“Anchored by richly detailed case studies of Mississippi and North Carolina, Malczewski’s Building a New Educational State uncovers the struggles of foundation officials, state and local policy makers, and black educators to deliver educational opportunities to rural blacks in the Jim Crow South. This engagingly written and powerful history makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the role of race, region, and education in American political development.”
— Christopher P. Loss, Vanderbilt University
“What impact did foundations have on school reform and black communities in the South? In her impressively researched, compelling argued, and engagingly written book, Malczewski offers important new insights to this question by exploring the ways that foundations acted as state-builders and policy entrepreneurs in the region. In cultivating reform through diverse public officials and non-state actors, including black communities, foundations helped to expand the infrastructure and institutions of public education and empower new political spaces and actors in deliberate and unintended ways. Building a New Educational State offers important contributions to history of education, southern history, African American history, and American political development.”
— Tracy L. Steffes, Brown University
“By focusing on the educational contributions made by African Americans and the voluntary sector, Malczewski links the history of education, African American history, and—more broadly—American political development. Her work will be read by scholars across these disciplines and appreciated for its synthetic quality, along with its impressive research and analysis.”
— Brian Balogh, University of Virginia, cohost of Backstory with the American History Guys
“Malczewski is to be congratulated for showing us how to bring current interest in connections between the state and schooling to bear on southern school history, and the lessons that southern school history holds for contemporary foundations and policymakers.”
— History of Education Quarterly