Established in 1911 as a simple owner-operated commercial school in Providence, Rhode Island, the Katharine Gibbs School expanded over the decades to acquire an international reputation for excellence in secretarial training. This essay examines the origin, development, and ultimate demise of the chain, placing it within the context of the…

The nineteenth-century debate about the role of the US Bureau of Education was marked by negotiations between the civic republican language of antebellum common school advocacy and a social scientific language of educational professionalism. To advance this argument, this essay traces how members of Congress defined, criticized, and delimited the…

In this article, the author focuses on the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and educational reform. The Klan's meteoric rise to national prominence in the 1920s has attracted a great deal of attention from historians, yet the group and its popularity during this time frame remain poorly understood. This is due in part to the fact that Klan symbols such…

The author introduces William Barton Rogers, conceptual founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who pursued two interrelated careers in nineteenth-century America: one centered on his activities in science and the other on his higher educational reform efforts. This essay explores one theme in Rogers' scientific and educational…

The Brown decisions have become part of the collective American memory. Students know that the 1954 decision ended legalized segregation in elementary and secondary schools and rightly understand it as a benchmark in educational history. However, when pressed for information on the decisions, few have ever read the original court documents and…