Original Tuskegee Teaching Materials

[Alabama]: [Tuskegee Institute]:

[Folder of Teaching Materials and Coursework from a Tuskegee Institute Basic Skills Workshop in the Summer of 1965].

[Tuskegee, Al. ca. 1965]. Contemporary two-pocket folder, containing three booklets or pamphlets, a newspaper, and numerous pages of handwritten or typed coursework. Minor wear to folder. Contents sound. Very good. Item #4678

A unique and informative collection of materials from the teachers and some of their students involved in a Basic Skills Workshop in the summer of 1965 to assist Black seniors at Tuskegee's high school planning on attending Tuskegee Institute as collegians. The material is housed in a Tuskegee Institute two-pocket folder with the seal of the school on the front cover and a photographic campus scene on the rear cover. According to some of the forms, the class took place from June 14 to July 16, and was taught by Dr. Charles Shapiro, a Professor of English at Briarcliff College in New York and Mrs. Grace Hooks of Tuskegee. The workshop was co-sponsored by the Cultural Enrichment Committee of the East Alabama Chapter of the Council on Human Relations and the Commission on Race and Equality of the American Ethical Union. The date of 1965 is supplied through some of the coursework, which is dated in that year, and many of the students are identified by name through the coursework and forms here.

Chief among the material are thirty pages of handwritten student essays and creative writing (much on the black experience as a youngster in the south), four partially-printed application forms completed by students (all 16 years of age) with some basic demographic information and the answers to two questions about their motivation for going to Tuskegee Institute, and five carbon copies of “Basic Skills Workshop - Diagnostic Test 1,” where students had to correct errors on a short essay, with numerous ink edits and emendations. In addition to the coursework and related documents, the folder also houses the May 1965 issue of Tribune: A Magazine of Report, Opinion, and Interpretation, published in Los Angeles by Almena Lomax, a Black civil rights activist (six records in OCLC, with only one explicitly reporting this issue); The Activist, vol. I, no. 1 (June 1965) published by the Tuskegee Institute’s Advancement League and including work by Samuel Younge (no copies in OCLC); The Southern Courier newspaper, vol. I, no. 1, Friday, July 16, 1965 (a Black newspaper published by the Southern Educational Conference in Montgomery, Alabama but with business offices in Atlanta until 1968, with OCLC recording no actual copies); and Carter, Doner and Green's The Writing Laboratory, 25 Lessons in Basic Grammar -- a quarto softcover textbook. These latter materials were very likely used in class as part of the workshop.

A wonderful assortment of teaching materials and original classwork produced by eager Tuskegee students during the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, with much to explore for further research.

Price: $1,500