




































Ruth Harris: Does Higher Education Practice What They Teach? 

Vanessa Garry, Matthew Davis 

University of Missouri - St. Louis 

 

Abstract 

Sixty-five years prior to Ruth Harris’ 

appointment as president of Harris-Stowe State 

University it was illegal to educate African 

Americans in Missouri. Yet, in 1940 she became 

the first African American female to lead the 

College. This paper reports findings from a 

historical analysis of Harris’ tenure from 1940 to 

1954. The analysis of Harris’ seven guiding 

principles revealed that traces of her work, such 

as community-based learning, exist in education 

today. 

 

Introduction 

In Ruth Harris’ book, Stowe Teachers 

College and Her Predecessors, she chronicled her 

tenure at the college from 1924 to 1954 by 

shining light on the four stages of the evolution of 

the College from a one-year normal department to 

a four-year college. In this paper we focus on the 

fourth stage as she takes the reins as president and 

practices seven educational principles to lead the 

continued development of Stowe Teachers 

College. However, as we attempted to make 

meaning of her narrative we also discussed key 

events from the first three stages of the 

development of the College because we believed 

they shaped her leadership skills and grounded 

her core beliefs.  

Making Stowe Teachers College, formerly 

Normal Department, competitive with 

universities and not just normal schools is a 

reoccurring theme that emerged from Harris’ 

narrative. Additionally, she yearned to make not 

only the College competitive but she wanted to 

develop capable undergraduates who would 

graduate and either teach or further their 

education at any university in the country. Since 

Harris received her doctorate from Teachers 

College, Columbia University perhaps her 

experience influenced her thinking. According to 

Fultz (2012, 17) historians have difficulty in 

categorizing normal schools and the general 

tendency has been to consider these institutions as 

mere extensions of common schooling—at best, 

high school “plus”. However, Harris’ aspirations 

for the College revealed through her recollections 

appears to provide fodder for historians to 

ruminate as they consider Fultz’s question, 

“Should normal schools be considered by their 

aspirations, and sometimes by their practice, as 

fundamentally outside the realm of common 

schooling, given the “professional training” and 

“higher” education that characterized the normal 

school ideal?” (Fultz 2012, 17).  

Two critical moments in Harris’ tenure as 

president frame this study. Perhaps they were the 

catalyst for the book. Delgado and Stefancic 

(2013, 24) espouse the challenge of discerning 

critical moments during the time we are living 

through them. It is easier to respond to them in 

retrospect. Two critical moments in Harris’ tenure 

we presumed are one, her appointment as 

president of the College in 1940 and two, her 

departure from the College in 1954. First, her 

appointment is a critical moment because during 

the 1940s few women, notably African 

Americans, were heads of colleges. In particular, 



14 
 

the male principals of Sumner High School and 

Simmons Elementary School assumed 

responsibility for the College after the St. Louis 

Public Schools Board of Education located the 

College first at the high school and second at the 

elementary school. Additionally, the male 

president of Harris Teachers College shouldered 

the responsibility of president for Stowe Teachers 

College and Harris Teachers College during the 

Depression era. Second, the end of her tenure was 

also a critical moment because the date of her 

departure coincided with the date of the decision 

of Brown v. Board of Education which signaled 

the end of segregation of schools in America. 

We frame this study with the two critical 

moments and use a historical analysis method as 

a way to determine how the seven principles 

Harris spoke about in her narrative aided her 

during her presidency in the development of the 

College and we pondered if her intent was to 

reveal the utility of each for future use. According 

to Ladson-Billings (2013, 42), stories reflect a 

point of view and underscore what the teller, 

audience, society, and/or those in power believe 

to be important and significant. Although the 

discussion about the seven principles was 

expansive in Harris’ narrative, we attempted to 

make meaning of the principles and think about 

them in today’s context. We relied mostly on her 

narrative and dissertation as well as historical 

events during the time of her tenure to aid us in 

our sense-making of her narrative.  

Using resources available to us we sought 

answers to the following two questions. What 

were key developments at Stowe Teachers 

College during Harris’ tenure as president? How 

did they relate, if at all, to her core beliefs? In 

order to address the first question we discussed 

salient ideas from the first three stages of the 

development of the College during Harris’ tenure 

and we identified the ideals and experiences we 

believed shaped her core beliefs and leadership 

skills that ultimately influenced her leadership 

during her presidency. Next, to determine 

significant developments of the College during 

her presidency we examined key events (i.e., 

Harris’ speech at the dedication services for the 

new building) during the fourth and final stage of 

her tenure along with her application of the seven 

educational principles. To answer the second 

question—How did the developments relate, if at 

all, to her core beliefs?—we examined our 

findings from her narrative along with her 

dissertation to determine if the key developments 

were rooted in her beliefs.  

 

Background—First Three of Four Stages in 

the Development of the College 

Two parts comprise the overview of the 

first three of four stages of the evolution of the 

College during Harris’ tenure which include 

salient events that influenced the development of 

the College and her experience that shaped her 

leadership skills and core beliefs. The latter is 

critical because we believe Harris’ leadership 

grew out of her experiences as a teacher and 

administrator at the College prior to her assuming 

the role of president. Events that signaled 

advancement of the College during the first three 

stages include 1) changes in location and name, 

2) social contexts of education for African 

Americans in Missouri, 3) expansion of 

curriculum, and 4) development of partnerships.  

First, the Board of Education of the St. 

Louis Public Schools District governed the 

College during Harris’ tenure and was 

responsible for twice renaming the College and 

twice relocating it. In the first stage from 1890 to 

1924, the College, named Normal Department, 

resided at Sumner High School, the first high 

school for African Americans west of the 

Mississippi River. In the second stage from 1924 



15 
 

to 1929 the Normal School remained at Sumner 

High School but its name changed to Sumner 

Teachers College. In the third stage from 1929 to 

1940, according to Harris (1967), the College cut 

all ties with Sumner High School with a name 

change to Harriet Beecher Stowe Teachers 

College (abbreviated to Stowe Teachers College) 

and a move to Simmons Elementary School. The 

move provided the College with much needed 

space as well as a laboratory school to use for the 

development of their teachers.  The second move 

occurred during the start of the fourth stage of the 

College’s evolution and at the beginning of 

Harris’ tenure as president. 

Second, one extenuating circumstance that 

shaped the context of education for African 

American children in Missouri and prompted the 

Board’s decision to open the College was the 

1875 decree by the General Assembly of the State 

of Missouri. In fact, prior to March 17, 1875, 

schooling for African Americans did not exist; 

however, in 1875 the General Assembly of the 

State of Missouri mandated an education for all 

children living in Missouri. In 1890 the Board 

responded to the decree by opening the College 

as a normal school. Like the first normal school 

in the United States which opened in 1839 in 

Massachusetts, its purpose was to train teachers 

(Wright 1930); however, the purpose of the 

College or Normal Department (as it was called) 

was to train African American teachers to teach 

African American children attending St. Louis 

Public Schools in grades kindergarten through 

eighth. 

Third, another event during the first three 

stages of the development of the College was the 

expansion of the curriculum from a one-year 

program to a four-year college. In 1925, the 

Board approved the College’s program expansion 

from a two-year program to a four-year program 

(Harris 1967), thereby making the College 

comparable to the all-White teachers’ college in 

St. Louis, Harris Teachers College. We think this 

is an important event because although there were 

many barriers that inhibited the growth of the 

College, throughout Harris’ narrative she made 

references to working to make the College as 

good as other colleges and universities. As an 

illustration, according to Wright (1930) normal 

schools in Massachusetts established a two-year 

program in 1865 and a four-year program in 1870 

conversely it took the Board almost 35 years 

before expanding Stowe Teachers College’s 

program to four years (Harris 1967). This was not 

the first time Stowe Teachers College received 

questionable treatment from the Board. For 

instance, in 1919 the Board approved the White 

teachers’ college authority to grant degrees to all 

students who satisfactorily completed the 

program requirements yet similar authorization 

for Stowe Teachers College came two years later 

in 1921 (Harris 1967). 

Fourth, during the Depression era in the 

1930s, a partnership with a nearby college for 

African Americans helped the College develop an 

alternative program to grow its enrollment. In 

1933 the superintendent of St. Louis Public 

Schools created an entrenchment program in 

response to the Depression. In order to reduce 

spending the superintendent discontinued the 

College’s two-year program, ordered it not to 

admit any new students, reduced its staff, and 

assigned the Harris Teachers College president as 

president of both Harris Teachers College and 

Stowe Teachers College. According to Harris 

(1967) the cuts in the programs put the College in 

peril. However, with support from the community 

and the sponsorship by Public Works 

Administration (PWA) the College was able to 

partner with Lincoln University in Jefferson City, 

Missouri to create a two-year junior college 

program which lasted for five years.  



16 
 

In the first part of the overview we 

discussed events that influenced the development 

of the College during the first three stages under 

Harris’ tenure and in the second part of the 

overview we constructed what we believed to be 

Harris’ leadership style and her core beliefs 

during the same time. We used her narrative and 

photographs in her book to aid us in determining 

her leadership style. For example, throughout the 

book she wrote a lot about the contributions of 

others, the need for equality in the treatment of all 

teachers’ colleges, and the desire to create a 

competitive college. Additionally, she included a 

limited number of photographs of herself in her 

book and most of her photographs show her 

seated among her peers. We interpreted the 

frequency in which she acknowledged others to 

mean she put people first. The group pictures 

bolstered our theory because we interpreted the 

photographs as representing a team. Additionally, 

we inferred from her willingness to put others 

first and her positioning in the group photographs 

indicated that she was not an attention-seeker but 

more of a collaborator. Given her rise to the 

highest position in the College and the clues we 

distilled from her narrative we believe Harris was 

a quiet, tenacious, and determined leader whose 

leadership style was probably democratic—she 

along with others collaborated in the development 

of the College.  

Second, in addition to Harris’ narrative we 

relied on her dissertation to aid us in interpreting 

her core beliefs. We believe community 

involvement was the cornerstone of Harris’ core 

beliefs. For example, she thought the College 

should serve its community (i.e., the College 

sponsored programs for students as well as 

community members) and students of the College 

should serve the community (i.e., the sociology 

course of the College had both class lectures and 

community service components). Moreover, 

Harris appeared to strongly believe that teachers 

should know the community in which they taught 

in order to better serve their students. The subject, 

which was the topic of her dissertation, probably 

got its roots from Paul R. Hanna (author of Youth 

Serves the Community) who was on the faculty of 

Teachers College, Columbia University where 

she completed her dissertation (Harris 1941). 

Today, when students apply what they learned in 

class to service work we refer to the practice as 

community-based or blended learning.   

The Seven Principles and the Key 

Developments of the College during Harris’ 

Tenure  

Although in our overview we included 

events from the first three stages we think 

influenced Harris’ leadership skills and beliefs, 

the next section of the paper is focused on the 

development of the College during Harris’ tenure 

as president—the fourth and final stage of her 

narrative. In this section of the paper we share our 

interpretations of her speech she delivered at the 

dedication services for the new building and next, 

discuss the seven educational principles she used 

to aid in the development of the College.  

With the pervasiveness of segregation in 

the United States during the 1940s it was 

probably very exciting for the community to hear 

that Harris was the new president of the College. 

She essentially “grew-up” with the College so the 

community and former students knew her and 

undoubtedly trusted her to improve the College 

for the benefit of African Americans. We 

presume Harris’ purpose of using the dedication 

speech to reveal her platform for leading the 

College was two-fold—give her constituents a 

glimpse of what was to come and instill 

confidence in the Board of her ability to lead the 

College. Harris commenced her speech with the 

question, “What shall this program be?” and 

proceeded to answer it with the following 



17 
 

assertions, “the foundation of the success of the 

College included kindness, integrity, 

responsibility, diligence, reliability, punctuality, 

and loyalty” (Harris 1967, 62). These words 

seemed to define Harris. That is to say we 

gleaned from her writings that she was steadfast 

in her loyalty to the College as evidenced by her 

length of service as well as responsible as 

attributed to her promotions during her tenure. 

Furthermore, words like responsibility and 

diligence appear to describe her commitment to 

supporting the community and cultivating a top-

notch college.  She elaborated that the College 

would be one of scholarship and that learning 

would far exceed what students learned in 

elementary or high school. Her assertion about 

scholarship gave us pause as we connected her 

aspiration to Fultz’s question about historians 

rethinking the descriptions of normal schools 

given their practices and higher education. 

Likewise, we presume this was also another way 

she attempted to position the College as a 

competitive four-year university.  

In her dedication speech she foreshadowed 

how the seven principles would support 

development; however, in the final chapter of her 

narrative we learned about the contributions to 

the College as a result of their application. The 

seven educational principles are 1) know your 

pupils first, 2) educate the whole teacher—

intellectually, culturally, socially, physically, 3) 

schools should make use of their communities as 

learning laboratories, 4) an institution should 

study itself, 5) an institution should provide for 

individual differences—especially in curriculum, 

6) a teachers’ college should seek better 

integration and less overlapping of the education 

courses, and 7) in-service teachers should 

participate in planning the curriculum. In the final 

section of her book Harris asked the readers, “Are 

educational principles practiced in the institutions 

where they are taught?” (Harris 1967, 84). We 

interpreted Harris’ rhetorical question to mean 

that the College practiced the same concepts that 

the faculty taught Stowe Teachers College 

undergraduates. The following discussion 

provides examples of how the practice benefitted 

the College. 

Principle one, know your pupils first, 

represented all of the tools the faculty of the 

College employed to get to know their students. 

In particular, they focused on recruitment by 

hosting events that allowed high school seniors in 

the region to visit their campus and talk to 

counselors and faculty members about programs 

at the College. They canvassed potential students 

to learn about their academic strengths and 

weaknesses by requiring them to complete 

questionnaires prior to their campus visits. 

Counselors organized and distributed the 

information to the faculty. On the day of the 

event the counselors placed students in groups 

according to their interests and assigned faculty 

with similar interests to talk with the students 

about their programs. By garnering information 

from students they were able to consider the kind 

of remedial programs needed to support students 

entering the College with academic deficits as 

well as make adjustments in the program 

offerings (Harris 1967).  

For principle two, educate the whole 

teacher—intellectually, culturally, socially, 

physically—the faculty adopted the phrase 

“whole child” for future teachers (e.g., whole 

teacher). Harris asserted that teacher-education 

curriculum should encompass social and cultural 

activities as well as intellectual because students 

benefited from exposure to many different kinds 

of cultural activities. Since the social climate of 

America at the time severely limited the access of 

African Americans to cultural events in the larger 

community outside of the College, Harris 



18 
 

believed it was the College’s responsibility to 

bring events to the community in which they 

could participate. 

Principle three, schools should make use of 

their communities as learning laboratories, 

harkens back to Harris’ experience at Teachers 

College, Columbia University. We saw a 

connection between Harris’ dissertation—rooted 

in helping teachers understand the communities 

in which they worked—and the third principle. 

For this reason Harris saw merit in having 

undergraduate students collaborating with 

community partners as a way to better understand 

the students they would one day teach. For 

instance, during her tenure as president the 

faculty initiated a cooperative education program 

between Stowe Teachers College and city 

agencies. The program consisted of 

undergraduate students enrolling in the sociology 

course which was a balance of class lectures and 

service in their community. Harris saw the 

program as a way for students to gain experience 

working with children, learn about community 

agencies, and provide service. Likewise faculty’s 

involvement bolstered their knowledge about 

students’ work in non-classroom settings which 

aided them in their process of selecting 

candidates for the Stowe Teachers College 

program.  

Principle four, an institution should study 

itself, was part of Harris’ desire for the College to 

be competitive with institutions across the nation. 

Adhering to the North Central Manual of 

Accrediting Procedures Harris involved the 

College in a couple of national studies as a way to 

investigate problems of the College and develop 

solutions. The first was a Carnegie Foundation 

grant awarded to the University of Missouri in 

which Stowe Teachers College participated for 

the purpose of improving instruction of its 

faculty. The participation of the College in the 

study included the administration canvassing 

students about the faculty’s teaching, sending 

faculty members to seminars, and having the 

seminar attendees report their findings.  

The second study conducted during Harris’ 

tenure was with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

According to Harris its purpose was an attempt to 

improve the living standards of the community by 

improving methods and content of instruction in 

schools, developing teachers’ instructional skills, 

making the curriculum relevant to the needs of 

students, and using current resources in different 

ways to reinforce teaching. In the first phase of 

the study Harris and a few faculty members 

visited several school districts and in the second 

phase undergraduate students of the College 

worked with adults and children in the 

community to focus on a community problem and 

generate solutions. For example, with the 

residents’ permission, the students studied their 

homes and redesigned interiors; next, they had 

students create posters on the theme of 

eradicating rats in the neighborhood. Last, one of 

the faculty members developed a textbook on rat 

control. The Sloan project was one of the vehicles 

Harris used to gain access to the community and 

put theory into action.  

Providing for individual differences—

especially in curriculum, was at the core of the 

fifth principle. Harris cites the English workshop 

as one of the ways the College differentiated 

learning oral and written language. The faculty 

assessed students to determine their skill levels in 

the English language and customized the 

curriculum to address their language deficiencies. 

Harris stated that differentiation (individualizing 

instruction to meet the needs of all learners) 

occurred at Stowe Teachers College long before 

tracking (grouping students by their abilities and 

placing them in similar classes) in the St. Louis 

Public Schools. The workshop was unique 



19 
 

because it was in addition to students’ regular 

English classes and students’ could progress at 

their own rate (Harris 1967). We presume this 

idea germinated from the data provided by 

incoming freshmen questionnaires that revealed 

many of them had underdeveloped reading skills. 

Differentiation in schools today looks similar to 

the ways Stowe Teachers College used it over 

sixty years ago.  

Seeking better integration and less overlap 

of education courses was the sixth principle. This 

occurred when the faculty combined courses to 

remove duplication in the programs. Harris 

asserted the catalyst for the change was due to 

criticisms launched by students against the lack of 

sequence of education courses. The impetus for 

the change was to integrate courses where it made 

sense in order to make the learning experience 

meaningful and practical. In other words they 

combined courses like philosophy of education 

with the practice of teaching to bring the theory 

and practice closer together. 

Principle seven, in-service teachers should 

participate in planning the curriculum, was 

Harris’ desire to foster a democratic culture at the 

College. This principle reinforced our belief that 

Harris’ leadership style was democratic. Our most 

compelling evidence is when the faculty uses in-

service teachers’ input to develop courses offered 

during the summer. Specifically, according to 

Harris (1967, p 156) teachers working in African 

American schools in St. Louis Public Schools 

were unable to attend the two local universities. 

In 1941 the Board approved the College’s 

summer program which afforded the teachers the 

opportunity to enroll in courses needed to develop 

their pedagogical skills. Principle seven is 

important because the faculty of Stowe Teachers 

College developed a summer program based on 

the needs of teachers. Subsequently the program 

paved the way for additional summer sessions at 

the College.   

Harris’ Core Beliefs through the Lens of her 

Dissertation 

Although there is limited information 

available to us about Ruth Harris we found her 

dissertation, Teachers’ Social Knowledge and its 

Relation to Pupils’ Responses, quite revealing of 

what we presume were her core beliefs about 

educating teachers. For example, in the first 

chapter of her dissertation Harris (1941) 

addressed the importance of teachers broadening 

their programs beyond the four walls of the 

classroom so they may become knowledgeable 

about the immediate community and the larger 

world community. She asserted the importance of 

getting teachers to understand the complex 

problems of the modern world in order to help 

students learn how to become world citizens. 

With Harris mentioning Paul R. Hanna in her 

dissertation we also presumed Hanna, a faculty 

member at Teachers College, Columbia 

University during her post-graduate work at 

Teachers College, influenced her beliefs. 

Additionally, Harris’ (1941) quote, “the teacher is 

the crucial factor in any conscious effort to bring 

school and community together” led us to believe 

that community or service learning is one of 

Harris’ core beliefs.   

The statement of problem in Harris’ 

dissertation is as follows: 

The understanding that teachers have of 

the communities in which they do their 

teaching is an important factor in the 

integration of their pupils’ lives in their 

communities and the pupils’ whole social 

adjustment. Consequently the 

development of this understanding should 

be a major concern of teacher training in 

institutions (Harris 1941, p 56).       



20 
 

Harris explored how much the teachers in 

four St. Louis African American elementary 

schools knew about the social condition in their 

communities and how the experience helped them 

relate to students. To answer her research 

question Harris developed two surveys and 

administered one to teachers and the other to fifth 

and sixth grade students. In some of the questions 

she queried teachers about heavily congested 

areas in neighborhoods, type of houses in 

neighborhoods, location of playgrounds, and 

African American population. She found that 

teachers’ social information scores were low in 

the study. For example, less than 50% of the 

teachers knew about the most congested areas in 

the neighborhood or the types of houses found in 

them. Additionally many of them knew little 

about the African American population in St. 

Louis (Harris 1941).   

Additionally, Harris compared students’ 

utilization of certain social facilities to teachers’ 

knowledge of the locations of the facilities. Her 

findings revealed the following: 15% of the 

students selected the library as one of the places 

they liked to go while only 30% of the teachers 

knew the locations of the libraries in the 

communities. Thirty-five percent of the students 

knew the locations of healthcare centers 

compared to 45% of the teachers. The playground 

was the third place students liked to go and 78% 

of the teachers knew the locations of the 

playgrounds; however, Harris stated that the 

majority of the playgrounds were on the school 

grounds (Harris 1941, 31). 

Harris appeared to grapple with the lack of 

knowledge teachers had of the communities in 

which they worked. She believed if teachers 

knew about the economic conditions of the 

communities surrounding the schools they would 

be more empathetic towards students. For 

instance, Harris supposed if students stole lunches 

she assumed it was because the students’ parents 

probably were unable to buy them lunches. 

However, teachers with limited knowledge of the 

community might assume students stole lunches 

because of poor behavior.  

We found a correlation between Harris’ 

core beliefs in three of the seven educational 

principles—principle one (know your students), 

principle two (educate the total teacher), and 

principle three (schools should make use of their 

communities as learning laboratories). We found 

evidence of Harris’ core belief, know your 

students, embedded in the College’s recruiting 

practices. Next, we found evidence of what we 

presumed to be her second core belief, educate 

the total teacher, engrained in the cultural 

offerings at the College. For example, because of 

prevailing Jim Crow laws African Americans 

were unable to attend cultural events in the larger 

community, therefore, Harris exposed students 

and community members to cultural activities 

through the College. Last, we found proof of 

Harris’ third core belief, schools should make use 

of their communities as learning laboratories, in 

the College’s community education program (i.e., 

sociology course with lecture and service 

components).   

Conclusion 

At the beginning of her book Harris stated 

that May 17, 1954 was a date everyone would 

remember. Not so much so because Stowe 

Teachers College was closing its doors but 

because the landmark decision of Brown v. Board 

of Education was going to open more doors for 

African Americans. Throughout Harris’ narrative 

she never limited the stature of Stowe Teachers 

College by comparing it to only African 

American schools instead she compared it to all 

universities and colleges. Like Brown she wanted 

African American students to get a solid 

education; therefore upon leaving Stowe Teachers 



21 
 

College they could enter the teaching profession 

or continue their education at colleges and 

universities of their choice.  

Although there is little, if any, information 

written about her after her departure from the 

College, the intellectual capital she invested in 

Stowe Teachers College during the years of her 

tenure left an indelible mark not only on the 

College as we know it today, Harris-Stowe State 

University, but also St. Louis.  We presume that 

her most significant contributions included the 

bridging of community learning to higher 

education as well as elevating the education of 

African Americans. 

First, we conclude that bridging the 

teachers’ program from the university to the 

community and back was a significant 

contribution by Harris. It enabled undergraduate 

students to gain experience working with 

agencies within the community and increased 

their understanding of the needs of their future 

students. Markedly, the practice exists today; 

however, we know it as community-based or 

service learning. Like Harris, supporters of 

service learning see the value of putting theory 

into practice in our communities.    

Second, we conclude that Harris’ 

aspirations to make Stowe Teachers College 

equal to or better than all colleges and 

universities is not only a significant contribution 

by Harris but it also begins to answer Fultz’ 

question, “Should normal schools be considered 

by their aspirations, and sometimes by their 

practice, as fundamentally outside the realm of 

common schooling, given the “professional 

training” and “higher” education that 

characterized the normal school ideal?” (Fulton 

2012, 17). We respond positively to Fultz’s 

question given Harris’ aspirations for Stowe 

Teachers College to be the best in its class and 

the structures (seven principles) her faculty 

practiced in order to achieve it. Her 

accomplishments while leading a college for 

African Americans were hopeful given the fact 

that higher education institutions along with like 

K-12 schools, were separate and unequal. 

We recommend the continuation of the 

study of historical black colleges and universities 

(HBCUs) as a way to define practices that 

worked and are germane to teaching and learning 

today. For example, we found that differentiation 

and blended learning practiced by the faculty of 

Stowe Teachers College currently exists in our 

schools today. We suggest future studies of 

former presidents of HBCUs in order to provide a 

lens for historians to glean meaning from their 

aspirations and practices that inform the narrative 

of HBCUs and their role in the education of 

African Americans.  

References 

 

Delgado, R., and J. Stefancic. 2013. Discerning 

critical moments. In Handbook of critical 

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D. Dixson, 23-33. New York: Routledge.  

Fultz, M. 2012. City normal schools and 

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of higher education for African Americans. In 

Higher education for African Americans 

before the civil rights era, 1900-1964, ed. M. 

Gasman and R. L. Geiger, 17-41. New 

Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. 

Harris, R.1967. Stowe Teachers College and her 

predecessors. Boston: The Christopher 

Publishing House. 

———. 1941. Teachers’ social knowledge and its 

relation to pupils’ responses. PhD diss., 

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Ladson-Billings, G. 2013. Critical race theory—

what it is not! In Handbook of critical race 

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Dixson, 34-47. New York: Routledge.  

Walker, F. 1930. The evolution of the normal 

schools. The Elementary School Journal 30 

(5): 363-71.  


