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 B.S. (1936) and an M.A. (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 CPS, 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 1943-44, 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 CPS, 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 CPS 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 Du Sable 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 CPS, 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.

Sources
"Chicago Goes Forward with Madeline Morgan," Negro History Bulletin (February 1943): 112, 118
Anne Meis Knupfer, The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women’s Activism (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2006)

Scope and Content Note

The Madeline Stratton Morris papers consist of biographical records, manuscripts, correspondence, organizational material, subject files, photographs, and a small collection of serials and memorabilia, as well as one box of Samuel B. Stratton’s papers. A separate series collects material relating to the creation and reception of her African American history curriculum, the “Supplementary Units” from 1940 to 1949. The collection is divided into nine series: Biography, Negro History Curriculum, Manuscripts (including manuscripts by Morris and other authors), Correspondence, Organizations, Subject Research Files, Samuel B. Stratton, Serials, Photographs, and Memorabilia.

Related papers at the Vivian Harsh Research Collection include the Adlean Harris Papers, the George Cleveland Hall Branch Archives, the Clementine Skinner Papers, the Eugene Winslow Papers, the Glennette Tilley Turner Papers, and the Charlemae Hill Rollins Papers.

Series I: Biography
These materials include copies of Morris’s birth certificate; funeral programs for her husbands Samuel Stratton and Walter Morris; biographical and legal documents relating to her immediate relatives; and transcripts and degrees from her secondary, undergraduate, and graduate education.

Series II: Negro History Curriculum
This series comprises manuscript drafts, correspondence, clippings, and reminiscences relating to the making of Morris’s "Supplementary Units," a curriculum of black history. The curriculum was implemented in the Chicago Public Schools social studies programs from 1942 to 1945, and the materials span its creation and immediate reception from 1940 to 1949. Included are several articles which Morris wrote to publicize the "Supplementary Units,” as well as notes of congratulation and inquiries from across the country, including a letter from Morton Brooks, a serviceman stationed in Italy in 1943. Other material relating to the “Supplementary Units,” particularly to its implementation in the CPS, may also be found in the Manuscripts (Public Addresses), Correspondence and Organizations series.

Series III: Manuscripts
This series contains Morris’s work as it extended from the 1930s to the 1980s, including student essays written for George Rawick and Avery Craven at the University of Chicago (1960-61), research notes used in the making of her textbook, and public addresses delivered on occasions of school commencements and Negro History Weeks, and on topics ranging from African American history to Civil Rights to religion.

Series IV: Correspondence
This series comprises correspondence from throughout Morris’s career, relating chiefly to her work as a teacher and activist, but also includes family letters. This series also includes a substantial correspondence from Grace Markwell, a white teacher from S. E. Gross School in Brookfield, Illinois, who collaborated with Morris on an “intercultural” social studies curriculum for the Illinois Council for Social Studies from 1943 to 1946. Markwell’s letters include reports of Morris’s visit to Gross School and Markwell’s attempt to implement the “Supplementary Units” in her classroom.

Series V: Organizations
This series is organized into two parts: materials relating to her teaching career with Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Board of Education are grouped together at the head of the series; materials relating to her work with other Chicago and national organizations follow alphabetically. The first part traces her work as a teacher from the 1930s to the 1960s, and includes student work, course planning, and administrative memos. The latter part reveals Morris’s extensive involvement with African American organizations in Chicago and nationwide. Morris was particularly active in the Association for the Study of Negro (later African-American) Life and History and, locally, with the Chicago Teachers Union and the Church of the Good Shepherd (Congregational).

Series VI: Subject Research Files
This series contains Morris’s collection of newspaper clippings, magazine off-prints, and pamphlets relating her abiding interests in African American history and the growth of black studies programs during her career. She also collected clippings relating to contemporary developments in the Civil Rights movement.

Series VII: Samuel B. Stratton
This series includes biographical material relating to Samuel B. Stratton, as well as several files of his correspondence, manuscripts, notes, and public addresses. Material relating to him may also be found in the main collection since Madeline and Samuel belonged to many of the same organizations, such as the ASNLH and the Church of the Good Shepherd, and correspondents often addressed them jointly.

Series VIII: Serials
Morris’s collection of Serials reflects her professional attention to current developments in African American life and history, as well as her lifelong interests in social activism, religion, and current events.

Series IX: Photographs
Photographs include portraits of Morris, her husbands Thomas Morgan and Samuel B. Stratton, and family pictures, as well as pictures of events sponsored by The Links, Inc. and the Church of the Good Shepherd, and of the Phi Delta Kappa dinner held for Superintendent of Chicago Board of Education William Johnson, on the occasion of the introduction of the “Supplementary Units” in 1942.

Series X: Memorabilia
This series contains Morris’s address books and appointment calendars, mementos from her participation in the White House Conference “To Fulfill These Rights” (a plastic briefcase) and the Democratic National Convention of 1980, and a zip-loc bag of unsorted greeting cards.

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