“An Outstanding Teacher, Civic Leader, and Author”: The Education-Activism of Jane Dabney Shackelford is the first book-length study of the Early Black History Movement through the life and times of schoolteacher, education-activist, and author Jane Dabney Shackelford (1895-1979). Shackelford, a native of Terre Haute, Indiana, published one of the major first Black history textbooks for schoolchildren, lead Negro History Week campaigns in Indiana, was lauded nationally for her innovative anti-racist teaching, and recognized internationally for her writing. This dissertation excavates the worldviews, pedagogies, and activism of community-centered Black women educators and draws from the wealth of archival resources they left us—including Shackelford’s personal papers housed in Terre Haute, archives in Indianapolis, Bloomington, and New York, and digitized repositories such as the Hoosier State Chronicles collections, Journal of Negro History, Negro History Bulletin, and Harvard Library Colored Teachers Associations’ “Black Teacher Archive.”
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