Histories of creativity have often included discussions of its origins and examined pivotal moments in their societal contexts (Nelson 2010; Simonton 2001; Still & d'Inverno 2016; Wasserman 2012). Some have considered creativity's compromised status among academics and in schools that resulted from divergent notions of what it means to create and interdisciplinary rifts dividing psychology and education (Fannes 2019; Lagemann 2000). In this essay, the authors examine nearly one hundred published research studies on creativity from the Progressive through the postwar era. Their narrative begins in the 1890s with the emergence of modern psychological research on creativity and the movement to establish the K-12 school system in the United States. It ends in the early 1970s, a time when the federal government called on educators to reward "creative or productive thinking" as part of its expanded definition of giftedness (United States Office of Education 1972, 21).