“A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School” -- PBS documentary showcases a separate, "equal" NJ school
You could listen to a lot of dry lectures by a lot of windy history professors and still not learn as much about race issues in the century after the Civil War as you do in “A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School.”
This hourlong film by Dave Davidson, Monday on PBS, seems on the surface to be a simple documentary: the history of an all-black school in Bordentown, N.J., that existed from 1886 to 1955. But by the time the story is told, you have come to see the school as a microcosm of all the good intentions, misguided theories and veiled prejudice that have made equality so elusive for so long....
Sounds like a laudable idea: establish a residential school where black educators could find employment and black youths could learn in a safe environment, free of the harassment by white students and teachers they might encounter at an integrated school. And Bordentown established itself as a model institution that emphasized discipline and personal responsibility.
But the seemingly feel-good story is not so clear cut after all. Bordentown was for much of its history a vocational school; the formal name was the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth. And it reflected a view that was racist in its own way: Sure, it’s great to educate blacks, as long as they’re educated to be chauffeurs and laundresses....
Read entire article at NYT
This hourlong film by Dave Davidson, Monday on PBS, seems on the surface to be a simple documentary: the history of an all-black school in Bordentown, N.J., that existed from 1886 to 1955. But by the time the story is told, you have come to see the school as a microcosm of all the good intentions, misguided theories and veiled prejudice that have made equality so elusive for so long....
Sounds like a laudable idea: establish a residential school where black educators could find employment and black youths could learn in a safe environment, free of the harassment by white students and teachers they might encounter at an integrated school. And Bordentown established itself as a model institution that emphasized discipline and personal responsibility.
But the seemingly feel-good story is not so clear cut after all. Bordentown was for much of its history a vocational school; the formal name was the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth. And it reflected a view that was racist in its own way: Sure, it’s great to educate blacks, as long as they’re educated to be chauffeurs and laundresses....