Growth in per pupil education spending in the United States was mostly flat until 1918, after which it increased by almost 100 percent in a brief six-year period. This is the fastest documented increase in per pupil education spending in U.S. history. Using newly digitized biennial data on 386 of the largest urban school systems in the United…

Newbery Award and Honor books are a representation of children's literature, but family structures portrayed in them have not previously been studied. This prescriptive content analysis considered 87 contemporary realistic fiction Newbery winners and runners-up since the 1930s that portray families in English-speaking, Western settings. The family…

This paper details the socio-legal factors that shape the relationship between the child, the family, and the state, and the ways unaccompanied migrant children's lives have come to be defined and contested. The legal identity of migrant children is socially situated within a history that intertwines social movements of helping professionals,…

This article discusses contributions of women to the emergence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Using network analysis, the author studied affiliations between African American and White women who signed "The Call," a petition calling for a national conference to obtain civil rights for African…

America's civic community from the end of the Great Depression through the post World War II years was hardly rational or racially neutral in its uneven and unequal treatment of African Americans and other underrepresented groups. Conventional civic scholarship of the era has ignored the complexities of a racially segregated society that in theory…

Analyzes the findings of a study conducted to: (1) identify the type of history courses offered by community colleges; (2) compare the relative strength of history enrollments in relation to total humanities and total college enrollments; and (3) identify, on the basis of enrollments, the most popular history courses. (JP)

Comments on Michael Mark's proposal for the extension of music education eras beyond Edward Bailey Birge's period designations. Suggests that additional benefits may be produced by broadening the focus of historical research beyond public school music in order to include a societal context for music teaching. (LS)

A longitudinal study sought to determine whether American newspapers shifted from foreign to domestic news content at the end of the War of 1812, as journalism historians traditionally believe, or if the shift in fact occurred before then as a result of a heightened American self-consciousness. A sample was drawn from newspapers from 1808 through…

Explains Joe McCarthy's rhetoric and its apparent resistance to exorcism by historical fact through the literary genre of fantasy. Argues that McCarthy could not be discredited or argued against because he took no positions but presented his audience with a sustained moment of hesitation in which every claim on credulity was offset by a denial of…

The 13 papers presented in this collection all deal with journalism and journalists from colonial America through the 19th century. The papers and their authors are: "'The Presence of God Was Much Seen in Their Assemblies': Religious News in Colonial America" (David A. Copeland); "And So They Came: The Persuasive Effect of American…

Presents a study which focuses on the use of network radio in the presidential campaigns of 1932 and 1936. Discusses the use of performance skills and sales techniques in broadcasts made by the Democrats and Republicans over the two major networks: the Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting System. Examines how radio…

Explores the long-term shift in the 1920s and 1930s from Victorian to modern front-page design in five United States newspapers, demonstrating that the shift was tied historically to questions of cultural authority. Argues that these changes produced a less dense, more uniform page that paid attention to visual hierarchy and remade the newspaper…

Library historians and historians of literacy have been more creative than journalism historians in using individual-level historical data such as deeds, wills, depositions, surveys, and census figures to study reading behaviors of the past. For example, the series of family cost of living surveys conducted in the United States by state and…

The history of the church colleges of Illinois and Indiana is presented to illustrate the part Christian higher education played in cultural and social development of the Upper Mississippi Valley. The founding of Christian colleges in Indiana and Illinois is divided into three stages: the pioneer period (1820-1854), the sectarian era (1855-1890),…

Examines the need for a comprehensive study of Black societies in the Americas. Attributes paucity of research to geographic, economic, and language issues as well as ethnocentrism among Black scholars in the United States, and the lack of cooperation with Carribean and Latin American scholars. (JCD)