Madeline Stratton Morris Papers

Biographical Note

Educator, historian, and activist Madeline Stratton Morris was born in Chicago on August 14, 1906, the eldest of six children of John Henry Robinson and Estella Mae Dixon. Her mother was born in Chicago. Her father was born in Ronceverte, West Virginia and lived in Philadelphia before settling in Chicago, where he served in the Eighth Illinois Infantry and worked at the Butler Bros. merchandise firm. Madeline Robinson married three times, divorcing Thomas Morgan (1926-1943) and surviving Samuel B. Stratton (1946-1972) and Walter Morris (1981-1983). She dedicated her professional life to raising awareness of African American history and to institutionalizing its teaching at all levels of public education. Her most notable success was the creation of the first black history curriculum for the Chicago Public Schools in 1942, a work which garnered national attention and launched her career as a leading figure in the black history movement.

She was educated in Chicago Public Schools (Farren Elementary and Englewood High School) and earned her teaching certificate from Chicago Normal College in 1929. In 1933, she began teaching Emerson School's social studies classes, sixth through eighth grades, and would continue to teach social studies in CPS schools until her retirement in 1968. She continued her own undergraduate and graduate education, earning a BS (1936) and an MA (1941) in education from Northwestern University, and taking graduate courses at the University of Chicago off and on from 1942 to 1961. These credentials, as well as her teaching position in the Chicago Public Schools, gave Morris a unique opportunity to research and institutionalize the teaching of African American history at a time when few African Americans held professorships at large research universities.

In 1941, with the support of the Chicago Board of Education and the Phi Delta Kappa sorority, Morris began work on what would become the cornerstone of her career: the Supplementary Units for a Course in Social Studies. Working with research assistant and fellow teacher Bessie King, Morris's curriculum was the first adapted by a major school system in the United States to emphasize black contributions to American history. Among the motivations for creating the "Supplementary Units," Morris counted her experience teaching American history to interracial classes, and the absence of African American subject matter in the standard curricula. Also vital were the opportunities made available by the institutional and cultural life of the Black Chicago Renaissance. Morris conducted her research in Vivian Harsh's burgeoning African American history collection at George Cleveland Hall Branch Library, and she drew inspiration from her visits to the American Negro Exposition of 1940. She sought encouragement and received congratulatory messages from the doyen of black history, Carter G. Woodson, and from Chicago's sole black high school principal, Maudelle B. Bousfield.

The "Supplementary Units" were taught in Chicago Public Schools social studies classes from 1942 to 1945. It immediately raised Morris's profile locally and nationally. Morris received profiles in the Chicago Defender, the Negro History Bulletin, and Time magazine. Civic organizations and school boards in the Midwest and New York City solicited her advice and requested speaking appearances on implementing African American history curricula in their schools. In 1943-1944, she worked with other Chicago-area teachers and the Illinois Council for Social Studies to develop a curriculum aimed at improving race relations and promoting "intercultural" democracy. The highest honor came in 1945, when Illinois State Representative Corneal Davis used the "Supplementary Units" as an occasion to introduce House Bill 251 which the General Assembly passed, directing by law that the "History of the Negro race may be taught in all public schools and in all other educational institutions in this state." A last minute change in wording from "shall" to "may" reduced the law's impact.

After the war, Morris continued to teach in the Chicago Public Schools, moving from Emerson to Drake, A. O. Sexton, and Dixon Elementary Schools, and summer school at Wendell Phillips High School. She also kept active professionally, serving as President of the Chicago Chapter of the National Council of Negro Women (1946-1948) and as board member of the Kenwood-Hyde Park Conference (1955-1958). Her work as an educator and community leader was recognized by local and national organizations such as the Southside Community Committee, the City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and the American Negro Centennial Authority. In 1966, she was invited by the White House to attend a Civil Rights conference, "To Fulfill These Rights." In this period, she remained dedicated to advancing the instruction of African American history in classrooms and textbooks. Taking courses with historians George Rawick and Avery Craven at the University of Chicago in 1960-1961, she developed ideas and conducted research for her textbook, Negroes Who Helped Build America, published in 1965.

Though Morris retired from teaching in the public schools in 1968, she continued to teach courses in African American History and pedagogy for the next ten years in Triton College (River Grove, Illinois; 1968-1970), Mayfair College (now Truman College, 1969-1972), Chicago State University (1972-1975), and Governors State University (1975-1981). During her retirement she also amplified her role in public life. She was a member of the Chicago chapter of The Links, Inc., from the 1950s until her death. She had been a member of the Association for the Study of Negro (later Afro-American) Life and Literature (ASNLH/ASALH) since the 1930s, and served as president of the organization from 1970 to 1977. She also served as an Executive Board Member of the NAACP, and as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1980. The range of her activities in her retirement can be gleaned from her public speaking engagements, which in 1975 brought her to the ASALH Conference in Atlanta, to a bicentennial celebration in Alliance, Ohio, and to Moscow as a part of an ASALH-sponsored tour of the USSR.

Morris died on December 26, 2007 in the Hyde Park home she had purchased 54 years earlier with her husband from her second and longest marriage. This marriage was also one of her most important professional relationships. Samuel B. Stratton was himself a prominent leader of the national black history movement and teacher in the CPS Dunbar Vocational and Wendell Phillips High Schools. He chaired the DuSable History Club throughout the 1940s and, like Madeline, was an active member in the ASNLH. They married in 1946 and the couple was associated professionally as well as socially. They were particularly active members of the Church of the Good Shepherd, speaking at events and participating in the "Mr. and Mrs. Club." After a career in the Chicago Public Schools, Stratton taught in the City Colleges of Chicago and in adult education classes in the University of Chicago. He died in 1972. The Madeline Stratton Morris Papers include one box of biographical material relating to Samuel B. Stratton's career and several of his surviving manuscripts, notes, and drafts of lectures and speeches.