In writing this review, it is good for me to get a few myths off of the table right away. The “Freedmen’s Bureau schools” were often the first formal education any black slaves and many freedpeople ever received. They were seminal in the creation of an education system for blacks. Not only were Southern whites disdainful of educating blacks before the Civil War, in many locales it was illegal to even teach slaves how to read and write. While these Freedmen’s Bureau-supported schools were the catalyst for black education in the former Confederacy, by 1868 the Bureau was pulling out of most parts of the South, its limited mission placed into local hands. The history of education during Reconstruction is about more than the Freedmen’s Bureau and the schools it funded. It is about the developing educational politics in communities that just a few years earlier had little commitment to educating even poor white children and which were now tasked with providing a basic education to everyone.
The Antebellum South was a region that excluded those of African decent from visibility and participation. Even free blacks were subject to constant challenges to their non-slave status and restrictions on employment and movement from place to place. Professor Green writes that:
the education of African Americans, free or enslaved, was prohibited and/or limited to a select minority, especially after Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Turner’s major slave revolt in 1831 created a hostile environment for African American education in the urban South by influencing the implementation of harsh slave codes that made educating enslaved African Americans illegal in Virginia and Alabama. Fear of another slave rebellion by an educated individual such as Nat Turner motivated these anti-literacy laws.
After the war and Emancipation, Southern white conservatives would try to restrict the franchise to the literate, fully aware that black illiteracy grew out of white laws.
Some free blacks were able to provide a limited education to their children. Green writes that; “A few private schools existed illegally in the residences of literate free African Americans. The Catholic Church in Mobile and Richmond also willingly promoted and provided education as a means of conversion in ‘places where they had opportunity.’” After the war, blacks in Richmond and Mobile fought for what Green says was the “larger goal of legitimizing African American education and providing access for anyone seeking an education. As a result of their insistence to become an educated people, they achieved two significant victories in the Freedmen Schools and African American public schools…”
The gains in education that were made in the two cities were achieved through the struggle of men and women who had not even been accorded the ordinary status of human beings just a short while before. The black communities formed alliances, lobbied and taxed themselves to send their now-free children to school.
Richmond’s black community saw the rapid development of schools right after the war ended. Northern philanthropic organizations wanted to see schools for black children grow in the former capital of the Confederacy. When they arrived, they found that black Richmonders were already setting up their own schools. Professor Green describes the heady first year of freedom:
“During the 1865–1866 academic year, black Richmonders and their allies developed a network of schools. The Freedmen’s Bureau assisted with the maintenance of day schools for children, night schools for adults, and Sabbath schools. Each school provided rudimentary education, including reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, but the schools also offered basic industrial and domestic education. Students learned sewing, cleanliness, punctuality, and other skills of self-sufficiency. The schools attracted a large number of African American students. The academic year opened with 1,723 students and concluded with 2,042.”
In Richmond, there was widespread white opposition to the education of African Americans during the early years of Reconstruction. Political leaders, however, realized that violence against the schools would only encourage Northerners to occupy the city longer. One key to local control was the provision of city and state supported schools for blacks. The white leaders mandated that the schools be segregated by race, but they determined to fund the schools with some degree of financial equity, according to Green.
In Mobile, some of the same educational developments took place. The black community had begun its Reconstruction odyssey in 1865 at a mass meeting where they sang The Song of the Black Republican which included the lines: “Free workmen in the cotton-field, And in the sugar cane; Free children in the common school, With nevermore a chain. Then rally, Black Republicans— Aye, rally! We are free! We’ve waited long To sing the song— The song of liberty.” If the song gave them courage for the coming struggle, they would need it.
There had been a tradition of education for some people of color in Mobile. Creoles descended from French settlers had long educated their children in a school provided by the Catholic Church. The city had a small educated group of mixed-race Creoles who would serve as teachers and administrators as the schools grew.
Dr. Josiah Nott, a man of science, led the opposition to black education in the Gulf city. When a school was set up in April 1865 Nott said that he “would rather see the building burned down, than used for its present purposes.” Within months, black churches connected to the Freedmen’s schools went up in flames. Knott advised O.O. Howard, Freedmen’s Bureau Commissioner, that blacks mental inferiority would made them failures as students. He told Howard to “remove your bureau and the United States troops (particularly blacks) as speedily as possible from our soil, and leave the relations between the races to regulate themselves.” In the face of violence, Mobile’s African American community responded with resistance.
After the end of the military’s Reconstruction occupation of Mobile, the walls slowly closed in on African American educational opportunities. In Richmond, on the other hand, a new political movement, the Readjusters, provided a way for blacks to influence state and city government. The Readjusters were an alliance of Virginia’s African Americans, immigrants, and whites fed up with Bourbon rule. Their standard bearer was former Confederate William Mahone.
During this time, African American Richmonders campaigned for “Black Teachers for Black Schools.” A black Normal School had been training teachers for years, but African American teachers were discriminated against in hiring. The campaign resulted in increased use of black teachers and the appointment of black principals. Unfortunately, many of these gains were reversed when the Democrats regained power.
Overall this is a good book for those interested in the erection of schools on the ashes of war. An enduring legacy of Reconstruction was the first generation of African Americans who could read and write and the eastablishment of a system of schools and colleges for black Americans. However flawed this progress was, it was correctly seen as a revolutionary development that ultimately imperiled white supremacy.
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