Climbing Up to Glory

by Wilbert L. Jenkins

  Blacks regarded many white teachers as racists, whether consciously or unconsciously so, and thought their children, only recently freed from enslavement to whites, should have black men and women as teachers and authority figures.37 Adding more credence to the value of black teachers was the racism and paternalism of white members of Northern benevolent societies. A leading critic of these benevolent societies was Frederick Douglass, who noted in 1865 that “these groups tended to give blacks pity and not justice.”38 The organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Recorder, published in 1865 a scathing editorial on the glaring disparity between the principles and practices of some Northern white missionaries. The Recorder condemned those missionaries “who while in the North make loud pretension to Abolition, [but] when they get South partake so largely of that contemptible prejudice that they are ashamed to be seen in company with colored men.”39 Not surprisingly, blacks wanted the schools to encourage racial pride in their children as well as to educate them—that is, freedmen wanted to use education to further liberate themselves from the control of whites. Only black teachers and black school boards could put control of the education of freedmen where it rightfully belonged: in the black community itself.40

  SACRIFICES MADE FOR EDUCATION

  Observers throughout the South were impressed with the freedmen’s strong desire for education. “Too much cannot be said of the desire to learn among this people. Everywhere to open a school has been to have it filled,” a Freedmen’s Bureau official in Alabama noted.41 Classrooms were often extremely crowded, with as many as fifty or even one hundred students in each of them. In fact, in Louisiana from May 1864 to the end of the war, the student-teacher ratio never fell below an average of sixty to one.42 When a teacher in Athens, Georgia, tried to limit her primary class to one hundred, black parents implored, “Do let them come if you please, ma’am, and if you can’t teach them even a little, just let them sit and hear what the rest learn; they’ll be sure to catch it.”43 A witness before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction testified that the Alabama negroes “have scarcely a leisure moment that you cannot see them with a book in their hand learning to read.”44 White Northern journalist Sidney Andrews noted, “I saw the negro porter of a store laboring at his spelling book in the corner, when no customers were in, and a young negro woman with her spelling book fastened to the fence, that she might study while at work over the washtub.”45

  Northern white contemporary John Trowbridge found the difference in the ages of students striking: “six years and sixty may be seen side by side, learning to read from the same chart or book.”46 Because books were scarce, freedmen “studied their letters in almanacs and dictionaries or whatever was available. They usually sat on log seats or the dirt floor.”47 Despite these conditions, they continued to attend school as regularly as possible throughout the Reconstruction years. In Savannah, for example, approximately 1,200 out of 1,600 black children attended school on a regular basis, and enrollment figures for black school-aged children in Charleston registered nearly 50 percent, with attendance rates varying from 70 to 90 percent.48 Moreover, James Anderson has shown that blacks throughout the post-Civil War period had remarkably high rates of attendance.49 Young children whose parents were working brought infant siblings to school with them, and adults attended at night or during the day after the crops were harvested.50

  Black pupils were soon advancing as rapidly in their studies as many of their white counterparts. Indeed, the principal of Charleston’s Morris Street School declared that black children learned “as readily as whites” and that “their thirst for knowledge was much greater than that of whites.”51 A reporter for the New York Times wrote that he had seen black students in Charleston working algebra problems, answering questions in ancient and modern history, and reading literature with good comprehension.52 An AMA instructor declared that in ten years of teaching in the North, he had “never seen greater advancement in the same time.”53 One teacher from a school near Savannah reported that after only eight months of instruction, her 120 students could “read, sing hymns, and repeat Bible verses and had learned about right conduct which they tried to practice.”54

  Not all of the children, however, practiced “right conduct.” For example, Sarah Jane Foster, a white teacher employed by the AMA, “kept David standing all day for his fighting.”55 She recalled whipping Mary Smith one day,56 and noted an episode in which two students started a ruckus in her class. They both ran out of the classroom, but when one returned, she gave him a “severe flogging.”57 The freed children, unaccustomed to sitting for long periods of time and listening to teachers, sometimes allowed their minds to wander, and this lapse contributed to classroom disruptions. And, like white children, they sometimes used implausible excuses for lateness. One teacher in North Carolina became so exasperated that she complained in a letter to the AMA that “you never know at what point you may expect to find them clear or stark blind,” because there was “the most free-and-easy defiance of all rules of discipline or self-regulation.”58 Another exclaimed that the children were “too easily amused,” laughed “at trifles,” and found almost any excuse for not paying attention in class.59 Given the fact that freedmen had not received any formal education, it is remarkable that discipline was not a bigger problem. That it was not is a testament to their determination to read and write and to the successful efforts of parents in raising their children.

  The children as well as their parents made substantial sacrifices to attend school. Parents who did not have enough money to pay tuition offered teachers milk, eggs, butter, chickens, and even pottery as compensation. These contributions were certainly necessary because some black and white teachers were starving. General Scott of the Freedmen’s Bureau endorsed the application of a black man who wanted to teach, thereby guaranteeing him a Federal salary. Scott explained that “there are a number of competent colored men here who would willingly devote their time to the education of the young, providing that their support could be insured them while so engaged.” 60 Young black pupils sometimes worked at odd jobs to earn money for their tuition. Jennie Armstrong noted that “the students pay for every book and slate with a readiness that is remarkable, the money coming to us in the almost forgotten shape of dimes and quarters.” 61 They went ragged, skipped meals, and walked great distances to get to school. The educational inspector for the Freedmen’s Bureau, J. W. Alvord, for example, reported the hardships of some young blacks: “At daylight in Winter, many of the pupils in the sparsely populated country places leave their home breakfastless for the school-house, five, six, or seven miles away.”62 Margaret Newbold recalled meeting a “motley assemblage” on her first day in a Freedmen’s School. “Cold, dirty, and half-naked but eager to learn,” her students were not concerned with what they could obtain in food and clothing, but “[were] anxious to feel sure that they would have the privilege of coming to school everyday.”63

  As they had during the antebellum period, once freed, blacks often taught other blacks, particularly family members and friends. The report of Ellen Stearns, a teacher at Oakdale Farm, North Carolina, makes this point. Stearns wrote, “I have a new scholar. He comes several miles to school, and is never absent, rain or shine.” She appeared stunned that this student had learned his letters in three lessons, and in only three weeks was able to spell words of three letters. Moreover, “he has taught his mother and two sisters all he has learned as we went along.”64

  Receiving instruction from their children had both a positive and a negative impact. While many black parents wholeheartedly supported their children’s educational pursuits, occasionally they would voice the fear of being outpaced by their youngsters who then would learn to despise their parents’ country ways.65 Elizabeth Hyde Botume observed that parents on the Sea Islands urged their youngsters to school, but the best scholars refused to go back to fieldwork. “This was a serious offense to the old people. ‘Do they think I am to hoe with them folks that
don’t know anything!’ exclaimed one of the older boys. ‘I know too much for that.’ ‘Them children discountenance we,’ groaned the parents. ‘They is too smart; they knows too much.’ ”66 In other words, some black parents were afraid that an education would make their children too independent and ultimately they would lose control of them. It is ironic that this fear was also one held by Southern whites about educating blacks.

  Although the Freedmen’s Bureau and Northern benevolent societies contributed to the efforts of blacks, freedmen often took the initiative in opening, financing, and maintaining their own schools. In fact, before Northern benevolent societies entered the South in 1862, before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and before Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865, blacks had begun to make plans to educate the illiterate among them. They started schools in New Orleans and at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in 1860 and 1861, and some schools that predated the Civil War simply increased their activities during and after the conflict. One such school was established in Savannah in 1833 and ran until 1865 without the knowledge of local authorities. During all those years, its teacher, a black woman named Deveaux, worked tirelessly teaching blacks to read.67

  This kind of self-sustaining behavior led to the growth of what John W. Alvord, the general superintendent of schools at the Freedmen’s Bureau, called “native-schools.”68 Classes were held in any available building—an abandoned warehouse, a pool room, a former slave market, a church basement, or even a private home.69 To the freedmen, it mattered little where they were taught as long as they had the chance to learn. Consequently, Freedmen’s Bureau officials were astonished to find so many schools organized and operated by blacks when they arrived in the South in 1865. Alvord discovered several of these “native-schools” on a tour of the Southern states in 1865 and 1866. Among those he described was one he stumbled upon at Goldsboro, North Carolina: “Two colored young men, who but a little time before commenced to learn themselves, had gathered 150 pupils, all quite orderly and hard at study.”70 Northern white teachers who were sent to the interior found a school for freedmen at Tigerville, Louisiana, organized by a former slave using books procured by a plantation worker from children’s libraries on local plantations.71 Similarly, when the first AMA missionary, Lewis C. Lockwood, arrived to open a school for blacks at Fortress Monroe in September 1861, there was Mary S. Peake, a prosperous black woman from Hampton, already teaching blacks in a school she had organized.72 Unlike Peake, many of the blacks who established “native-schools” were not well qualified to teach. For instance, a visitor to James City, a community of freedmen across the river from New Bern, had an opportunity to talk with an elderly man who conducted a “native-school” in the area. Describing his background, the teacher said, “I taught myself.”73 However, in the opinion of most of those who instructed freedmen, credentials or the lack thereof were relatively unimportant. Their top priority was the lowering of the illiteracy rate among blacks.

  Financing and maintaining schools were often community efforts. Some communities voluntarily taxed themselves to pay for everyone’s education. In others, black schools charged tuition. Children of families who were not able to afford the tuition, however, were allowed to attend without any charge.74 Black commitment to education was so great that even on the remotest plantations, some freedmen “asked the proprietors to reserve out of their wages enough to hire a teacher for their children.”75 Others refused to sign contracts with planters without a clause stipulating that the planter would supply lumber and a plot of land to build a school. Black artisans sometimes donated their labor,76 and elite blacks sometimes donated lots. The Rollin family of Charleston, for example, offered to provide a lot if the Freedmen’s Bureau would pay for the construction of a school. Subsequently, with the help of James Lynch, a missionary of the AME Church, Charlotte Rollin opened a school for freedmen in Charleston. In fact, one of the reasons why the Rollin sisters appeared before the legislature in Columbia was to secure state support.77

  In an attempt to raise funds to build their own school, blacks in Wilmington, North Carolina, gave a Bible and a Methodist hymnbook as prizes to those who collected the most money. In response to crowded and poor school facilities, blacks in Beaufort, North Carolina, began a building campaign in January 1866. With over $300, on July 4, 1866, construction of the new school commenced. The actions of Beaufort’s blacks did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. Harriet Beals wrote, “men, women, and children are all eager to advance this work, denying themselves every little comfort, that they may pay the money for the schoolhouse.” She added, “a woman gave up a dress last week that she greatly admired.”78

  Another contemporary commented on the efforts of other North Carolina blacks to build a new school. By January 1867, freedmen had contributed $800 toward their new building, which was nearly completed. In describing the school and the sacrifices made for it, S. J. Whiton wrote, “This edifice contains the finest hall for colored people in North Carolina, and the freedmen here are naturally rather proud of it. Many of them have gone without their dinners, and denied themselves in various ways, in order to help along the good work.”79 Moreover, a group of black women in Lexington, Kentucky, launched a successful campaign that culminated in the opening in September 1866 of Howard School, named for General O. O. Howard, the Freedmen’s Bureau director. It occupied a large brick building on Church Street known as “Ladies Hall,” which James Turner and other black leaders purchased for $3,500. Howard School opened with three black teachers and five hundred enrollees.80

  Often, despite their poverty, black families offered room and board to teachers to supplement their salaries. Fayetteville, North Carolina, blacks provided a house for AMA teacher David Dickson and agreed to pay for his fuel, lights, books, and assistants. When thirteen teachers were requested from the AMA national headquarters in 1866, at almost every location freedmen had agreed to assume the costs of board and fuel. The AMA had to pay only salary and transportation.81 In addition, Dudley blacks paid Carrie Scott, a teacher, $15 per month in 1872.82

  The black thirst for education existed among the civilized nations as well. Indeed, black Indians collected money from poor but ambitious parents, built their own schools, and hired and paid teachers. A government report on black Creeks in 1866 confirmed that “they are anxious that their children shall be educated” and are “determined to profit” from “the school formed at their own advance.”83

  Throughout the South, blacks formed societies to promote education, raising money among themselves to purchase land, build schoolhouses, and pay teachers’ salaries. One such society in Georgetown, South Carolina, collected $800 to purchase a lot.84 In 1866 the Louisiana Educational Relief Association was organized to pay for the education of poor black children. Its board of trustees had the authority to lease or buy school property as they saw fit and to examine and employ teachers.85 In 1865 black leaders established the Georgia Educational Association to set school policies, raise funds to help finance the cost of education, and supervise schools in districts throughout the state. It was established on the principle that freedmen should organize schools in their own counties and neighborhoods and finance and maintain them as well. By the fall of 1866 the association had helped finance entirely or in part ninety-six of the 123 day and evening schools for freedmen in that state and owned fifty-seven buildings. In Savannah in 1866, sixteen of twenty-eight schools were under the control of an all-black board and had only black teachers.86 Blacks in Maryland similarly established the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People to advance the cause of black education. It, too, was a smashing success. In 1867 it was able to build sixty schoolhouses and raise over $23,000 for freedmen’s education.87

  Having established a long tradition of self-help, black churches were at the vanguard of the freedmen’s educational campaign. In Texas both before and after the Freedmen’s Bureau left the state, churches offered their
facilities for classrooms. One of the first Bureau schools to open in Galveston, in September 1865, was held in the black Methodist church, and two other black schools that opened in the city by 1867 also utilized church facilities. African Methodists in Houston allowed schools in their churches. And as a consequence of the black community’s failure to raise enough money to build a schoolhouse, freedmen in Corpus Christi in 1869 still used one of their churches for regular classes.88 Also, in Kentucky the black First Baptist Church of Lexington, pastored by the Reverend James Monroe, opened a school in the fall of 1865, and other churches in the city such as Pleasant Green Baptist, Main Street Baptist, Asbury AME, and the Christian Church followed suit.89 In these church-based schools, preachers often served as schoolteachers. For instance, D. C. Lacy, an African Methodist minister, taught at one of the three freedmen’s schools in Limestone County, Texas, and a black Baptist pastor in Austin, Texas, taught at one of the Travis County schools.90

  Although many churches that were used as schools were poorly lit and ventilated and furnished with benches rather than desks, they were often the only public buildings owned by the freedmen that could be put to use as schools. Most people were poor, and congregations throughout the South in rural areas and small towns could afford only small, simple buildings that were sparsely furnished. A Northern teacher, G. Thurston Chase, conducted classes in North Carolina in a church that was “made of staves split out by hand.”91 The building was totally inadequate for the large number of students, thus forcing the teacher to cram as many as seventy-five to one hundred children in a room built to accommodate about twenty-five. To make matters worse, rough pine benches served as seats.92 Nevertheless, some places were even worse. In Marietta, Georgia, a church school was large enough, but soldiers had torn out the pews and broken the windows. As a result, the students had no place to sit, and icy winds and heavy rains blew through the room.93 The situation did not substantially improve in towns or cities with larger congregations and sturdier buildings. Conditions were still extremely difficult, with classes typically conducted in basements that were dark, damp, and dingy.94