Myths of the Plantation Society: Slavery in the American South and the West Indies Book

An important and thought provoking consideration of how early industrialists and those at the center of early wealth after the Civil War had an impact on the development and engagement of African Americans in education. Examples of those whose impacts are meaningfully acknowledged are Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the Rockefellers, and a group of others, some with well known names and others that have began to slide into obscurity. Perhaps this is what the book does best, it ensures that this intersection of people and industry are acknowledged as being "architects" of education with their fair share of biases, reasoning, and so forth. While there are obviously elements of the biases of white industrialists in such an enterprise, there is also a connection to larger topics that may be better tread in history, such as Booker T. Washington's connection with the Hampton Institute. While topics and studies of that connection may be well known, Watkins in this book fleshes out Armstrong and others as architects who - with admitted bias, racism, and systems of oppression in place - still acted as architects of African American education.

While the system was - and in some measure still remains- flawed for underrepresented voices, in closing Watkins touches on something that should be considered in other studies, saying, in part: "In many ways, the forging of this endeavor helped to teach America's corporate industrial class how to rule." If this is true, and Watkins presents enough evidence to make it worth consideration, then how does continuing educational needs and discussions speak to the value, longevity, and purpose of that rule?