Dr. Louis Ray, associate professor of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is both a warmly regarded teacher and a dynamic conference lecturer.  We are very pleased, at FDU Press, to have published his study of educator Charles H. Thompson, whose role in the history of desegregation in the United States he has firmly established.   FDU Press staffer Elizabeth Jaeger explores Dr. Ray’s past and current research in an illuminating interview.

Louis Ray, Charles H. Thompson, and African-American Education
by Elizabeth Jaeger

Dr. Louis Ray has spent the last decade researching and writing about the influential life of Charles Henry Thompson. Thompson began his long career at Howard University when Washington, D.C. wasn’t much more than a “sleepy southern town.” While Thompson taught at Howard, Washington, D.C. grew into a “geopolitical center of the Western world.” In this changing environment, Thompson built a reputation for himself as a teacher, researcher, and activist.  Thompson was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in education and psychology.  His outstanding qualifications and talent greatly assisted Howard University in meeting the rising accreditation standards.  Within only three years, Thompson earned a promotion to full professor and by the end of his fifth year, his teaching and activism were known throughout the nation.

Racial segregation was the law of the land during Thompson’s career.  Despite the extreme inequality that surrounded him, his peers and students regarded him “as one of the most innovative thinkers and productive administrators in African-American higher education.” Angered by the racial policies of the time, Thompson was not reserved in his opinions. He spoke vehemently against the injustice he both witnessed and experienced daily. For five years, 1938 to 1943, Thompson served as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Howard University’s largest academic division. He then served as dean of Howard’s Graduate School for nineteen years, 1944 to 1963.

Today, Thompson’s notoriety is grounded in the fact that he founded and edited the Journal of Negro Education. During the years 1932 to 1963, this journal was extremely important since it became the “primary scholarly forum in the United States for critiquing developments in African-American education.”  Starting with an assessment of public school funding in the year 1926, Thompson “systematically documented the rapid, sustained growth of educational discrimination in the South despite significant increases in public school funding.”  Following his findings, he published irrefutable evidence that education within the racially segregated public schools was inherently discriminatory and therefore, undeniably unconstitutional. It was this evidence that the lawyers representing the NAACP Legal Defense Fund used to legally challenge the laws segregating schools.

Along with damning evidence, Thompson published numerous editorials that “provided a nuanced, insider’s account of the movement to overturn racial segregation as public policy.”  These editorials also accurately documented the pivotal role that African-American teachers played in the NAACP’s litigation campaign that brought about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. According to Dr. Ray, Thompson was “a brilliant essayist who sought to close the gap between America’s democratic precepts and its undemocratic practices by molding public opinion among activists, scholars, policymakers and the public favorable to a significant expansion of civil rights.”

Dr. Ray’s deep interest in Thompson began during a graduate seminar taught by Professor David M. Reimers. His impressions of the quality of Thompson’s contributions were confirmed by Thompson’s contemporaries Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee in their anthology, The Negro Caravan. According to them, “[Thompson’s] influence upon Negro scholarship has been marked. He is the author of many articles published in [the Journal of Negro Education] and in The American Teacher, School and Society, Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, Occupations, and The Crisis.” Dr. Ray was immediately intrigued by the excellence of Thompson’s scholarly work and the fact that he had compiled a detailed record regarding African-American education. Reading his work completely transformed Dr. Ray’s understanding of American education in the 20th century.

After the completion of one book, Charles H. Thompson: Policy Entrepreneur, 1932-1954, Dr. Ray’s interest did not wane. He is currently writing a second volume, Charles H. Thompson: The Price of Freedom, 1955-1963. These were the years during which segregationists vehemently swore that they would dismantle education before they would ever consider desegregating it. “Their defiance thundered from state houses and legislatures, the editorial pages of daily newspapers, pulpits and universities. Officials at state departments of education sometimes condoned riots in order to block tentative steps toward desegregation. The drum beat of reaction signaled a return to the Old South creating a climate of violence, fear, and intimidation.”

Dr. Ray first became interested in the history of education when he told a friend that he planned to pursue a doctorate at New York University.  His friend enthusiastically encouraged him to take a course with the late Henry J. Perkinson. Perkinson was a well-known historian who had received NYU’s Distinguished Teaching Medal. Dr. Ray found Professor Perkinson “to be the epitome of scholarship: charming, erudite, witty, kind, patient; he was a brilliant lecturer and a consummate mentor.” Through his work with Perkinson, Dr. Ray realized that the history of education would provide him with a lens to explore his research interests in educational innovation and social movements. It was after Perkinson invited Dr. Ray to join the history of education Ph.D. program that he moved in that direction. In accepting, Dr. Ray became the last NYU student to complete the degree under Perkinson’s tutelage.

This fall will mark Dr. Ray’s tenth year at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He has been pleased with his time at the university, stating that, “The students, faculty, and the university’s attractive facilities are what make teaching at FDU enjoyable for me. Scholarship does not develop in a vacuum: my thinking and writing have been informed by questions my students have asked and by class discussions. I am also deeply appreciative of the encouragement and support that I have received from colleagues within and beyond the University.” As a professor, he encourages his students to take control of their own education by “learning how to learn.” He wants his students to, “develop confidence in using action research as a tool for resolving the problems that naturally arise in teaching. I seek to model teaching and research as exciting fields of human endeavor and education as a creative arena for work and continuous learning.”

The one aspect of teaching that saddens Dr. Ray is the fact that such an overwhelming number of students do not enjoy history. When he completes the book The Price of Freedom, he hopes to explore some of the ideas he has for addressing the pervasive apathy that exists in regards to the study and appreciation of history.

 

Elizabeth Jaeger is currently finishing up an MFA degree in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is an assistant editor at The Literary Review and her work has been published in The Drowning Gull, Icarus Down Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Atticus Review, and The Literary Explorer. An essay of hers has been featured on the podcast No You Tell It. She has recently finished writing a memoir about her time in Nepal traveling with a young Nepalese boy and she hopes to find a home for it soon.