Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900-1954 (2011) by Zoë Burkholder

That race is a socially constructed and historically contingent idea is, today, beyond dispute.Scholars have examined racial formation in the United States for several decades.Having now been a staple of the larger field of American history for some time, one might be excused from wondering if the study of racial formation had peaked some time ago.Fortunately, Zo Burkholder has made a rigorous, concise, and valuable contribution to this complex and thriving branch of scholarly work.With Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900Race, -1954, Burkholder has discovered a neglected area in the field of racial formation.Previous studies on modern America, which now count as required readings for graduate students, have tended to focus on labour unions and immigrant communities.Color in the Classroom reminds scholars in the field of modern U.S. history that the school system has been one of the most important and one of the largest social institutions in the country's history.Burkholder adds a great work to a growing cadre of scholars still exploring the intricacies of U.S. racial alchemy.She draws her evidence from a breadth of sources ranging from places as prominent as New York City, and inconspicuous as Terre Haute, Indiana.The primary sources listed in the bibliography and endnotes show extensive archival manuscript collections, periodicals, books, and pamphlets.This choice of sources allows her to bridge intellectual and institutional histories.Burkholder places a long list of professional teaching journals-covering science, literature, and social science-at the center of her research.Color in the Classroom tracks how American definitions of race and culture changed over the first half of the 20th century.Burkholder focuses on the roles played by prominent anthropologists and their effect on the nation's public school system.In the 1930s and 1940s, well-known anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead worked directly with K-12 educators to introduce their newly formulated scientific definition of race.Leading white educators then worked at the local and national levels to promote changing notions of what was known as tolerance education.Burkholder argues that it was through the pairing of socially engaged anthropologists and K-12 school teachers that "racial discourse underwent a paradigmatic shift during the span of World War II" (p. 6).Prior to the Second World War, American teachers applied race to demark various European nationalities.From 1900 to 1938, race was conflated with nationality, and most lesson plans centered on progressive-era Americanization efforts.Teachers focused

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