Michael Hines

Michael Hines
Assistant Professor, Education

Michael Hines is a historian of American education whose work concentrates on the educational activism of Black teachers, students, and communities during the Progressive Era (1890s-1940s). He is an Assistant Professor of Education, and an affiliated faculty member with the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Bill Lane Center for the American West. He is the author of A Worthy Piece of Work (Beacon Press, 2022) which details how African Americans educator activists in the early twentieth century created new curricular discourses around race and historical representation. Dr. Hines has published six peer reviewed articles and book chapters in outlets including the Journal of African American History, History of Education Quarterly, Review of Educational Research, and the Journal of the History Childhood and Youth. He has also written for popular outlets including the Washington Post, Time magazine, and Chalkbeat. He teaches courses including History of Education in the U.S., and Education for Liberation: A History of African American Education, 1800-The Present.

Book: A Worthy Piece of Work: The Untold Story of Madeline Morgan and the Fight for Black History in Schools

A Worthy Piece of Work tells the story of Madeline Morgan (later Madeline Stratton Morris), a teacher and an activist in WWII–era Chicago, who fought her own battle on the home front, authoring curricula that bolstered Black claims for recognition and equal citizenship.

During the Second World War, as Black Americans both fought to save democracy abroad and demanded full citizenship at home, Morgan’s work gained national attention and widespread praise, and became a model for teachers, schools, districts, and cities across the country. Scholar Michael Hines unveils this history for the first time, providing a rich understanding of the ways in which Black educators have created counternarratives to challenge the anti-Black racism found in school textbooks and curricula.

At a moment when Black history is under attack in school districts and state legislatures across the country, A Worthy Piece of Work reminds us that struggles over history, representation, and race are far from a new phenomenon.