Brown v. Bantu Education : a transnational evaluation of educational reform through the press in the 1950s

Abstract

As the United States of America stood on the precipice of monumental civil rights advances in the mid-twentieth century, the National Party's racist apartheid ideology was creating a society that was diametrically opposed to values of integration and equality in South Africa. Despite the differences between these two nations' respective attitudes towards race, they continued to exist as Western allies with mutual political interests in the 1950s. This paradoxical diplomatic relationship will be analysed through the lens of education and the press, by specifically comparing two watershed historic moments: Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in the United States and the Bantu Education Act (1953) in South Africa.

In examining black and white newspapers from these two nations, this thesis adds depth to the transnational contextual understanding of segregated educational policy by reflecting on historical similitudes, while also contrasting their disparate paths. Highlights include an evaluation of the shared struggle over who controls education; an articulation of the magnitude of the loss of black perspectives in South Africa because of apartheid censorship; and illustrating how the persistent Cold War narrative of American ‘exceptionalism’ was a misnomer from a South African perspective at that time. This comparison between the constitutional and educational parallels ultimately enhances the awareness of the social memory and collective identity in both the United States and South Africa, which contributes to a more accurate and holistic understanding in the long trajectory of comparative history between these two nations.