Albert E. (Albert Edward) McKinley

Born in Philadelphia in 1870, Albert Edward McKinley became an American historian, educator, and textbook writer whose career was closely tied to the growth of history and social studies teaching in the United States. Sources available here identify him as a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, a former dean of the Liberal Arts College at Temple University, and the first president of the organization that later became the National Council for the Social Studies.

McKinley wrote on both academic and classroom subjects. His books included The Suffrage Franchise in the Thirteen English Colonies in America, a study of colonial voting rights, as well as school-oriented works such as Illustrated Topics for American History, Island Possessions of the United States, and A School History of the Great War. That mix of scholarship and accessible teaching material suggests an author interested not only in historical research, but also in helping students understand how history connected to citizenship and public life.

He died in 1936, leaving behind a body of work that continued to circulate through libraries, archives, and public-domain editions. For listeners today, his books offer a window into how history was taught and explained in the early twentieth century, especially at a moment when American schools were expanding their focus on world events and civic education.