Mission and History

The Journal of Negro Education (JNE), a scholarly refereed journal, was founded at Howard University in 1932. It is one of the oldest continuously published periodicals by and about Black people. At the time of its inception, however, there was no publication that systematically or comprehensively addressed the enormous problems that characterized the education of Blacks in the United States and elsewhere. The mainstream educational journals only occasionally published articles or studies pertaining to Black education, but no publication focused specifically on this area. There was thus an urgent and critical need for a scholarly journal that would identify and define the problems, provide a forum for analysis and solutions, and serve as a vehicle for sharing statistics and research on a national basis. Consequently, the Journal was launched with a threefold mission: first, to stimulate the collection and facilitate the dissemination of facts about the education of Black people; second, to present discussions involving critical appraisals of the proposals and practices relating to the education of Black people; and third, to stimulate and sponsor investigations of issues incident to the education of Black people. 

Under the leadership of Dr. Charles H. Thompson for the first 31 years of its existence, the Journal played a pivotal activist role in documenting the condition of Black schools and colleges and exploring the implications of segregated education. Working in concert with Howard University's President Mordecai W. Johnson and former Howard Law School Dean-turned-NAACP Chief Counsel Charles Hamilton Houston, Thompson saw to it that the Journal became a vehicle for documenting and promoting the desegregation efforts spearheaded by the NAACP and other civil rights organizations. Some of the groundbreaking research studies used to argue Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and other desegregation cases were published in the JNE . For example, Howard Hale Long's 1935 yearbook article “Some Psychogenic Hazards of Segregated Education of Negroes” and Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark's 1950 article, “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children,” which reported their classic empirical study on preference of African American children for White dolls versus Black dolls—research that contributed to the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision that struck down racial segregation in public schools. Charles H. Thompson himself argued forcefully against Jim Crow educational policies and highlighted the accomplishments and dilemmas of Blacks in education in his more than 100 articles and editorials published in the Journal. 

In subsequent years, headed later by Editors-in-Chief Walter G. Daniel, Earle West (Acting Editor), Charles A. Martin, Faustine C. Jones-Wilson, Sylvia T. Johnson, Rc Saravanabhavan, Frederick D. Harper, and Ivory A. Toldson, the JNE continues to serve as an invaluable chronicle of almost every development in Black education of any consequence. Experts and researchers in education, sociology, history, and other fields have contributed significant articles to the Journal's pages. Some of these contributors include noted authorities such as James Banks, Horace Mann Bond, Ralph J. Bunche, Kenneth B. Clark, James P. Comer, W.E.B. Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, Geneva Gay, Edmund W. Gordon, Robert Havighurst, Dorothy Height, Dwight O.W. Holmes, Charles S. Johnson, Alain L. Locke, Thurgood Marshall, Benjamin E. Mays, James M. Nabrit, Jr., Dorothy B. Porter, Barbara Shade, Clemmont E. Vontress, Doxie Wilkerson, and others. 

Although edited and published under the sponsorship of the School of Education at Howard and (until 1992) its Bureau of Educational Research, the Journal is not now and has never been merely a local organ of Howard University . Its Editorial/Advisory Board, peer reviewers, contributors, and content have consistently reflected the international scope of interest in educational issues affecting people of African descent and other people of color throughout the world. See the numerous topics of interest at the JNE link that lists the Journal's “Special Issues” that have been published over the years. 

The current subscription count of The Journal of Negro Education is around 1,350 and includes individual, institutional, and library subscriptions. Widely disseminated, the JNE currently has a readership of subscribers in all 50 U.S. states as well as in Australia , Bermuda , Canada , England , France , Germany , India , Jamaica , Japan , New Zealand , Poland , Scotland , South Africa , Trinidad and Tobago , and the U.S. Virgin Islands.