Read the excerpt below from educator Lucy Craft Laney’s address, "The Burden of the Educated Colored Woman," delivered at the Hampton Negro Conference in 1899:
"It is a flat relationship to argue whether the Negro should have a classical education or an industrial education. He needs both, and he must have both if he is to survive and progress. But more than this, we must look to the mother, the woman of the race, as the primary educator. The home is the foundation of the state; it is the school of character. Therefore, the colored woman must be trained to think, to work, and to lead, not only in the schoolroom but at the hearth."
Which of the following statements best analyzes how Laney’s perspective in the excerpt reframes the dominant educational debates of the late nineteenth century?
- It transcends the binary opposition between industrial and classical liberal arts education by arguing for an integrated approach that explicitly centers Black women's intellectual and community leadership.Answer
- BIt rejects Booker T. Washington's model of industrial training in favor of W.E.B. Du Bois's Talented Tenth philosophy, arguing that Black women must be educated exclusively in the classical liberal arts.
- CIt aligns Black women's educational goals with mainstream white feminist movements of the era by prioritizing individual professional advancement over community uplift and family preservation.
- DIt argues that Black women's educational institutions should be governed strictly by Black church leadership to ensure that moral instruction remains entirely distinct from secular curriculum.