Dangerous Donations: Northern Philanthropy and Southern Black Education, 1902-1930.

Dangerous Donations: Northern Philanthropy and Southern Black Education, 1902-1930. By Eric Anderson and Alfred A. Moss Jr. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 1999. Pp. xviii, 245. $34.95, ISBN 0-8262-1226-3.)

Dangerous Donations is a major, revisionist look at the relationship between northern philanthropy and southern black education in the early twentieth century. The book's title camouflages its direction. Readers might expect an examination of philanthropic giving based on the widely accepted notion of northern industrialists' need for a submissive black workforce in the southern political economy. Black school officials who were on the receiving end of philanthropy therefore accepted "dangerous donations" that inevitably played into the hands of racist southern whites and their northern corporate elite collaborators. The end result, as the story goes, was the control of the direction and overall "underdevelopment" of African American education. Eric Anderson and Alfred A. Moss Jr. argue that, to the contrary, it was southern whites that looked at northern philanthropy in the early twentieth century as "dangerous" to the South.

Anderson and Moss take their book's title from a 1909 pamphlet, Dangerous Donations, or Degrading Doles, or A Vast Scheme for Capturing and Controlling the Colleges and Universities of the Country, written by Warren A. Candler, a southern white Methodist bishop and a consistent critic of northern philanthropy. The authors cite evidence of other white southerners, on occasion extremists, who accused the northern philanthropic organizations--especially the most important philanthropic organization influencing black educational giving in the South, the General Education Board (GEB), founded in 1902--of supporting schools that failed to "prepare African Americans for their subordinate place in a segregated society" and even of "training the negroes to the vain hope of social equality with whites" (p. 7). Anderson and Moss readily admit that there were northern philanthropic compromises with white southerners, expansion of southern educational programs designed to placate the South, and, initially, little black influence on GEB policy. The authors persuasively conclude, however, that "the foundation philanthropists had a vision of race relations (and black potential) that was significantly different from the ideas of the South's white majority" (p. 11). Anderson and Moss rely on their thorough and detailed reading of philanthropic papers and personal correspondence to support their conclusions.

The authors also present a secondary thesis that expands the research base on African American education and the missionary societies that supported education work. They introduce in two long chapters the little-known history of the American Church Institute for Negroes (ACIN), which in 1906 resurrected white Episcopalian interest in African American education. Although these chapters are rich and introduce important sources chronicling Episcopalian education efforts, at times the authors lose sight of their major revisionist theme. Anderson and Moss come back strong in a final chapter that details the "transformation of northern philanthropy" between 1900 and 1930. The heart of that transformation involved the influence of the missionary societies and included a central role for the foundations, such as the GEB, that replaced individual donors. Though not necessarily new to students of educational history, Anderson and Moss remind us of the northern as well as southern hostility to the influence of the education foundations.

Dangerous Donations highlights the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald to elucidate the GEB's impact on individual donors. But the controversial Thomas Jesse Jones is perhaps the most enlightening and provocative character in the book. He outlined his thoughts on black education in the famous--or infamous, depending on the point of view--"Jones Report on Negro Education of 1917" [Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States (2 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1917)]. W. E. B. Du Bois and others accused Jones of calling for restrictions on the development of black college education, promoting cooperation among black private schools to reduce educational opportunity, and advocating a unified policy on black education by the philanthropic foundations. Anderson and Moss give the Jones report a thorough reading and arrive at more favorable conclusions of Jones and his ideas on Progressive education. Although Jones does not emerge from this work smelling like a rose, this is certainly the most favorable view of the controversial sociologist that has appeared in years.

Dangerous Donations does raise questions. For example, to what extent do the authors minimize black voices, especially in the GEB, that shaped philanthropic policy? For years W. T. B. Williams, the black field agent of the organization, held the attention of the organization's director Wallace Buttrick, who often passed along the agent's views to other influential GEB members. John Hope, president of Morehouse College and Atlanta University, and also a close associate of influential members, often passed along an educational philosophy that at times found its way into GEB policy. To what extent did the upsurge in financial support for African American education in the twenties reflect changes in the post-World War I social milieu? Did philanthropists along with other liberals see an even greater need to train African American leaders for what many believed then would be a permanent separate America? If so, would not that education have to come from African American educational institutions, thereby justifying the increase in expenditures?

Many changes took place from 1900 to 1930 that influenced the development of African American education; in fact, by 1920 there were southern liberal organizations on the scene, such as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), with their own ideas about southern black education. The CIC insisted on complete segregation and the denial of the vote, of course, but the educational foundation leaders never challenged these precepts either. Perhaps what changed in the period covered by Dangerous Donations was not the perspectives of the GEB, as Anderson and Moss quite persuasively maintain, but that of the perspectives of the southern liberal elite by 1930. These questions pertain only to process and do not affect the conclusions reached by Anderson and Moss. Certainly no one can argue after reading this study that the educational foundations were designed to restrict black educational opportunities in order to create a menial workforce in the South. Dangerous Donations contributes much to our understanding of African American, southern, and educational history in the early twentieth century.

LEROY DAVIS 

Emory University