Episode 143: Black History, the Hogg Foundation, and the Red Scare in Texas

The Hogg Foundation, past and present, wants to know more about the people and communities it aims to impact through its work. But during the 1950's this desire for greater knowledge ran headlong into the social and political climate of the time. \ ]'? Beginning in 1954, the Hogg Foundation conducted the Texas Cooperative Youth Study, a large-scale survey of nearly 13,000 high schoolers. It surveyed their attitudes on a range of issues, including segregation and other hot-button social issues of the time. The study took place the same year as the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that mandated the desegregation of public schools. Unexpectedly, the study met with a cold reception. White parents were alarmed by the study’s questions, and this response triggered a backlash that even drew in elements of the anti-communist panic emblematic of the time. To help us make sense of this moment in Hogg Foundation history, Aviv Rau is a graduate research assistant for the Hogg Foundation and a graduate student in the Information Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin. And Dr. Don Carleton is executive director of the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of, “Red Scare.” Related links: Central Texas African American Healthy Minds winners: https://hogg.utexas.edu/healthy-minds-grants-2023 Hogg History: The First National Congress of Black Professionals in Higher Education https://hogg.utexas.edu/hogg-history-the-first-national-congress-of-black-professionals-in-higher-education Hogg and the Story of Texas https://hogg.utexas.edu/hogg-mental-health-texas Why History? https://hogg.utexas.edu/podcast-why-history From the Archives: Dr. Kenneth Clark on Racism and Child Well-Being https://hogg.utexas.edu/podcast-dr-kenneth-clark-on-racism-and-child-well-being From the Archives: Roy Wilkins on The Mental Bondage of Race https://hogg.utexas.edu/podcast-roy-wilkins