A Worthy Piece of Work

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The story of Madeline Morgan, the activist educator who brought Black history to one of the nation’s largest and most segregated school systems.A Worthy Piece of Work tells the story of Madeline Morgan, a teacher and activist in WWII-era Chicago, who fought her own battle on the home front, authoring curricula that bolstered Black claims for recognition and equal citizenship. During the Second World War, as Black Americans reasserted demands for democracy at home, even as they fought to save it abroad, Morgan’s work gained national attention, widespread praise, and became a model for individual teachers, schools, and school districts across the country. Scholar Michael Hines outlines how Morgan’s curriculum gained momentum through the convergence of interests between Black educators and white policymakers which ultimately lead to her pioneering work in one of the nation's largest school systems to be used in the city of Chicago, and one of the first such curricula in use nationally. He unveils this history for the first time, providing a rich understanding of the ways in which Black educators have created counter-narratives to challenge the antiblack racism found in school textbooks and curricula. With Black history under attack in school districts and state legislatures across the country, A Worthy Piece of Work reminds us that struggles over history, representation, and race are far from a new phenomenon.