paulos, E. (2010, October). Rise of the expert amateur: DIY projects, communities, and cultures. Paper presented at the ACM NordiCHI Conference, Reykjavik.
Lave, J. “Situating Learning in Communities of Practice” In Resnick, Lauren B. (Ed); Levine, John M. (Ed); Teasley, Stephanie D. (Ed), (1991). Perspectives on socially shared cognition, (pp. 63-82) Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.
Learning Labs in Libraries and Museums: Transformative Spaces for Teens. (2014) Association for Science-Technology Centers & Urban Libraries Council, Washington, DC.
Martin, L. (2015). The Promise of the Maker Movement for Education. Journale of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 5(1).
Martinez, S. L. & Stager, G. S. (2013) Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. Constructing Modern Knowledge Press
National Research Council (2009). Learning science in informal environments: People, places, and pursuits. Washington, D. C.: The National Academies Press.
New York Hall of Science (NYSCI). 2013. Making meaning. New York Hall of Science: Queens, NY.
Papert, S. (1991). Situating constructionism. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism (pp.1–11). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Peppler, K., & Glosson, D. (2013). Stitching Circuits: Learning About Circuitry Through E- textile Materials. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 22(5), 751-763.
Science Education Special Issue: Research on Learning Science in Informal Contexts.
Sheridan, K., Halverson, E. R., Brahms, L., Litts, B., Owens, T., & Jacobs-Priebe, L. (2014). Learning in the making: A comparative case study of three makerspaces. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4).
Tan, E., Calabrese Barton, A., Kang, H., & O’Neill, T. (2013) Desiring a career in STEM-related fields: How middle school girls articulate and negotiate identities-in-practice in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 50(10):1143-1179.
The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. (2009, April 29). Remarks by the president at the national academy of sciences annual meeting.
Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge University Press.
Vossoughi, S. and Bevan, B. Making and Tinkering: A Review of the Literature.
Vossoughi, S., Escudé, M., Kong, F., & Hooper, P. (2013). Tinkering, learning & equity in the after- school setting. Paper presented at Fablearn 2013: Digital Fabrication in Education Conference. October 27, 2013; Stanford, CA.
Recent Dissertations on Making
Brahms, L. J. (2014). Making as a learning process: Identifying and supporting family learning in informal settings (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh).
Litts, B. K. (2015) Making learning: Makerspaces as learning environments. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. University of Wisconsin-Madison
Publications from NSF-funded Cyberlearning Projects
Halverson, E., Sheridan, K. (2014). The Maker Movement in Education. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 84(4), pp. 495-504.
Lee, S. A., Bumbacher, E., Chung, A. M., Cira, N., Walker, B., Park, J. Y., Riedel-Kruse, I. H. (2015). Trap it!: A Playful Human-Biology Interaction for a Museum Installation. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2593-2602). Seoul, South Korea: Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Hossain, Z., Jin, X., Bumbacher, E. W., Chung, A. M., Koo, S., Shapiro, J. D., & Riedel-Kruse, I. H. (2015). Interactive Cloud Experimentation for Biology: An Online Education Case Study. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3681-3690). New York, New York: Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Blikstein, P. (2013). Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention. FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors, pp. 1-21.
Eisenberg, M., Oh, H., Hsi, S., & Gross, M. (2015). Paper mechatronics: A material and intellectual shift in educational technology. In Proceedings of Interactive Collaborative Learning 2015 International Conference (pp. 936-943). Florence, Italy: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Cogger, S. (2015). Doing the Data Walk. The Science Teacher, vol. 82(2), pp. 43.
Burghardt, D., & Hecht, D. (2016, March). Wise guys & gals: Boys & girls as wisengineering STEM learners. Poster session presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting, Bethesda, MD.
Hanko, K., Lee, S., & Okeke, N. (2015). What Makes a Great Museum Experience and How Can Technology Help? Informal Learning Review, Vol. 130, pp.13-18.
Primers are developed by small teams of volunteers and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Hsi, S. & Grover, S. (2015). CIRCL Primer: The Cutting Edge of Informal Learning: Makers, Mobile, and More!. In CIRCL Primer Series. Retrieved from http://circlcenter.org/the-cutting-edge-of-informal-learning/
After citing this primer in your text, consider adding: “Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).”


Preliminary. How To Study And Judge Literature
TWO ASPECTS OF LITERARY STUDY. Such a study of Literature as that for which the present book is designed includes two purposes, contributing to a common end. In the first place (I), the student must gain some general knowledge of the conditions out of which English literature has come into being, as a whole and during its successive periods, that is of the external facts of one sort or another without which it cannot be understood. This means chiefly (1) tracing in a general way, from period to period, the social life of the nation, and (2) getting some acquaintance with the lives of the more important authors. The principal thing, however
(II), is the direct study of the literature itself. This study in turn should aim first at an understanding of the literature as an expression of the authors' views of life and of their personalities and especially as a portrayal and interpretation of the life of their periods and of all life as they have seen it; it should aim further at an
appreciation of each literary work as a product of Fine Art, appealing with peculiar power both to our minds and to our emotions, not least to the sense of Beauty and the whole higher nature. In the present book, it should perhaps be added, the word Literature is generally interpreted in the strict sense, as including only writing of permanent significance and beauty.
The outline discussion of literary qualities which follows is intended to help in the formation of intelligent and appreciative judgments.
SUBSTANCE AND FORM. The most thoroughgoing of all distinctions in literature, as in the other Fine Arts, is that between (1) Substance, the essential content and meaning of the work, and (2) Form, the manner in which it is expressed (including narrative structure, external style, in poetry verse-form, and many related matters). This distinction should be kept in mind, but in what follows it will not be to our purpose to emphasize it.
GENERAL MATTERS. 1. First and always in considering any piece of literature a student should ask himself the question already implied: Does it present a true portrayal of life--of the permanent elements in all life and in human nature, of the life or thought of its own particular period, and (in most sorts of books) of the persons, real or imaginary, with whom it deals? If it properly accomplishes this main purpose, when the reader finishes it he should feel that his understanding of life and of people has been increased and broadened. But it should always be remembered that truth is quite as much a matter of general spirit and impression as of literal accuracy in details of fact. The essential question is not, Is the presentation of life and character perfect in a photographic fashion? but Does it convey the underlying realities? 2. Other things being equal, the value of a book, and especially of an author's whole work, is proportional to its range, that is to the breadth and variety of the life and characters which it presents. 3. A student should not form his judgments merely from what is technically called the dogmatic point of view, but should try rather to adopt that of historical criticism. This means that he should take into account the limitations imposed on every author by the age in which he lived. If you find that the poets of the Anglo-Saxon 'Beowulf' have given a clear and interesting picture of the life of our barbarous ancestors of the sixth or seventh century A. D., you should not blame them for a lack of the finer elements of feeling and expression which after a thousand years of civilization distinguish such delicate spirits as Keats and Tennyson. 4. It is often important to consider also whether the author's personal method is
objective, which means that he presents life and character without bias; or subjective, coloring his work with his personal tastes, feelings and impressions. Subjectivity may be a falsifying influence, but it may also be an important virtue, adding intimacy, charm, or force. 5. Further, one may ask whether the author has a deliberately formed theory of life; and if so how it shows itself, and, of course, how sound it is.
INTELLECT, EMOTION, IMAGINATION, AND RELATED QUALITIES. Another main question in judging any book concerns the union which it shows: (1) of the Intellectual faculty, that which enables the author to understand and control his material and present it with directness and clearness; and (2) of the Emotion, which gives warmth, enthusiasm, and appealing human power. The relative proportions of these two faculties vary greatly in books of different sorts. Exposition (as in most essays) cannot as a rule be permeated with so much emotion as narration or, certainly, as lyric poetry. In a great book the relation of the two faculties will of course properly correspond to form and spirit. Largely a matter of Emotion is the Personal Sympathy of the author for his characters, while Intellect has a large share in Dramatic Sympathy, whereby the author enters truly into the situations and feelings of any character, whether he personally likes him or not. Largely made up of Emotion are: (1) true Sentiment, which is fine feeling of any sort, and which should not degenerate into Sentimentalism
(exaggerated tender feeling); (2) Humor, the instinctive sense for that which is amusing; and (3) the sense for Pathos. Pathos differs from Tragedy in that Tragedy (whether in a drama or elsewhere) is the suffering of persons who are able to struggle against it, Pathos the suffering of those persons (children, for instance) who are merely helpless victims. Wit, the brilliant perception of incongruities, is a matter of Intellect and the complement of Humor.
IMAGINATION AND FANCY. Related to Emotion also and one of the most necessary elements in the higher forms of literature is Imagination, the faculty of making what is absent or unreal seem present and real, and revealing the hidden or more subtile forces of life. Its main operations may be classified under three heads: (1) Pictorial and Presentative. It presents to the author's mind, and through him to the minds of his readers, all the elements of human experience and life (drawing from his actual experience or his reading). 2. Selective, Associative, and Constructive. From the unorganized material thus brought clearly to the author's consciousness Imagination next selects the details which can be turned to present use, and proceeds to combine them, uniting scattered traits and incidents, perhaps from widely different sources, into new characters, stories, scenes, and ideas. The characters of 'Silas Marner,' for example, never had an actual existence, and the precise incidents of the story never took place in just that order and fashion, but they were all constructed by the author's imagination out of what she had observed of many real persons and events, and so make, in the most significant sense, a true picture of life. 3. Penetrative and Interpretative. In its subtlest operations, further, Imagination penetrates below the surface and comprehends and brings to light the deeper forces and facts--the real controlling instincts of characters, the real motives for actions, and the relations of material things to those of the spiritual world and of Man to Nature and God.
Fancy may for convenience be considered as a distinct faculty, though it is really the lighter, partly superficial, aspect of Imagination. It deals with things not essentially or significantly true, amusing us with striking or pleasing suggestions, such as seeing faces in the clouds, which vanish almost as soon as they are discerned. Both Imagination and Fancy naturally express themselves, often and effectively, through the use of metaphors, similes, and suggestive condensed language. In painful contrast to them stands commonplaceness, always a fatal fault.
IDEALISM, ROMANCE, AND REALISM. Among the most important literary qualities also are Idealism, Romance, and Realism. Realism, in the broad sense, means simply the presentation of the actual, depicting life as one sees it, objectively, without such selection as aims deliberately to emphasize some particular aspects, such as the pleasant or attractive ones. (Of course all literature is necessarily based on the ordinary facts of life, which we may call by the more general name of Reality.) Carried to the extreme, Realism may become ignoble, dealing too frankly or in unworthy spirit with the baser side of reality, and in almost all ages this sort of Realism has actually attempted to assert itself in literature. Idealism, the tendency opposite to Realism, seeks to emphasize the spiritual and other higher elements, often to bring out the spiritual values which lie beneath the surface. It is an optimistic interpretation of life, looking for what is good and permanent beneath all the surface confusion. Romance may be called Idealism in the realm of sentiment. It aims largely to interest and delight, to throw over life a pleasing glamor; it generally deals with love or heroic adventure; and it generally locates its scenes and characters in distant times and places, where it can work unhampered by our consciousness of the humdrum actualities of our daily experience. It may always be asked whether a writer of Romance makes his world seem convincingly real as we read or whether he frankly abandons all plausibility. The presence or absence of a supernatural element generally makes an important difference. Entitled to special mention, also, is spiritual Romance, where attention is centered not on external events, which may here be treated in somewhat shadowy fashion, but on the deeper questions of life. Spiritual Romance, therefore, is essentially idealistic.
DRAMATIC POWER. Dramatic power, in general, means the presentation of life with the vivid active reality of life and character which especially distinguishes the acted drama. It is, of course, one of the main things to be desired in most narrative; though sometimes the effect sought may be something different, as, for instance, in romance and poetry, an atmosphere of dreamy beauty. In a drama, and to some extent in other forms of narrative, dramatic power culminates in the ability to bring out the great crises with supreme effectiveness.
CHARACTERS. There is, generally speaking, no greater test of an author's skill than his knowledge and presentation of characters. We should consider whether he makes them (1) merely caricatures, or (2) type characters, standing for certain general traits of human nature but not convincingly real or especially significant persons, or (3) genuine individuals with all the inconsistencies and half-revealed tendencies that in actual life belong to real personality. Of course in the case of important characters, the greater the genuine individuality the greater the success. But with secondary characters the principles of emphasis and proportion generally forbid very distinct individualization; and sometimes, especially in comedy
(drama), truth of character is properly sacrificed to other objects, such as the main effect. It may also be asked whether the characters are simple, as some people are in actual life, or complex, like most interesting persons; whether they develop, as all real people must under the action of significant experience, or whether the author merely presents them in brief situations or lacks the power to make them anything but stationary. If there are several of them it is a further question whether the author properly contrasts them in such a way as to secure interest. And a main requisite is that he shall properly motivate their actions, that is make their actions result naturally from their characters, either their controlling traits or their temporary impulses.
STRUCTURE. In any work of literature there should be definite structure. This requires, (1) Unity, (2) Variety, (3) Order, (4) Proportion, and (5) due Emphasis of parts. Unity means that everything included in the work ought to contribute directly or indirectly to the main effect. Very often a definite theme may be found about which the whole work centers, as for instance in 'Macbeth,' The Ruin of a Man through Yielding to Evil. Sometimes, however, as in a lyric poem, the effect intended may be the rendering or creation of a mood, such as that of happy content, and in that case the poem may not have an easily expressible concrete theme.
Order implies a proper beginning, arrangement, progress, and a definite ending. In narrative, including all stories whether in prose or verse and also the drama, there should be traceable a Line of Action, comprising generally: (1) an Introduction, stating the necessary preliminaries; (2) the Initial Impulse, the event which really sets in motion this particular story; (3) a Rising Action; (4) a Main Climax. Sometimes (generally, in Comedy) the Main Climax is identical with the Outcome; sometimes (regularly in Tragedy) the Main Climax is a turning point and comes near the middle of the story. In that case it really marks the beginning of the success of the side which is to be victorious at the end (in Tragedy the side opposed to the hero) and it initiates (5) a Falling Action, corresponding to the Rising Action, and sometimes of much the same length, wherein the losing side struggles to maintain itself. After (6) the Outcome, may come (7) a brief tranquilizing Conclusion. The Antecedent Action is that part of the characters' experiences which precedes the events of the story. If it has a bearing, information about it must be given either in the Introduction or incidentally later on. Sometimes, however, the structure just indicated may not be followed; a story may begin in the middle, and the earlier part may be told later on in retrospect, or incidentally indicated, like the Antecedent Action.
If in any narrative there is one or more Secondary Action, a story which might be separated from the Main Action and viewed as complete in itself, criticism should always ask whether the Main and Secondary Actions are properly unified. In the strictest theory there should be an essential connection between them; for instance, they may illustrate different and perhaps contrasting aspects of the general theme. Often, however, an author introduces a Secondary Action merely for the sake of variety or to increase the breadth of his picture--in order to present a whole section of society instead of one narrow stratum or group. In such cases, he must generally be judged to have succeeded if he has established an apparent unity, say by mingling the same characters in the two actions, so that readers are not readily conscious of the lack of real structural unity.
Other things to be considered in narrative are: Movement, which, unless for special reasons, should be rapid, at least not slow and broken; Suspense; general Interest; and the questions whether or not there are good situations and good minor climaxes, contributing to the interest; and whether or not motivation is good, apart from that which results from character, that is whether events are properly represented as happening in accordance with the law of cause and effect which inexorably governs actual life. But it must always be remembered that in such writing as Comedy and Romance the strict rules of motivation must be relaxed, and indeed in all literature, even in Tragedy, the idealization, condensation, and heightening which are the proper methods of Art require them to be slightly modified.
DESCRIPTIVE POWER. Usually secondary in appearance but of vital artistic importance, is the author's power of description, of picturing both the appearance of his characters and the scenes which make his background and help to give the tone of his work. Perhaps four subjects of description may be distinguished: 1. External Nature. Here such questions as the following are of varying importance, according to the character and purpose of the work: Does the author know and care for Nature and frequently introduce descriptions? Are the descriptions concrete and accurate, or on the other hand purposely general (impressionistic) or carelessly superficial? Do they give fine variations of appearance and impression, such as delicate shiftings of light and shade and delicate tones of color? Are they powerfully sensuous, that is do they appeal strongly to the physical senses, of sight (color, light, and movement), sound (including music), smell, taste, touch, and general physical sensation? How great is their variety? Do they deal with many parts of Nature, for example the sea, mountains, plains, forests, and clouds? Is the love of external beauty a passion with the author? What is the author's attitude toward Nature--(1) does he view Nature in a purely objective way, as a mass of material things, a series of material phenomena or a mere embodiment of sensuous beauty; or (2) is there symbolism or mysticism in his attitude, that is--does he view Nature with awe as a spiritual power; or (3) is he thoroughly subjective, reading his own moods into Nature or using Nature chiefly for the expression of his moods? Or again, does the author describe with merely expository purpose, to make the background of his work clear?
2. Individual Persons and Human Life: Is the author skilful in descriptions of personal appearance and dress? Does he produce his impressions by full enumeration of details, or by emphasis on prominent or characteristic details? How often and how fully does he describe scenes of human activity
(such as a street scene, a social gathering, a procession on the march)? 3. How frequent and how vivid are his descriptions of the inanimate background of human life--buildings, interiors of rooms, and the rest? 4. Does the author skilfully use description to create the general atmosphere in which he wishes to invest his work--an atmosphere of cheerfulness, of mystery, of activity, or any of a hundred other moods?
STYLE. Style in general means 'manner of writing.' In the broad sense it includes everything pertaining to the author's spirit and point of view--almost everything which is here being discussed. More narrowly considered, as 'external style,' it designates the author's use of language. Questions to be asked in regard to external style are such as these: Is it good or bad, careful or careless, clear and easy or confused and difficult; simple or complex; terse and forceful (perhaps colloquial) or involved and stately; eloquent, balanced, rhythmical; vigorous, or musical, languid, delicate and decorative; varied or monotonous; plain or figurative; poor or rich in connotation and poetic suggestiveness; beautiful, or only clear and strong? Are the sentences mostly long or short; periodic or loose; mostly of one type, such as the declarative, or with frequent introduction of such other forms as the question and the exclamation?
POETRY. Most of what has thus far been said applies to both Prose and Poetry. But in Poetry, as the literature especially characterized in general by high Emotion, Imagination, and Beauty, finer and more delicate effects are to be sought than in Prose. Poetry, generally speaking, is the expression of the deeper nature; it belongs peculiarly to the realm of the spirit. On the side of poetical expression such imaginative figures of speech as metaphors and similes, and such devices as alliteration, prove especially helpful. It may be asked further of poetry, whether the meter and stanza structure are appropriate to the mood and thought and so handled as to bring out the emotion effectively; and whether the sound is adapted to the sense (for example, musical where the idea is of peace or quiet beauty). If the sound of the words actually imitates the sound of the thing indicated, the effect is called Onomatopoeia. Among kinds of poetry, according to form, the most important are: (1) Narrative, which includes many subordinate forms, such as the Epic. (2) Lyric. Lyric poems are expressions of spontaneous emotion and are necessarily short. (3) Dramatic, including not merely the drama but all poetry of vigorous action. (4) Descriptive, like Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village' and Tennyson's 'Dream of Fair Women.' Minor kinds are: (5) Satiric; and (6) Didactic.
Highly important in poetry is Rhythm, but the word means merely 'flow,' so that rhythm belongs to prose as well as to poetry. Good rhythm is merely a pleasing succession of sounds. Meter, the distinguishing formal mark of poetry and all verse, is merely rhythm which is regular in certain fundamental respects, roughly speaking is rhythm in which the recurrence of stressed syllables or of feet with definite time-values is regular. There is no proper connection either in spelling or in meaning between rhythm and rime (which is generally misspelled 'rhyme'). The adjective derived from
'rhythm' is 'rhythmical'; there is no adjective from 'rime' except 'rimed.' The word 'verse' in its general sense includes all writing in meter. Poetry is that verse which has real literary merit. In a very different and narrower sense 'verse' means 'line' (never properly 'stanza').
CLASSICISM AND ROMANTICISM. Two of the most important contrasting tendencies of style in the general sense are Classicism and Romanticism. Classicism means those qualities which are most characteristic of the best literature of Greece and Rome. It is in fact partly identical with Idealism. It aims to express the inner truth or central principles of things, without anxiety for minor details, and it is by nature largely intellectual in quality, though not by any means to the exclusion of emotion. In outward form, therefore, it insists on correct structure, restraint, careful finish and avoidance of all excess. 'Paradise Lost,' Arnold's 'Sohrab and Rustum,' and Addison's essays are modern examples. Romanticism, which in general prevails in modern literature, lays most emphasis on independence and fulness of expression and on strong emotion, and it may be comparatively careless of form. The Classical style has well been called sculpturesque, the Romantic picturesque. The virtues of the Classical are exquisiteness and incisive significance; of the Romantic, richness and splendor. The dangers of the Classical are coldness and formality; of the Romantic, over-luxuriance, formlessness and excess of emotion. [Footnote: All these matters, here merely suggested, are fully discussed in the present author's 'Principles of Composition and Literature.' (The A. S. Barnes Co.)]