African-American Schooling in the South Prior to 1861 ... · taught a primary school in Alexandria for about twenty years (about 1826-1846) until Alexandria was retro-ceded to Virginia

African-American Schooling in the South Prior to 1861

David Freedman

The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 84, No. 1. (Winter, 1999), pp. 1-47.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28199924%2984%3A1%3C1%3AASITSP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

The Journal of Negro History is currently published by Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, Inc..

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/asalh.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.orgThu Jan 17 09:01:30 2008


http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html

http://www.jstor.org/journals/asalh.html

AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCHOOLING IN THE SOUTH PRIOR TO 1861

BY David Freedman*

Mary Smith Kelsey was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1823. Her mother, Sarah, was a free woman of mixed-color and her father was a Frenchman who could not many Sarah under Virginia law. When he returned to France, Mary's father did not take his family with him, but he apparently did provide for Mary's education.' In 1829, Mary was sent to Alexandria to live with her aunt Mary Paine and to attend scho01.~ The first school which Mary Kelsey attended was taught by an African-American woman in Alexandria. It is not unlikely that this was the school taught by Sylvia Morris who taught a primary school in Alexandria for about twenty years (about 1826-1846) until Alexandria was retro-ceded to Virginia and African-American schools were legally to be c10sed.~ Kelsey is reported to have attended a number of schools during her ten years in Alexandria, the last being Mr. Nuthall's. He was an Englishman who taught in the First Baptist Colored Church until white opposition became so strong that he discontinued it to teach in Ge~rgetown.~

Throughout her ten years of schooling, Kelsey was well liked by her classmates and received a traditional English education (primarily reading, writing and arithmetic) along with dressmaking and needlew~rk.~ In 1839, Mary Kelsey returned to Norfolk, and between 1839 and 1847, Kelsey joined the First Baptist Church, and sewed and made dresses to earn a living. During this time, Kelsey apparently visited the poor, both from kindness and to urge them to come into the ~ h u r c h . ~ There are conflicting stories about why and when Mary Kelsey moved from Norfolk to Hampton in 1847 or 1850: the first is that Kelsey's mother Sarah married Thompson Walker and the three moved together in 1847;' the second is that Mary Kelsey married Thomas Peake (and changed her name to Mary Smith Peake) in 1846, and that the Peakes and Sarah moved to Hampton in 1850.8 In either case, around 1847 Mary Kelsey moved to Hampton, Virginia, and around 1850-1 she married Thomas Peake, formerly enslaved and at the time of their marriage working in the merchant marine as a wardroom attendant.9

After arriving in Hampton, Mary Peake began a variety of types of activities: She founded the Daughters of Zion, a benevolent society which looked after the needs of poor and sick African-Americans, and which collected and distributed food and clothing, and arranged shelter for a growing number of African-American fugitives arriving in Hampton;lo she continued to do needlework to support herself;" and she began to teach free and enslaved African-American~.'~ The American Missionary Association would later claim that Peake's school in Hampton was clandestine, but this is inaccu-

* David Freedman, a criminal defense investigator, resides in San Francisco, California.

2 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

rate. Robert Engs, writing about Hampton, suggests that whites had an unusually lax attitude toward free and enslaved African-Americans, to the point that many activities, which were legally forbidden, discreetly took place with the full knowledge of anyone in Hampton who cared enough to know.13 Engs writes: "Teaching slaves was, of course, against Virginia law, but, like so much else in ante-bellum Hampton, it went unchallenged by white residents so long as it was done discreetly and caused no problems."l 4

This is not to imply that the conditions were easy or that any activity was accept- able within Hampton, but relative to conditions in which African-Americans lived across the South, Hampton's whites may have been less vigilant in exercising repression and enforcing oppressive laws. Between 1851 just after her marriage and 1861 when Hampton was burned by the retreating confederate army, Mary Peake taught reading to free and enslaved African-Americans at the same time.

Not very much is known about Peake's school during this period of 185 1 and 1861. Certainly the Bible and Christian teachings were crucial to the content of Peake's teachings as they would remain throughout her life. Mary Peake taught men and women, children and adults, free and enslaved, in her house, most likely in small groups as large congregations would have been likely to draw attention (and repression by whites). During this time, Mary Peake taught, among others, Thompson Walker (her step-father), William Thornton, and William Davis, all of whom would remain important public leaders of the African-American community through the war and into Re- constructi~n.~~It seems likely that at this time no differentiation among pupils was being made. Anyone who could get to Peake's house would be taught by the same material in the same way.

By the summer of 1861, Hampton had been largely abandoned by whites mostly moving towards confederate strongholds (only after it had been burned by retreating confederates), and around 900 African-American refugees had made it to Fort Monroe.I6 Any efforts or need to keep the school hidden were gone, and Mary Peake, teaching publicly, had 40-50 pupils by September. In the summer of 1861, Peter Her- bert, who had escaped out of enslavement, was also teaching about 40-50 pupils.I7 On September 3, Lewis Lockwood, a representative of the American Missionary Associa- tion (AMA) arrived at Fort Monroe. Lockwood, who would later write a biography of Mary Peake, represented the first northern missionry intervention into the conditions of African-Americans then being classified as "contraband" of war. On September 17, the AMA recognized and began to pay Mary Peake ($1.50/week), and at Peake's sug- gestion, the school was reorganized so that she taught children in the morning and adults in the evenings.18

In November, Lockwood wrote to the American Missionary Magazine: "Tuesday and Wednesday I established a good school at the Fortress, under the instruction of Mrs. Bailey, assisted by Miss Jennings, and James, a bright boy. . . ." Bailey was a free African-American and taught between 40 and 60 pupils in this, the third school taught by and for African-Americans in the Hampton-Fort Monroe area. Lockwood goes on to report in this letter that he has established another school for African- American children and adults in the Hygeia Hospital under the instruction of a "crip- pled colored man."I9 In December, this last school was moved from the Hygeia Hos-

pita1 to just north of Hampton at Mill Creek Bridge. The teacher was identified by Lockwood in a later letter as Wilson Wallace, another local African-Ameri~an?~

Mary Peake was now teaching an adult evening school and a day school despite being very sick with consumption. h a letter dated October 1, 1861, Lockwood noted that she was teaching spelling, writing, elementary arithmetic and the Lord's prayer to children from 9am to noon.21 As of January 1862, Mary Peake was teaching 53 chil-dren in the day school and 20 adults at night." The materids being used were probably a vaxiety of primers and northern texts sent to Mampton. Lockwood's letters to the North are constantly asking for materids: paper, slates and pencils, as well as spelling books (the American Spelling Book - Barnes) and Primers (Boston American Tract S o ~ i e t y ) . ~ ~

The historiography of African-American taught and run schools in the South prior to 1861 is surprisingly limited, pmticulxly in light sf the attention that has been focused on the schools run by northern missionary societies. Kt has been eighty years since Carter G. Woodson published his pioneering study of pre-1861 schools, and since that time, little serious attention has been focused on the vast network of schools that were taught and run by African-Amendcand4 These schools represent the founding and operation of an institution (schools) that rivds the creation of churches and benevolent organizations in both scope md community commitment. Further, the pre- 1861 schools were the training grounds for the African-American leadership of Reconstruction.

The struggle for literacy and schooling duping enslavement offers critical insight into the values and beliefs of many African-American communities prior to 1861. Overwhelmingly, literacy was equated with political and economic freedom. The struggle for schooling by both free and enslaved African-Americans demonstrated both the capacity of numerous African-American cornunities to build and sustain institutions and the pervasive value placed on learning, even in the face of extraordinary threats and punishments. As described above, Mary Peke's schools which balanced a number of the African-American community's values and beliefs are but one example out of an extensive array of schools that were built md sustained during the period of enslavement and lasted well into the period of emancipation.

These schools also offer insight into how md why communities build institutions that overcome and at times 'thrive on difference; where differences based on age, color, class (and status within classes), gender, free or enslaved status, religion, language, ethnicity, or geographic location divided members of various communities, these differences were often overcome in the struggle for literacy m d schooling.25 When the northern missionaies later descended on these schools, and replaced them with missionary schools, the notion of unity across these differences was washed away, supplanting the history of community based struggle with a history that sees the unifying force of northern missionaries in its place. The reconstruction of histories is part of the construction of knowledges in the preseraLz6

On Saturday night, February 22, 1842 at the age of 39, Mary Beake died of consumption. She was buried 100 yards north of the seminary, Lockwood writing, "A live-oak tree stands at her head. . . .27 But M q Peake's life and work raises issues that might be remembered long bey~nd her death.

JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

A number of historians have argued that the decisions made by African-Americans at the moment of freedom were based on the cultural beliefs formed during the period of enslavement. Mary Peake's work supports this contention. Peake's teaching prior to the war helped shape her post-war activities, and reflect community beliefs about schooling. Recognition of the longevity of community beliefs about schooling place the post-1861 schools (which have received substantially more attention) should be understood as parts of the widespread social and cultural belief systems about schooling that long pre-dated the end of ensla~ement .~~

Schools, and the meanings that were made through and in schooling, are not iso- lated variables, but relate to other cultural beliefs and attitudes; community based schools and institutions which work within, help to shape, and are shaped by the broader understandings of the role of schools in relation to other cultural meanings. Peake's efforts to form schools needs to be understood as one realm of action based on community beliefs and attitudes. The decisions made at the point of northern intervention were directly related to and even resulting from the pre-intervention culture. The Daughters of Zion, the First Baptist Church, and the school, to which Mary Peake devoted extensive amounts of time, offer clear indications of how some Hampton Af-rican-Americans acted within the oppressive systems of enslavement and racism based on meanings that reflect the pre-intervention culture.29

Religion played an important part in how Mary Peake approached her teaching. Christianity seems to have been both her reason for teaching and the way in which she made sense of her work. Peake is reported to have considered her day school primarily as a way to help prepare her pupils for Sunday services. Lockwood wrote, "She felt that the teachings of the week-day school ought to be largely preparatory to the rehearsals of the Sabbath S ~ h o o l . " ~ ~ While it is possible (even likely) that Lock- wood's own missionary zeal led him to misunderstand the importance of religion (as he misunderstood race), it does seem likely that Peake understood herself and her work largely within Christianity, even though it was not necessarily Lockwood's Christianity. Peake's commitments suggest a sense of collective rather than a missionary model of religion expressed by Lockwood.

Perhaps as part of her religious beliefs or part of her understanding about social change, Mary Peake worked to educate many people whose status was significantly different from her own. Engs argues that the Peake family held an elite status within Hampton. Both Thomas and Mary Peake worked: Mary sewing and doing needlework and Thomas as a servant at the Hygeia Motel and later with the Union Army. Their home was the most valuable African-American owned property in the county, valued at $2,200.31 This status seems to have allowed the activities both engaged in. Mary Peake's status (which came from her work rather than her marriage) was recognized, however Peake seemed to be able to overcome this difference in status and to build a sense of commonality with the people she taught and the community she worked in.

Part of her status certainly included being born free, yet Peake's earliest school efforts included teaching enslaved pupils. Given the conditions of Harnpton, it would have been easier and safer not to admit enslaved African-Americans, but Peake made an effort to teach anyone who could get to her house. This seems to have been a con- scious effort, and was a clear violation of Virginia law; but Peake seems to have been unwilling to allow the constraints of Hampton to limit her efforts to teach. Peake

5 AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCHOOLING

made a choice about who to admit to her school in a context that drew sharp legal and status distinctions between free and enslaved African-Americans.

Race was not by definition a unifying category. In fact, Lockwood made very clear in his writings that color was a significant difference among African-Americans. It is difficult to determine if, in Hampton, African-Americans differentiated by color, but Lockwood's writings do suggest that difference existed within race. Lockwood consist- ently refers to Mary Peake as being very light-skinned, the implication being that she was almost "white."32 It was common at this time for whites to equate lighter skin color (or part-white parentage) with a greater intellectual capacity. Lockwood's references are attempts to legitimate Peake to the northern whites for whom he wrote, by replicating paternalistic and racist attitudes. While it is unclear if Hampton African- Americans distinguished color differences in similar ways, Mary Peake's color probably had a significant effect on her perceived status and on her successes.

Mary Peake's life also points to issues of gender differences in Hampton. Her education was different than an African-American male's would have been in that a clear employment component of the curriculum existed. Teaching sewing and needlework as part of girls' regular schooling suggests that a link was made between schooling and employment. Teaching as labor held a higher status than needlework and sewing as well as the more typical domestic labor jobs available to African-American women. Peake lived by sewing for years, at the same time she taught, implying that teaching for her was voluntary work and not an occupation on which her life depended. Yet, African-American women were not universally more likely to become teachers or find jobs compared to African-American men. Because of the limited types of jobs available to African-American men and women, teaching might be seen as representing a higher status regardless of gender (although not by definition an equally high status for men and women).33

I have divided these histories of schooling in the South prior to intervention into two sections and four parts. Section 1 focuses on the lower South: part 1 of this section contains histories of Louisiana. I have divided Louisiana off into a separate part than the rest of the lower South in an attempt to point to the significant differences in schooling histories there, while maintaining its relation to the other lower South states. Part 2 of the first section, then, focuses on the rest of the states of the lower South. Section 2 focuses on the histories of schooling in the states of the upper South. Part 3 looks at schooling formations in the upper South except for Washington D.C. Part 4 looks at these histories for Washington. I have separated Washington for structural reasons and because, in similar ways to Louisiana, the histories for Washington seemed to me to be significantly different, but not so much as to fully separate them from the region.

Section 1: The Lower South

Part 1: Louisiana

Louisiana was purchased by the United States in 1803, but only after being under the colonial control of both the Spanish and French. African-Americans were treated

JOUWkIAL OF NEGRO HSTORY

very differently under the various colonial regimes. The Spanish and French had relatively libreral policies regarding manumission, and the Spanish seemed to have encouraged the enslaved to purchase their own freedom when possible. The French and Spanish also had relatively liberal policies regarding inter-racial sexual practices as well, and in 1803, the United States purchased a territory with a considerable mixed- color and creole of color population.34 In part due to the migration of West Indians from the Carribbean, between 1803 and 1810, the free African-American population increased in Louisiana fourfold to nearly eight thousand.35

The interaction of free and enslaved African-Americans was at times extraordinarily strained. The treaty which transfemed Louisiana to US control had promised free Af- rican-Americans the rights and advantages of citizenship, and they planned to exercise those rights. Whites arnbivalently called upon free African-Americans to help milita- rily defend the colony from slave insurrections (and Native Americans), and in an attempt to protect their higher status in relation to the enslaved, many free African- Americans did consider it in their interest to fight with whites to put down these insurrection~.~~Within these distinctions of interest existed difference~ of color, language and status all of which had serious impacts on schooling. Alice Dunbar-Nelson writing in 1916, said that until 1865 there could be no single conception of "African-Ameri- can" in Louisiana because of the differences in color. She goes on to say that a rigid color-based caste system was maintained within African-American communities. Mixed-color African-Americans considered themselves (and were treated by the law) as a caste above darker complexion African-Ameri~ans.~~ Language differences arose not only out of the importation of Africans directly into Louisiana, but also from the shifting colonial control and immigration from the Carribean. The earliest schools in Louisiana were taught in French although many people probably spoke English and/or S p a n i ~ h . ~ ~Status and access to resources was greatly influenced by when and how Af- rican-Americans entered Louisiana. By 1803, Louisiana was home for a small but propertied and wealthy group sf free African-Amekcans as well as poor and enslaved African-Americans. Along with color, access to resources was a very important factor in attainimg status. All of this had a significant impact on schooling.

Despite the threats and vicious penalties for learning to read, and the harsher penalties for teaching, enslaved African-Americans in Louisiana struggled to form schools. "Although it was a little short of death for a slave to be caught learning to read, and still more dangerous for them to teach one another," the efforts were made to start and run Writing in the Cleveland Gazette in 1883, Paul Gaston offers some sense of how these schools were started and run: ". . . . the plantations of a parish or township would be canvassed, and those in whom they could confide, were invited to attend a 'School' in any location where Secresy [sic] could be secured. Sometimes these schools were held in remote swamps and cane-breaks, where, perhaps, the foot of the white man had never trodeW4O Gaston suggests that the boundaries of white control, the plantation fence, were not the limits which bound the school. Instead, the geographic area from which the school might draw pupils was bound by the ability of enslaved African-Americans to travel to and from the school during times when they would not be immediately missed. Distance, and not ownership, regulated the ability of many to attend a clandestine school. As morning approached, "when each scholar must be found at his post of labor, or receive a sufficient number of 'Stripes,' minus

AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCHOOLING

the 'Stars,' to induce an explanation of his delinquency" the school would disband and the pupils and teachers would return to their various and dispersed homes.41

Gason offers a description of what the schools physically looked like as well. As participants arrived,

a number of logs would be formed into a hollow square, a pine fire built in the center, and the dusky pupils disposed around upon the log-seats prepared for the purpose. . . . Whenever the weather or other cause prevented this nomadic 'pursuit of knowledge under difficulties,' the school- room would be removed to stable lofts, or other 'eligible' locations, where, after duly chinking the seams between the boards, the pupils would seat themselves upon bundles of fodder, old harness, horse-collars or on the floor, as circumstance permitted. Then with a konk shell filled with lard or oil, and a cotton wick inserted, as their only 'chandelier,' which was held in turn, these outcasts would pore over their tattered 'child's primers' until 'cne,' 'two,' and 'three' in the morning, and those who lived at a distance seldom closed their eyes on 'school-nights,' but spent the entire period of 'darkness' in their clandestine pursuit of 'light.'42

Whether in the swamps or in a loft, these schools took place out of sight of everyone who did not attend, enslaved and owner alike. These schools had to be carefully orchestrated, and no component of them could be taken for granted. Every aspect was either carefully planned or the school could not operate, or worse, the participants could be found out.

Although Gaston describes a particular type, clandestine schools did not all follow this model of operating. Virginia Harris, told an interviewer about her experience at Sunday school while she was enslaved about eight miles from Vicksburg, Louisiana: "At Sunday School the pastor tried to learn us our A.B.C. He done that 'cause he was the only one that had anything."43 Sunday schools, although often related solely to religious training, were sometimes used as a cover for schooling. The pastor might com- bine religious instruction with literacy, or use the legitimacy of the church to shield the workings of a school. Clandestine schools were certainly run and organized in many different ways, depending on different contexts.

Gaston tells of another clandestine school which was ended by a white "reign of terror" in 1813. Gaston writes that this school took place near the plantation of Ardoise de Bourville, close to the Mississippi River, probably in Pointe Coupee parish.

Cyrille, having been a pupil in the "nocturnal schools" already mentioned, had thereby obtained just a sufficiency of the forbidden fruit to create an intense longing for more, and every moment he could wrest from labor was diligently applied to the attainment of this earnestly desired result. In due time, believing himself qualified to become a teacher of his fellow slaves, he took a few of the most trustworthy into his confidence and twice or thrice in each week they regularly met on a small island in the midst of one of the great Cypress swamps. . . . [After telling his wife, Eulalie, of the school, they would go together to the island] then they would, if they were the f i t across the mo- rass, build a fire which served the double purpose of lighting their "rural academy" and driving away the swarming mosquitos. Finally, drawing forth their "child's First Primer," each dusky scholar would pour again and again over its soiled pages, until the "we small hours" bade them prepare to depart on their homeward journey. . . .@

The school continued like this for over a year, until the time of the great panic over the possible British invasion into Louisiana about 1813. But on a school night, Mad- ame de Bourville, suddenly feeling sick, called Eulalie to her bed to care for her.


When Eulalie could not be found, the neighborhood was aroused to search for the fugitives. Gaston says that the search went on for three days, and then on the fourth day, all of the enslaved African-Americans on de Bourville's plantation were tortured for information about the band of fugitives. After a number had been tortured to death, a cousin of Eulalie was forced to point out the way to the island, and Cyrille, Eulalie and their fourteen companions were killed.45

Compared to these conditions under which enslaved African-Americans formed schools, free African-Americans in Louisiana had greater opportunity and potential to form schools. There were not legal restrictions against free African-Americans being taught or teaching in Louisiana. In 1842, the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family was founded in New Orleans by three women of color, descendants of wealthy and well-established free African-American families. They opened a home on Bayou Road for African-American orphans and elderly, and instructed the young in reading and writing, sewing, cooking, housekeeping and laundry This school was founded as a charity institution to meet a need in New Orleans that was certainly not being met by anyone else. The curriculum suggests that this school taught both literacy skills as well as preparation for certain types of work. It is likely that the combination of literacy and skills training rose, as for many charity schools, from the attitudes of the nuns towards the students. These students were being prepared to lead certain types of lives within New Orleans, and like all schools, this one sought to train the students into certain types of jobs.

Similarly, on April 20, 1847, with a bequest from Mme. Couvent, a free African- American woman (and later support from Aristide Mary and Thomy Lafon, both Cre- oles of color) a group of free African-American men founded a free school under the name of the Catholic Society for the Instruction of Indigent Orphans at the comer of Union and Greatmen streets. The students were taught to be fully literate in French and English, as well as arithmetic. When the students reached a certain age, and pre- sumably were suitably bi-lingual, they were placed in jobs in New Orleans as clerks in stores and warehouses. Girls and boys were taught separately, boys on the first floor, and girls on the second. The reputation of the school drew children who were not orphans, and they paid a tuition fee to attend.47 In the 1860 census, a free creole of color, Armand Lanusse, was listed as the principal of the Couvent school, with Joanni Questy, Constant Reynes and Joseph Vigseuix listed among his colleague^.^^

Not all schools in Louisiana followed a similar strategy or had a clear religious- charity component to them. In an interview, Sylvester Sostan Wickliffe talked about his uncle Romaine Vidrine, who was a wealthy free African-American in Louisiana. Vidrine was a mixed-color slaveholder, and kept a private school for free-bom Afri- can-Americans. The older students were taught in French, the younger ones in both French and English. But Wickliffe indicates that only free African-Americans were al-lowed to be taught even though a fair number of enslaved African-Americans (about 38) lived on Vidrine's plantation. Wickliffe reports that Vidrine maintained a clear distinction between free and enslaved, never allowing the enslaved to become "familiar" with him, although he was good to them. Schooling did not at any time cross the boundary of free-enslaved.49

Mr. Ludger Bouguille, who is listed in the 1860 census as a free creole of color teacher, on the other hand, initially made an effort in New Orleans to allow an en-


slaved boy to attend the school he taught.50 "On one occassion, long before the war, he was the recipient of a bright looking boy, whose master and father solicited the favor of his attending school. Mr. B. made no objections, as the respectability and standing of the father was sufficient guarantee that no legal proceedings would result from the act; but after a few days he found that everyone of his pupils had decided to leave him. They had found out that a slave was being taught in the same room with themselves, and their parents would not allow such an indignity to be perpetrated upon them."51 Ludger Bouguille dismissed the student from his class and gave him private lessons in his master's house. The other students returned to his school. Even though it appeared, at first, that Bouguille's school would teach both free and enslaved without being stopped by whites, at least some of the free African-American parents considered their status to be challenged by the admission of an enslaved student.

St. Landry Parish, which includes Opelousas and Washington, contained a large and wealthy free African-American population. The parish was primarily rural and a large group of free African-American planters and landowners helped to support the Grim- ble Bell school. This school seems to have been somewhat unique compared to other African-American schools, in that it used a Lancasterian structure (although it had fewer students than would be usual for Lancasterian schools). The Grimble Bell school taught both primary and secondary levels, employing four teachers who taught about 125 students. The students paid fifteen dollars per month for board and tuition. Until it was forced to close sometime in the late 1850s, the school taught a broad liberal curriculum: reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, bookkeeping, English, French and Latin.52 In scope, this might rival curricula taught anywhere in the United States before the 1850s. The Lancasterian method (also known as the monitorial method) had older students monitor and teach younger students all under the supervi- sion of, in this case, four teachers. The use of the Lancasterian system was usually restricted to urban settings since it required a significant number of pupils, which suggests that this was a school which drew from a large rural geographic area.

It is interesting that this group of students from relatively wealthy families would be taught within this structure of schooling; not because it was unpopular across the South or in northern African-American schools, but because the way in which the structure supports self-teaching among students is reminiscent of the clandestine schools in other parts of Louisiana. The "Lancasterian" model in this case may have been less the result of Joseph Lancaster's ideas, and more an outgrowth of the struc- tures of clandestine schools.53

Louisiana prior to 1861 also housed a number of African-American schools about which there is less information. For instance, in the Louisiana Courier in January 1813, G. Dorfeuille signed an advertisement for a school: "I intend to establish a school for the education of colored children. Such an institution is entirely lacking in this portion of the country, and the enlighted persons who heretofore were desirous of having their children educated-I refer to the prudent colored persons-were obliged to send them to the North. On them I depend for support. Eighteen or twenty pupils have been already promised, the school will be open on M ~ n d a y . " ~ ~ While it is unclear what became of this effort, Dorfeuille indicates that a number of students had already signed up, and perhaps more importantly, that he earned a living by teaching. There are similarly incomplete references to an Academy for free colored students be-


gun in 1844 and taught by M. Peter.55 And in 1859, John F. Cook is reported to have taught for one year before he was warned that he would be arrested for teaching as well as being a free African-American "immigrant into L~u i s i ana . "~~ In 1864, the New Orleans Union commemorated the founding of the Pioneer School of Freedom, which had been founded in 1860 in New or lean^.^'

More scattered evidence can be found in census data for 1850 and 1860, although this material is notoriously inaccurate, under-representing African-Americans and not providing any information about women's professions. According to Sterkx, the 1850 census shows 1008 free African-Americans attending school in New Orleans and 211 attending rural parish schools (most, though not all, of these students were probably in the Grimble Bell school), although the types and locations of the schools are not given.58 The 1850 census also indicates that Oscar Dubrucil, was an African-American Schoolmaster in Natchitoches Parish.59 The 1860 New Orleans census listed six men with teaching as their occupation: Ludger Bouguille (free mixed-color), Adolphe Duhart (free mixed-color), Francois Escoffie (free African-American), Armand Lanusse (free-mixed color), Joanni Questy (free African-American), and Paul Trevigne (free mixed-color).60

Part 2: Lower South

The lower South includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisana, Missis- sippi, South Carolina and T e ~ a s . ~ ' The African-American population in the lower South increased from two different directions of forced migration and sale. Most of the enslaved in the lower South were probably sold further South from the upper South as agricultural patterns changed. Many others, however, migrated to the Gulf area from the Caribbean.62 In general, the conditions of enslavement in the lower South were harsher than in the upper South. Most importantly, across time, the enslaved African-American population increased as did the pressures for higher produc- tivity. In spite of the conditions, enslaved and free African-Americans formed schools throughout the lower South before 1861.

Susie King Taylor, born enslaved in 1848, wrote about her early days of schooling in Savannah, Georgia. She wrote, in 1902, "My brother and I being the two eldest, we were sent to a friend of my grandmother, Mrs. Woodhouse, a widow, to learn to read and write. She was a free woman and lived on Bay Lane, between Habersham and Price streets, about half a mile from my house." Taylor and her brother, who were both enslaved, attended this small school which was taught by a free African- American. The students had to maintain the clandestine character of the school, so they bound their books in brown paper to disquise what they carried from the police and other whites, and then the students entered through Mary Woodhouse's gate one at a time. The school had to be hidden from the more constant watch of the neighbors as well, and since they would sometimes see the students enter or leave the house, Taylor says the neighbors supposed that the students were being trained into a particular trade. Woodhouse was a seamstress, and probably used this to suggest to observers that she was training apprentices while she taught reading and writing in her L-shaped


kitchen. "She had twenty-five or thirty children whom she taught, assisted by her daughter, Mary Jane."63

Taylor studied at Woodhouse's school for two years, and then transferred to a school taught by Mary Beasley, which she attended until May 1860 when Beasley told Taylor's grandmother that she could teach no more to Taylor. It is possible that the woman Taylor identifies as Mary Beasley was actually Matilda B e a ~ l e y . ~ ~ Matilda Beasley taught a school for African-Americans in Savannah where she taught reading and writing, and shortly after the Civil War, became the first African-American nun in Georgia and opened an orphanage in S a ~ a n n a h . ~ ~

These were not the first African-American schools in Savannah, however. In 1818, Julian Froumontaine, who was a "colored Frenchman9' born in Santo Domingo, moved from Charleston, South Carolina to Savannah and opened a scho01.~ Between 1818 and 1829, Froumontaine taught openly. In December 1829, Georgia passed harsher literacy restrictions, and Froumontaine continued to teach enslaved African-Amer- icans, but the school was clandestinely operated until about 1844. There is some indication that an undetermined number of his students taught in Georgia at later times.67 It is unclear if Froumontaine taught previously in Charleston or if he was schooled in Santo Domingo, but upon his arrival in Savannah, he began teaching. Froumontaine certainly taught free African-Americans in Savannah, but it is less clear if he also taught enslaved pupils. Before the passage of more restrictive literacy laws, Froumontaine taught only free students, but after the school became clandestine, the benefits of only instructing free students would have been gone, and it is unclear if Froumontaine opened his school to anyone who could atlend.

Another school was taught in Savannah by James Porter. He migrated from Charles- ton in 1854, like Froumontaine had done earlier, and opened a school to teach music lessons, but also taught reading and writing under cover of the music school. Porter was both a tailor and a music teacher.68 Similarly, Louis Toomer, who would later be the principal of the African-American run Savannah Education Association school system, taught a clandestine school.69 Jeff Johnson, who was born in Cartersville (about 25 miles outside of present-day Atlanta), told an interviewer of being taught by "a colored man school teacher" about three miles from his home in "Finley's quarter^."^^ In much the same spirit, a woman named Deveaux taught a clandestine school in Savannah between about 1835-1865. Deveaux was still teaching in the same room in 1865 when she was interviewed by a visitor. Deveaux is reported to have said that after the war she was teaching to children of a "better" class of African- Ameri~ans.~'Teaching for 30 years in the same room is a remarkable achievement, and certainly an unusual accomplishment for a teacher of a clandestine school.

In Augusta, Edwin h r d y taught a clandestine school for enslaved students. h r d y was a Methodist preacher who taught his school for boys and girls in his backyard. Eugene Wesley Smith, who was born in 1852 in Augusta, told an interviewer: "Going to school wasn't allowed, but still some people would slip their children to school. There was an old Methodist preacher, a Negro named Ned hrdee, he had a school for boys and girls going on in his back yard. They caught him and put him in jail. He was to be put in stocks and get so many lashes every day for a month."72 Accord- ing to other sources, Purdy paid a fine of fifty dollars, and received sixty lashes, and then was sent to prison for an undisclosed amount of time.73 The punishment Purdy


faced points out not only the threat, but the willingness of African-Americans to teach and learn in the face of the threat to their lives.

Ella Belle Rarnsey told an interviewer of being sent to an African-American school in Atlanta in about 1852. Ramsey was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1842, and sold to the Goldsmith family in 1852. She was the nursemaid and caregiver for the three Goldsmith children, and Mr. Goldsmith asked her if she would like to go to school to learn to read and write. She told the interviewer, "Dey had a colored school den in Atlanta where dey taught de colored chillun. I don't 'member de name of de place, but it was a nice school. It was a regular school where dey teach how to read an' write an' count an' spell an' all like dat. I didn' go to school long though. When de chillun git bigger de Mistress need me at home."74 Rarnsey's schooling was limited because of the demands of her owners, but her report of schooling is suggestive none- theless: first, Ramsey did not indicate that she was taught sewing and dressmaking, possibly indicating that the curriculum of this school was not differentiated by sex; second, because Ramsey went to school in the 1850s, after Georgia had passed its most restrictive anti-literacy laws, it is likely (although not certain) that this school was taught by African-Americans; and finally, this interview suggests that even when enslaved African-Americans were permitted to go to school, the economic and social demands of the slave-owner constantly threatened to pull them out of school.

Another African-American teacher who migrated from Charleston to Georgia (although to Augusta rather than Savannah), was a man named Baird. John Trowbridge, writing a story of his own "journey through the desolated states, and talks with the people," tells of meeting Baird in Augusta after the war. Trowbridge writes of the meeting:

At Augusta, I visited a number of colored schools; among others, a private one kept by Baird, a colored man, in a little room where he had secretly taught thirty pupils during the war. The building, containing a store below and tenements above, was owned and occupied by persons of his own race; the children entered it by different doors, the girls with their books strapped under their skirts, the boys with theirs concealed under their coats; all finding their way in due season to the little school- room. I was shown the doors and passages by which they used to escape and disperse, at the ap- proach of white persons. Mr. Baird told me that during ten years previous to the war, he taught a similar school in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. The laws prohibited persons of color from teaching; and accordingly he employed a white woman to assist him. She sat and sewed, and kept watch, until the patrol looked in, when she appeared as the teacher, and the real teacher (a small man) fell back as a pupil. It was ostensibly a school for free colored children, the teaching of slaves to read being a ciminal offense; yet many of those were taught.75

Trowbridge's story of both of these schools is very informative. The school taught in Augusta was housed in a building owned by African-Americans, probably enabling the school to take place with fewer risks, but as the descriptions of the precautions of entering and exiting demonstrates, this clandestine school was no more protected from observation than any other. Baird's school was one of at least two schools being taught in Augusta before 1860.76 However, it is likely that the man that Trowbridge refers to as Baird is actually Simeon W. Beard, who was teaching a Broad St. Gram- mar School from 9am-2pm in 1866 across the street from "Upper Market" in Au- gusta, and who is reported to have taught a school on Wall Street in Charleston previ~usly.~~

Equally as interesting as the Augusta school which operated during the war, is the Charleston school. At least one free student of Beard's is known: J. W. Morris was born to free parents, John B. Morris and Grace Morris, on August 26, 1850; Beard's school was the first schooling for a young 9. W. Morris, who later attended Howard University (in 1868), South Carolina University Law Department (in 1875), and went on to become President of Allen University in Columbia, S.C. Trowbridge points out that although the school was supposedly for free African-Americans, it taught enslaved students as well, and taught boys and girls together. Thus, Trowbridge suggests that although Beard claimed that his school was only for free African-Americans, the claim was little more than a way to sheild discovery. Trowbridge's description of Beard's hiring of a white woman to help hide the school is little more curious. A South Caro- lina law passed in 1834 criminalized the teaching of free and enslaved African-Ameri- cans by whites or African-Americans (although the penalties were different). Beard's assistant, then, probably acted as though she were teaching a trade (sewing), rather than simply taking Beard's place as the teacher.78

Beard's school was not the only school based in South Carolina, of course. Proba- bly the earliest school taught by African-Americans had a somewhat strange beginning. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), an En- glish missionary organization decided to purchase two enslaved African-Americans, train them to teach, and open a school. At a cost of about three hundred and eighty pounds, the SPG built a schoolhouse in Charleston, and the school opened, with Harry and Andrew teaching, in 1744. While the SPG funded the School, Harry and Andrew taught about 60 students the first year. It is likely that only free African-Americans attended this school, since in 1740 South Carolina had passed a law prohibiting the teaching of enslaved students and this school was run openly; but it remains unclear if Harry and Andrew were manumitted or if the SPG kept them enslaved. Harry, at least, was apparently paid only with some clothing provided by the vestry. Harry and An-drew taught a day school for youth, and a night school for adults who worked during the day. Harry and Andrew taught this school for twenty years until it closed for reasons that are unclear in 1764.79

In 1790, in Charleston, the Brown Fellowship Society was organized, with one of its stated purposes being to open and maintain schools for African-American youth. The Society's membership was limited specifically to free brown (light-color) men only, and the school enrolled free youth. Gender and color status were the basis for the organization, and possibly for the school. Along with this school, the Society provided insurance benefits for the survivors of members who had died, purchased a cemetery for members, and contributed to the support of orphans. Although the organization was predicated on distinctions of gender, color, and status, the Society did sub- sidize the Minor's Moralist Society, lasting from 1803 to 1847, which schooled indigent free African-Americans. One of the founders of this society was Thomas Bonneau, who taught a school from about 1803 (when the Society was formed) until his death in 1828 or 1829. Bonneau's school, which probably received suport from the Society, employed William McKinney and E K. Sasportas as assistants. It is likely that Fannie Pinckney Bonneau taught a girls department of the school, at least after Thomas Bonneau died. Following Bonneau's death, Daniel Payne would take over this school, and the Bonneau Library Society, which seems to have focused on continuing


(high school or college level) educational needs for free African-Americans, was begun.80

According to Birnie, other early 1800s schools in Charleston of which less is known include: one taught by a Mr- Munns or Munz, and one taught in the 1820s by Mrs. Stromer which lasted until the 1860s, at which time she began teaching in freedmen's schools. Somewhat later, Edward Beard taught a school on Coming street; Wil- liam Feerette taught a school on Market street; Mood taught on Beafain Street; Sey- mour on George Street; Andrew Miller kept a school about 1830; At least in 1852, Fannie Bonmeau taught on Coming Street, and in 1852 M a y and Catherine Holloway attended her school, together paying one dollar and seventy five cents per month; Amelia Barnett taught on Mary Street; Kittie Solomon who may have been a Haitian immigrant taught a school; Hemy Frost, who taught on Magazine Street; and a Miss Weston was thrown in the guard-house for teaching a school.s1 Francis L. Cardoza attended school in Charleston between 1842 and 1849; Cardoza would later return to Charleston at the request of the American Missionary Association, after studying in Edinburgh and London, to take charge of an A M sponsored Normal

Other schools in South Carolina seem to have been more specifically for teaching enslaved Af-rican-Americans. An un-named preacher who was born in South Carolina about 1845 remembered visiting his father at another plantation. He wrote, "My father was a good man but I didn't see much of him because he belonged to different people. They let him come once a week to see us. I was always glad for him to come because he could read a little and taught me about all that I ever learned out of the Blue Back Speller."83 While the conditions of separation did not allow for a "regular" day school, this school offers some indication of the ramge of teaching within enslaved communities.

Other interviews suggest that schools were pun when and where it was possible. William Oliver, who was born in HOT, S.C., when asked about schooling, said: "Only by night. And that couldn't be known. %%en he could get anybody to teach him 'A-B-C' but wasn't allowed to go to any school."84 Similarly, Ransom Simmons, who was born in Mississippi but brought to Richland County, S.C., remembered a night school where: "Oh, dey give everyone of us a slate en slate pencil on we study dere in de quarter in de night time by de light of de fire. Studied dem Blue Back Websters. Dab was de text we h o w bout den."85 Writing in 1853, Frederika Bremer told about gaining admittance to a clamdestine school taught in Charleston, "I found in a wretched dark hole only a half dozen poor children."86 Bremer goes on to say that she thought the students were "mere animal life," and the school an attempt to "hu- manize" them. If nothing else, Bremer does offer a particular perspective as to the racist attitudes about the potential for schooling in these comments.

James Stirling, traveling through South Carolina in about 1857, reported, "even in Columbia, the capital of South Car~lina, hundreds of slaves can read, and twenty or thirty negoes regularly teach in the evenings to their fellow slaves, receiving a fee of a dollar a month."87 Following northern missionary intervention, a number of other travelers and teachers wrote about a variety of pre-intervention schools. In November of 1870, an unidentified writer from Charleston told of clamdestine schools before the war. "Two teachers were obliged to follow some other occupation and their schools broken up, because their pupils were found too far advanced in their studies. This

15 AFRICAN-AMEMCAN SCHOOLING

Miss L. herself taught some children secretly to read and write for many years. She sometimes had as many as twenty in her charge ostensibly for a sewing school. These schools were allowed, and parents hired the time of the young children from their masters in order to send them. Yet she was not free from suspicicn, and the police paid her a visit or two . . . The children always had a piece of sewing in hand, and were so drilled that their books vanished by magic." This writer goes on to tell about a boy who used his writing skills to forge a pass, but was caught; the boy's parents were flogged, and the boy was imprisoned and whipped.88 This school suggests not only some of the difficulties in keeping schools clandestine, even in urban areas, but also suggests some of the ways in which these schools fit into larger efforts to resist enslavement. In certain instances, learning had a direct impact on an enslaved African- American's chances for escape or other forms of resistance. Schools offered both the immediate possiblity of escape, and the longer-term possibility of freedom. But, as with most of these struggles, the penalities we- &e severe.

Richard Dennett, writing in November 1865, tells a similarly interesting story. He writes: "The first assistant in the Normal School building, a free colored girl, has kept a private school in Charleston during the past four years, and among her present pupils are many of her old ones. Having been educated by her father, she begun just before the war to teach a class of forty or fifty free colored girls in her own house. Under the law prohibiting the teaching of Negroes she was twice arrested, but by the interposition of her mother's guardian, Major King, a license was granted her by Mayor McBetli to keep a school for free colored persons, on condition that no slaves should be admitted to it, and that a white person should be always in the room during school hours. She complied with these conditions, hiring a white woman to sit in the school-room with her sewing, and kept the school open till the capture of the city.89 Trowbridge tells an almost identical story of a female teacher paying half of her in- come to a white to sit and sew in the school-room, and act as the teacher when whites or the police visited.g0 Dennett's and Trowbridge's re-tellings of this school are somewhat strange; it seems that the hiring of a white woman to sit in the school with sewing is closer to the histories of keeping schools clandestine. It seems possible that both men are confused about the particular time-frames of when the white woman was hired, or that her sewing in the classroom was irrelevant to the school and just what she did. In either case, the teacher successfully navigated the restrictive laws of teaching African-Americans, and continued her school into the period of intervention.

Schooling in Florida has proven to be very difficult to document. I have been able to find only a single reference to a school which was taught in Key West, Florida. Eliza Ann Taylor told an interviewer: "Mr. Roberts was a Negro man well-educated in dem times; he taught other free Negroes. You see I had no edu~ation."~' Taylor's reference to this school provides few details since she, being enslaved, could not attend. It does suggest, however, that schools were formed in Florida prior to 1861 for free African-Americans at least. The 1850 census shows 66 African-American students, 29 male and 37 female.92

Schooling histories for Texas suggest a very different set of conditions than do the histories in Georgia and South Carolina or Florida. Westward migration of whites with enslaved African-Americans around 18 16 did not introduce enslavement to Texas, it existed before that. However this migration did mark the beginning of a large expan-


sion of an enslaved population. Even so, because of the Spanish and then Mexican control of Texas, followed by brief independence, enslavement did not have a strong grip in Texas until statehood in 1846. Between 1836-1861, the institution and consoli- dation of enslavement as social policy modeled on the Southern U.S., rapidly ex-~ a n d e d . ~ ~Perhaps as part of this relatively late entrenchment of enslavement, schools (and histories that acknowledge schools) are limited. Interestingly, Texas never passed anti-literacy laws, but this seems to have little to no impact on the development or re- striction of schooling. By far, the best material on Texas African-American schools is from narratives, but this material is not extensive.94

Irella Battle Walker was born on August 15, 1851, at Craft's Prairie, Bastrop County, Texas. When she was very young, her mother, father and herself were sold to a Mr. Washington in Travis County. She told an interviewer: "Dere was old man Jack James dat had a sort ob night school. He had dis night school every other night. He made his own little school room at night in his cabin. He had long boards fo' de benches and desks was let down by ropes f'om de rafters. Dem desks was put out ob sight again by day. We had de blue back spellers, and we had to go a certain distance in 'em. We had to learn a certain amount each time. Each person had one ob dem books. Jack had a long piece of broom straw and he pointed wid it to de letters, and dat's how we learn our A B C's. I never did git far enough to learn much about wri- tin' but I can ready putty good, when my eyes let me. Jack James was a worker on de plantation and I don't know if Mawster Washington ever knowed dat Jack was learnin' us our A B C's at dat night school." Rosina Hoard, who spent a few years just before intervention on the Washington plantation, remembered: "De mawster never did care if we held night school in our cabins . . . ."95 Travis County formed in 1840, but from 1850 to 1855, the enslaved population increased from 594 to 2,068.96 It is sometime during this rapid population increase that Irella Walker and her family were sold and moved to Travis, and it is likely that this clandestine school formed sometime about when this increase occurred.

A.C. Pruitt was born in Louisiana but moved "jes' befo' freedom" to Snowball which is near Cole Springs, Texas (which I suspect is mis-transcribed by the interviewer and is actually Coldsprings, about 50 miles north of Houston). Pruitt suggests that the move was in response to the advancing Yankee army, a last ditch effort to keep the enslaved away from the Yankees. Pruitt told the interviewer: "Dey was a 01' man name' Peter Green on de place. Ev'ry evenin' us chillen hatter go to he cabin and he spen' de evenin' teachin' us prayers. He git us all 'roun' him in a circle and teach us to count and say us prayers and t'ings like dat. 01' Peter he ain' never been no preacher. He de shoemaker on de plantation. But he jes' tuk dat much interes' in de chillen to try to teach dem ~ u m p ' n . " ~ ~ I suspect that the "and t'ings like dat" may have included reading, but Pruitt does not specify that it is or is not. It might be considered somewhat unusual to teach numbers and prayers but not reading, although it is entirely possible that Peter Green could not read but had been taught numeracy. Peter Green is also differentiated from some other "cullud preachers" who are not named but from whom Green is singled out as a teacher and not a preacher at all.

Julia Blanks was born in San Antonio in 1862 to an enslaved mother and a father who she describes as three-quarters Cherokee. Blanks told an interviewer: "The way my step-father got his learning was a cullud blacksmith would teach school at night,


and us chillen taught our mother. She didn't know how to spell or read or nothin'. She didn't know B from bull's foot. Some of them were allowed to have church and some didn't. Mighty few read the Bible 'cause they couldn't read. As my mother used to say, they were raised up as green as cucumbers. That old blacksmith was the only- ist man that knew how to read and write in slavery time that I know Presuma-bly, Blanks and her siblings taught their mother after they were freed, but her step-father was taught by the blacksmith during enslavement.

Narratives from Alabama provide similar glimpses in some histories of schooling. Jenny Proctor was born in 1850 in Alabama. She told an interviewer: "None of us was 'lowed to see a book or try to learn. Dey say we git smarter den dey was if we learn anything, but we slips around and gits hold of dat Webster's old blue back speller and we hides it 'ti1 way in de night and den we lights a little pine torch and studies dat spellin' book. We learn it too."99 The image is a familiar one: Webster's speller, studying at night, and forced labor during the day. Clara Young was born in Huntsville, Alabama. She remembered: "Bey had a nigger woman to teach all de house darkies how to read en write en I larned how to sign my name en got as fur as b-a-k-e-r in de Blue Back Speller."'w That an African-American teacher would be hired to teach house laborers seems to be a fairly unique experience. It is unclear who hired this teacher, although the implication of "dey had" would seem to be that the white slave owners hired this teacher.

Thomas Cole was born in Jackson County, Alabama on August 8, 1845; his mother Elizabeth was a nurse for Dr. Robert Cole throughout an extended illness until his death, at which time the Cole family moved to Huntsville with Elizabeth, but not Thomas. Just prior to the war, Thomas Cole ran away and joined the Union Army forces. Thomas Cole told an interviewer: "Some of de slaves was pretty smart fer de chance dey had ter gits any education, iffen some of de white folks laks a slave, or dey had some chilluns dat laks a slave dey would larn you how ter read and write and dat slave would larn another one ter read and write. . . ."I0' Cole provides some very interesting insight into how literacy skills were first attained, but more importantly, how those skills were transferred to more people. The interesting part of this is not that certain owners may have been kinder than others, or that some white children may have helped an enslaved African-American shelhe grew up with; rather it is that as a particular enslaved person gained some amount of literacy, shelhe would begin teaching other members of the community.

Lucy Skipwith's letters to John Hartwell Cocke, on whose plantation she was enslaved, offers another set of histories of schooling in Alabama. Cocke, who was an advocate of African-American migration to Liberia, owned two plantations, one in Virginia and a second near Greensboro, Alabama which was known as the Hopewell plantation. Lucy Skipwith served as Hopewell's seamstress, weaver, nurse, and teacher for about twenty-five years. Her letters to Cocke from the mid-1850s through the Civil War provide an interesting view of how Skipwith struggled between accommodating to Cocke's demands and benefitting from that accommodation, and the apparent re- sentment expressed by other African-Americans and whites on the plantation. In any case, Skipwith taught a day school on the Hopewell plantation from at least 1854 until 1856, when she decided it would be more effective to teach Sunday school only. On August 17, 1854, Skipwith writes: "my School Children that comes to school every


day are improveing in learning, but the boys that do not come every day I fear that I shall never be able to do much with them, as it do not lay upon their mines as it ought. I hope that you will soon be here to help me in this cause for I needs your help very much." Lucy indicates later that part of the reason that these boys are not in her school regularly is that they are working on the plantation.

On May 19, 1855, Skipwith writes: "I am going on with my school as usual, and my children are still improveing. as they are going on reading so well, I am now teaching them to write, and some of them can make letters very well. I am inhopes that some of them will write by the time you come out here I keeps up a night school for the instruction of the Children that work out in the Farm. they seem to improve very slow in reading, but they improve makeing figures very much and they seem to have a great love for it. I think that mr Eastman [who taught a girls' school in Greensboro and sold textbooks] done much good haveing the Black Board made as the Children all love to work on it." By July 20, 1855, however, Skipwith reports that the night school is not going so well: "I am still going on with my School and I can see improvment in the Children every day there is two of the little girls that I think will write very well by Christmas, and three of the Boys. . . . I do not get on with my night School so well at preasant. the nights are so short and the children so sleeppy when they come from work, that I cannot keep theirs eyes open no time, and it will soon be picking Cotton time and when they get through with their Cotton at night it will be too late to keep them up, as they will have to rise early." Despite Cocke's willingness to allow Skipwith to teach these schools, he was not willing to allow schooling to interfere with his profit by lessening the work-load of these students.

Nevertheless, Skipwith continued to teach the day and night schools until July 5, 1856: "I am very much disincuraged with the pressant prospect of my school it seems to be falling every day. in the week days I hardly ever have more than two Children and they are very small, and at my night school1 there is so many of them and I have them such a little while that it is little that I can learn them. my greatest Chance to learn them is on the sabbath. my sabbath school goes on very beautiful." So Skipwith seems to have discontinued the day and night schools in favor of her sabbath school about this time. In October 1859, Skipwith writes that eleven of her thirteen sabbath school students had converted during a religious revival, the other two were still too young. Skipwith taught this sabbath school until sometime just before August 15, 1863, when she wrote to Cocke that some whites had threatened to punish her if she did not stop, and that she was waiting until they left her alone to continue teaching.Io2

Horace Mann Bond has suggested that other Alabama schools may have been protected through the efforts of Creoles of color who petitioned the Legislature in 1833 to uphold the rights guaranteed them in the treaties associated with the Louisiana Purchase. Mobile and Baldwin County Creoles of color seem to have been successful in also having money allocated for schools they maintained.Io3 The 1860 census listed 114 "free colored" children attending school in the city of Mobile. Bond goes on to say that the editor of a Reconstruction newspaper, Mobile Nationalist, was educated at public expense in Mobile prior to the war.'04 It seems likely that the relatively late, rapid increase in the population of enslaved African-Americans in Alabama, like Texas, in part hindered the development of schools. Bond is willing to discount almost


any schooling efforts from within Alabama, suggesting that those who could read and write had learned in other states prior to moving or being moved to Alabama.

However, the autobiography of Rev. Stephen Walter Rogers, as told to Nathan Wil- ley, along with the other narratives I have referred to already, offer some sense that Alabama was not totally without African-American schools. Rogers, a prominent pastor of St. Thomas' Church in New Orleans in 1866, was born in North Carolina and lived in Louisiana until he was fifteen, when he was sold to a planter in Alabama. Rogers became the "body-servant" of the planter's nephew, and Rogers asked if this man might teach him to read. The man bought Rogers a Webster's Blue Back Speller, and warned him that it would be his death if he was caught with it, and then over the next three months, proceeded to teach Rogers to read late at night after the overseer had gone to bed. At the end of three months the man left to go to college, but Rogers had acquired enough reading md writing skills to begin to teach some carefully se- lected enslaved African-American~.'~~

Willey writes:

The school-room was a stable-loft over the carriage house; but for prudential reasons the school was never opened until ten o'clock at night, when they were satisfied that all the white people in the place had gone to bed. The usual school session lasted from ten until two in the morning. The school furniture was of the simplest kind; the seats were piles of corn, bundles of fodder, old harness, horse-collars, etc. Tallow-candles of their own manufacture were used by the pupils for lights, and the candlesticks were made of thick pieces of plank with holes bored in them; lamps were also made of tin, shaped somewhat like an oyster-shell with a wick at the end: these being filled with lard and the wick ignited gave a dim light. The pupils, disposed in two rows on each of the seats, sat back to back, and left a space between the seats sufficiently wide for the teacher to pass. The number of pupils which he usually had was about forty. . . .

This was an exceedingly large school, and the efforts to keep it hidden were extensive; fodder, cotton, rags and moss were stuffed into the cracks to keep the light from shining through, and in the winter, the school moved into the basement to which Rog- ers had the key.'" Certainly the material conditions which Rogers told Willey about suggests that every necessity for operating the school was made or gotten (probably at considerable risk); the clear implication being that these students were decidedly com- mitted to learning.

Willey goes on to describe how books were obtained for the school: ". . . and as books were scarce and rather an unsafe investment, five pupils usually read out of one book, they holding the book and light alternately. Through the connivance of the young master a few spelling and copy books had been obtained for the use of the school; but after he left the plantation the school was supplied by a jew peddler passing through the place and doing a business decidedly contraband, who furnished the negroes with twenty-five spellers at the price of one dollar each, which were kept carefully concealed when not in use." Twenty-five dollars is a fairly extraordinary amount of money for enslaved rural African-Americans to have had access to, and it certainly represents a willingess to go to great lengths to learn. Willey says that each pupil paid about twelve and one half cents per month to attend the school, just enough to pay for the books.Io7

At the end of about one year, all of the enslaved African-Americans but five were sold and dispersed. Rogers was not sold, but was brought to New Orleans. In 1850,


Willey concludes, "while acting in the capacity of a preacher, he published a small book of about fifty pages, consisting of extracts from his sermons, Bible narratives, hymns, and religious meditations, for the use of his Sunday-school." At the time of publication, Rogers was still enslaved, although living in New Orleans and running a Sunday-school. In a brief note accompanying the book, Rogers apparently states ex- plicitly that he wants to make sure the reader is clear that his text was published before the war and while he was enslaved.108 Like a number of teachers before and af-ter him, the work that Rogers did spanned a number of social institutions and thrived despite the conditions of enslavement.

Conditions in Mississippi might be considered to have been virtually the same as those in Alabama. All three of the schools that I have been able to identify were taught by and for enslaved African-Americans. The first was attended by Mark Oliver who was born in 1856 in the Southern part of Washington County, Mississippi, near Lake Washington. Oliver told an interviewer: "The only book learning we ever got was when we stole it. Master bought some slaves from Cincinnati, that had worked in white folks houses. They had stole a little learning and when they came to our place they passed on to us what they knew. We wasn't allowed no paper and pencil. I learned all my A.B.C's without it. I knows how to read and aint never been in a school room in my life. There was one woman by the name Aunt Sylvia. She was so smart she foreknowed things before they took p l a ~ e . " ' ~ Oliver's histories suggest that at least some of the enslaved brought literacy skills with them when they were sold South, and alongside this forced migration was the development of schooling in certain of the communities that they arrived in.

The second school taught by and for enslaved African-Americans in Mississippi was remembered by Mandy Jones. Jones was born in the countryside near Crawford, Lowndes County. Jones says, "I never did learn to read much. I went to school atter the S'render, when I was about 13 years old. My teacher was a bright mulatto young man. They said he got his learnin' in a school taught in a cave durin' slavery days, un be knownst to the white folks." Jones does not specify where this school was. In a second interview, Jones elaborated on schooling during enslavement:

I 'members what dey done in slave times, I was a chile but I used to set an' lissen to 'em talk. De slaves would run away sometimes, an' hide out in de big woods. Dey would dig pits, an kiver the spot wid bushes an' vines, an' mebbe lay out fer a whole year. An' dey had pit schools in slave days too. Way out in de woods, dey was woods den, an' de slaves would slip out o' de Quarters at night, an go to dese pits, an some niggah dat had some learnin' would have a school. . . . Der was a yaller slave man named Gunn, an' his young marster taught him so good, dat atter a while he taught a pit school hisself. Dis Gunn had a boy named Henry, who learned in his daddy's pit school, an' atter de S'render, Henry Gunn had a school for de cullud chilluns. He was my onlies' teacher, but I didn't learn much, I was too big to go to school, 13 years ole, but I had to work in de fiel! We learned firs' de A B C's, den 1-o-g, log, d-o-g, dog, jes' like dat, yo knows how it goes, de Blueback speller."O

Jones makes consistent references to the light color of the Gunn family, and implies that they may have held a different status because of it. Jones' description of the pits is a helpful insight into another mechanism by which clandestine schools were run and kept hidden.

21 AFRICAN-AMEMCM SCHOOLING

The final clandestine school located in Natchez, Mississippi has become probably the best known as well. However, surprisingly little is known about Milla Granson (or Lila Grandison, as Gutman suggests) or the school.111 Granson, had been taught to read in Kentucky by the white children of the plantation owner. Upon this man's death, Granson was sold to a plantation in Mississippi where she was a field hand. She was subjected to harsh work conditions and beaten by the overseer for not keeping up, and her health began to give out. The plantation owner, seeing her condition, gave her permission to work part of the time in the kitchen instead of the field. Some- time around her partial change in jobs, Granson began to teach in a back-alley cabin. Granson converted the cabin into a school room.112

Laura Haviland described Granson's work some years later: "Two other schools were taught by colored teachers [in Natchez]; one of these was a slave woman, who had taught a midnight school for years. It was opened at eleven or twelve o'clock at night, and closed at two o'clock A.M. Every window and door was carefully closed to prevent discovery. In that little school hundreds of slaves learned to read and write a legible hand. After toiling all day for their masters they crept stealthily into this back alley, each with a bundle of pitch-pine splinters for lights. . . . Her number of scholars was twelve at a time, and when she had taught these to read and write she dismissed them, and again took her apostolic number and brought them up to the extent of her ability, until she had graduated hundreds. A number of them wrote their own passes and started for Canada, and she supposes succeeded, as they were never heard from. . . . At length her night-school project leaked out, and was for a time sus-pended, but it was not known that seven of the twelve years since leaving Kentucky had been spent in this work. Much excitement over her night-school was produced. The subject was discussed in their legislature, and a bill was passed, that it should not be held illegal for a slave to teach a slave."113

Haviland goes on to quote Granson saying, "I can not tell you how my heart leaped with praise to God when a gentleman called to me one day on the street, and said he would inform me that I could teach my midnight school. if I chose, as they found no law against a slave teaching a slave." Granson re-opened her night school, and a Sun- day school as well.114 In an 1865 listing of Natchez teachers, Granson was included. An 1865 letter to The Freedmen's Bulletin, Granson (identified as Lily Grandison) was said to still be teaching a morning school of about 30 students, and attending an afternoon school for women taught by Mr. Harris.lI5 Clearly, the work that Milla Granson risked so much for during her enslavement, continued well into the period of northern and federal intervention.

Section 2: The Upper South

Part 3

Racial ideology in the upper South (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) was significantly different than in the lower South.

JOURNAL OF MGRO HISTORY

In the upper South, the abolitionist movement was far stronger, although it was inter- woven with a desire to be "rid" of the "slavery problem." Abolitionism was mixed with colonization efforts, and an ever increasing practice of selling African-Americans "down the river." Nevertheless, white racial attitudes towards slavery were more those of toleration than the celebration found in much of the deep South. Slavery was considered a necessary evil; many whites viewed African-Americans as biologically infer- ior, but with a possibility of improvement through social control and acculturation. Free African-Americans, however, were considered as dangerous or idlers, and legal restrictions grew harsher over time. Allowing even the appearance of equality betweeen whites and free African-Americans, it was thought, would undermine white supremacy, and draw into question white rule.Il6 While whites tried to stifle any efforts by African-Americans to build community-based institutions, the cultural basis and demand for these institutions, like schools, overcame the stifling conditions.

African-American schools in Kentucky seem to have been fairly sporadic between statehood in 1792 and 1840.Il7 In 1834, a Mr. and Mrs. Culter briefly taught a school in Louisville, but their school was quickly broken up by hostile whites. In 1839, in Lexington, a Mr. Hodge tried to run a school, and in 1840, a Methodist minister named Crumbie tried to run another school, but like the Culter's school, these were broken up.Il8 Starting in the 1840s, however, the evidence of African-American schools is far better. In Louisville, "a number of free Negro teachers (at least two of them women) opened schools that quickly attracted a substantial number of both free and slave students. . . ."I19 In December 1841, Henry Adams, one of these early teachers and a Baptist preacher, formed a school with only five students. Adams was born in Franklin County, Georgia on December 17, 1802 and ordained in 1825; he moved to Louisville in 1829 and became the pastor of the "colored branch" of the First Baptist Church until 1842 when 475 Africm-Americans formed the First Colored Baptist Church with Adams as their pastor. Adams' school, begun in 1841, grew quickly and he hired four assistants, Annie Lee, Mary Jones Richardson, James M. Priest, and J. C. Corbin. Corbin had been taught in Chillicothe, Ohio, and was hired by Adams in 1848.Iz0 Peter Booth also taught in Louisville during this time, and in the 1850 census, Kentucky free African-Americans reported a total of 288 people attending school, 128 male and 160 frmale.12'

Beginning in 1848, William H. Gibson, a native of Baltimore, opened his own school on Fourth and Green Streets in Louisville. He taught a day and a night school with an enrollment of about one hundred students, many of whom were enslaved, in-cluding William S te~a rd . "~ William H. Steward was born enslaved in Brandenburg, Meade County, on July 26, 1847. When he was very young, he was brought to Louis- ville where he f i s t attended Adams' school. Steward later attended schools hught by William Gibson and R. T. W. James in Louisville, and was considered a very bright scholar.123 Similarly, Bartlett Taylor attended a number of schools in Louisville, including Adams'. Taylor was born enslaved in Henderson County, Kentucky on Febru- ary 14, 1815, the son of Jonathon Taylor, his white owner and his enslaved mother, who was sold to pay off Jonathon Taylor's debts when Baxtlett Taylor was seven. Af- ter being moved to Louisville, Bartlett Taylor hired out his time and learned the butcher's trade. In 1840, Taylor was to be sold to the highest bidder, and he successfully outbid speculators to purchase his freedom. Taylor began to go to a night school


taught by Robert Lane, and took writing lessons from Henry Adams. Taylor learned to read, write, and cipher.lZ4

Schools were also being taught outside of Louisville, of course. Travelers reported finding schools in Richmond, Maysville, and Danville prior to intervention.Iz5 In an interview, Hannah Davidson remembered, "Once, Jim Ferguson, a colored man, came to teach school. The white folks beat and whipped him and drove him away in his un- derwear." Davidson was born on a plantation in Ballard County, Kentucky in 1852. Davidson goes on to say: "The slaves tried to get schools, but they didn't get any. Fi- nally they started a few schools in little log cabins. But we children, my sister and I, never went to This clandestine school was apparently only for adults, probably held late at night, and Davidson's absence from the school leaves few details about what went on in it.

With more success than Jim Ferguson, Sandy Davis taught a school for enslaved students. One student of Davis' was h o l d Gragston, who was born in Mason County just across the Ohio River from Ohio on Jack Tabb's plantation. Gragston, in an interview, said: "Mr. Tabb was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even. But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn't have nothin' to do but teach the rest of us-we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us-how to read and write and cipher. Mr. Tabb liked us to know how to figure. But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time comin', he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we had been lemin' to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us-after gettin' somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn't say he was spoilin' his slaves. . . . He used to call Sandy Davis, the slave who taught me, 'the smartest Nig- ger in Kentu~ky ' . " '~~ moveGragston goes on to explain how, since Tabb let him around during the day and night, he began to help transport runaways across the Ohio River.

Tennessee, although not a border state like Kentucky, had a substantial number of schools as well. Nashville may well have been the center of schooling activities in the state. Daniel Wadkins, who was an assistant teacher in Nashville beginning in 1833, wrote probably the best record of these pre-intervention schools in 1874. Wadkins writes: "On the fist Monday in March 1833, on Church street, between College and Summer, there was a small school, opened by Mr. Alphonso M. Sumner, for colored children, there being an understanding that none but free children should attend." De- spite the apparent "understanding," a numbrer of enslaved African-Americans did attend, some with permission. Sumner was a barber as well as a teacher, and because he had to spend a fair amount of time running his barbering business, he employed Wad- kins to assist him in the teaching of the school. The school had twenty students and was taught for six weeks, at which time a number of the students became sick and it was postponed for two weeks. The school was not started up again because of a severe beating inflicted upon Sumner when he was accused of writing and sending two letters relating to two fugitives in Detroit. Wadkins says: "This occurrence occas- sioned so much feeling against colored schools that the free colored people, then numbering about two hundred, being intimidated, thought it best to wait. . . ."'28


In January 1838, a white man named John Yandle taught in a school organized by free African-Americans. For about a year, Yandle taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geograplhy to about thirty scholars on McLemore street, and then for another year on North High street, until he found work that paid better. Wadkins assisted Yandle the second year that he taught.129 Sarah Porter opened a school in her house on Broad street in 1841, and had about twenty-five students. Porter was born free and had married an enslaved man, also kept a bakeshop which no doubt supported her school. During her second year, Porter was assisted by Wadkins and the school grew substantially. Porter's school moved out of her own house and was held in the house of John Sledge. Rufus Perry, during this early period of Porter's teaching, attended this school in Nashville. Perry was born enslaved and hired out his time in Nashville, but is reported to have held "free" status in Nashville; in any case, he was taken back to the Overton plantation in Smith County, and by 1852, because of his schooling, he was considered "dangerous" on the plantation. He was subsequently sold down the river to Mississippi, but after three weeks in Mississippi, escaped to Canada. Porter entered the ministry in 1854 and attended Kalamazoo Seminary, and in 1887 received the title of Doctor of Philosophy from the State University, Lousiville, Kentucky.130

In 1842, about when Porter's school moved, Wadkins opened his own school in the house of D. Cameron, on Front street near the jail. Wadkins writes of his school: "There was an average attendance of thirty-five scholars, and although it was understood that these schools were for free children, not a session was taught without more or less slave children being admitted and treated precisely as the nominally free." In 1844, Wadkins moved his school to a building near Lick branch, where between 1844- 1850 he taught "a large day and night, or evening, school, being assisted by Mr. Jo-seph Manly and Mr. George Barber. The school numbered some fifty students during this ~ e r i 0 d . l ~ ~

During this period, one of Wadkins' students was James T. Rapier, who would go on to serve as a member of Congress from Montgomery, Alabama during Reconstruc- tion. Sally Thomas, James Rapier's enslaved grandmother, had a son, John in 1808 near Charlottesville, and then had two more children, James P. Thomas and Henry K. Thomas, who were born near or in Nashville. John Rapier (the first son of Sally Thomas) was emancipated, through a combination of a bequeath in a will and the Ala- bama General Assembly's acknowledgment of the will and the manumission as legal, in 1829. John Rapier soon married a free African-American woman from Baltimore, named Susan and had four children: Richard, John Jr., Henry, and James. Susan died in 1841, and in 1848 John Sr. acquired a young enslaved woman named Lucretia; together, they had five more children (Rebecca, Joseph, Thomas, Charles, and Susan), but because Lucretia was enslaved, they could not legally marry. These children were legally born enslaved, and despite numerous efforts, John Rapier could not free his fa1ni1y.l~~

In his autobiography, James Thomas (who is John Rapier's brother) writes of his schooling at the same schools that would be attended later by John Rapier's children: "School was kept occassionally. It was regarded a great favor to have it allowed at any time. Each pupil or scholar paid one dollar per month; often there was no school because there was no teacher. When I was quite young, there was a colored man who taught school and was a fine scholar himself; one night he was taken out by what was


termed the slicks and whipped pretty near to death. The leader of the gang was a son of the most distinguished jurist in the state. A good man and a bad son. So they said, after that the colored teachers were afraid to try. . . ." This is clearly a description of Alphonso Sumner being beaten. James Thomas, having been born in 1827, would have been six years old when Sumner's school was stopped by Two other teachers who apparently helped educate James Thomas were Samuel Lowery and Ru- fus Conrad, the later teaching off and on in the Second Christian Church on Vine

John Rapier (James Thomas' brother) opened a barber shop, and operated it in n o - rence, Alabama for forty years (1829-1869). With some of the earnings from barbering, John Rapier schooled some of his children. During the 1840s and 1850s, John Jr. and James Rapier attended school in Nashville. Writing to his other brother in 1843, John Rapier Sr. explained: "My two sons . . . are with mother [Sally Thomas, in Nashville]. . . . John and James are . . . pleased with grandmother, and Donot want to come home So James John Rapier in 1845, describing to Richard Rapier in Buffalo, New York, how his sons' education progressed said: "John writes very plain for a boy of his age and practice. . . . [he] has much taste for reading as any child I know off and very good arithmetic. . . . James is with Frank Parish this year, and has the promise of twelve dollars per month. [Me] reads well for a lettle Boy. He is taken lessons with Gordan McGowin on the violin. James will make a man of mu- sick I think. He seems very found of it."'36

Wadkins identifies Panish as Sumner's partner in the barbershop who was carrying on business in New Orleans; apparently James Rapier, in 1841, was apprenticed to Frank Parrish to learn the barbering trade in Nashville, and would make twelve dollars through the apprenticeship. At the age of 19, having served a five year apprenticeship with Panish, James Rapier opened his own barber shop. Altogether, James had attended six years of schooling in Nashville. Two generations of the Rapier-Thomas family attended schools in Nashville; schools run by a number of African-American teachers including Wadkins, Sumner, Conrad and Lowery.I3'

Wadkins taught his own school almost continuously in Nashville from 1844 until 1856, moving five times during that twelve years. h 1855, it opened on the corner of Line and McLemore, near to where Wadkins had been an assistant in Yandle's school, but the school operated for only two months at this location. Wadkins had sixty students attending at the time, but one night about a dozen "citizens" called at his home, and told Wadkins to immediately stop teaching; if he wanted to teach it had to be done in a neighboring free state. They told him that the 'Y~eighborhood" objected, and if he refused to heed their warning, he must be prepared to "look out for the conse- quences." Wakdins allowed the school to remain closed for the rest of that year, but in 1856, the school re-opened for seven months near the Louisville depot. Wadkins quotes the captain of the police as telling him that he was ordered by Council not to teach another day, that they were in possession of "a great many facts that convinced them that the negroes contemplated a general insurrection," thereby presenting the dominant white attitude that schooling led to insurrection, and forcing the school to c10se.I~~Wadkins goes on to say that his was the last attempt to form a school in Nashville until 1862. Sally Porter's school had ended around the same time in 1856; Mrs. A. L. Tate had taught a small school at intervals for two or three years before

26 JOURNAL OF NiEGRO HISTORY

1856, as had Mrs. S. Thomas who had taught for about a year with forty students about 1846. In 1862, Wadkins would re-open his school in Nashville in the First Colored Baptist

Outside of Nashville, on a plantation near Memphis on the western edge of the state, after 1850, Louis Hughes attended a school while still enslaved. In his autobiography, published in 1897, Hughes writes:

Thomas, the coachman, and I were fast friends. We used to get together every time we had a chance and talk about freedom. "Oh!" Tom would say, "if I could only write." I remember when Tom f i s t began to take lessons at night from some plasterers, workmen of the neighborhood. They saw that he was so anxious to learn that they promised to teach him every evening if he would slip out to their house. I, too, was eager to learn to read and write, but did not have the opportunity which Tom had of getting out at night. I had to sleep in the house where the folks were, and could not go out without being observed, while Tom had quarters in another part of the establishment, and could slip out unobserved. Tom, however, consoled me by saying that he would teach me as soon as he knew how. So Tom one night put a copy of some figures on the side of the barn for me to practice from. I took the chalk and imitated him as near as I could, but my work was poor besides his, as he had been learning for some months, and could make the figures quite well and write a little. Still I kept trying. Tom encouraged me and telling me that I would learn in time. "Just keep trying," said he. When this f i s t lesson was over, I forgot to rub out the marks on the barn, and the next morning when Old Master Jack, who happened to be at our home just at that time, went out there and saw the copy and my imitation of it, he at once raised great excitement by calling attention to the rude characters and wanting to know who had done that. I was afraid to own that I had done it; but old Master Jack somehow surmised that it was Tom or I, for he said to Boss: "Edmund, you must watch those fel- lows, Louis and Thomas, if you don't they will get spoilt-spoilt. They are pretty close to town here-here." Tom and I laughed over this a good deal and how easily we slipped out of it, but con- cluded not to stop trying to learn all we could.'40

The schools in Kentucky and Tennessee suggest some of the ways in which both free and enslaved African-Americans taught and learned in pre-1861 schools. Violence and the threats of violence did not deter the efforts to form schools in either state. Cer- tainly the laugh that Tom and Louis Hughes had from successfully avoiding punishment was shared by other African-Americans who participated in schooling, but the attainment of a "forbidden fruit" is not how Hughes and most other students explained the attempts to form schools; rather, as Hughes points out, schooling was more directly equated with freedom. While some whites expressed explicit fears that literacy was equivalent to insurrection or at the very least a challenge to their power and rule, African-Americans, as H have argued before, held a far more compelx attitude towards schooling.

North Carolina, being colonized before Kentucky and Tennessee and being a coastal state into which enslaved Africans were directly imported, suggests somewhat different histories of schooling. North Carolina, like almost all of the Southern states, passed increasingly restrictive anti-literacy laws as schools thrived, but the laws did not stop the formation of One of the best known (or at least one of the most focused upon) North Carolina schools was taught by John Chaves. Chaves, in a letter to his friend Willie Mangum in 1832, wrote, "if I am Black, I am free born American and a revolutionary soldier."142 Chaves apparently attended the Washington Academy (which would become the Washington College in 1813, and the Washington and Lee University in 1871) in Lexington, Virginia. In a certification of Chaves' free status, a

court in Rockbridge County, Xrginia said that Chaves was considered free, respecta- ble, and had been a student at the Washington Acadenay where he had completed a regular course of academic studies.143 In 1801, Chaves was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Lexington in Virginia, and after passing a aumbr of trials, Chaves was appointed as a missionary among Afican-Americans. Chaves' missionary circuit included parts of Virginia and North Carolina, and between about 1805 and 1825, he preached primarily in Wake, Orange and Granville Counties in North Carolina. In 1832 Chaves found that he could not preach my more because of a Noah Carolina law passed in the Wake of Nat Turner's Southampton insux~ection.'~~

By August 1808, Chaves was naming a school in Raleigh. On August 26, 1808, Chaves ran a notice in the R d e i g h Register: "John Chaves takes this method of in- forming his Employers, and the Citizens of Raleigh in general, that the present Quar- ter of his school will end the 45th of September, and the next will commence on the 19th. He will, at same time, open an Evening School for the pulpose of instructing Children of Colour, as he intends, for the accommodation of some of his employers, to exclude all Children of Golour from his Day School. The Evening School will commence at an hour by Sun. When the white children leave the House, those of colour will take their places, and continue until ten o'clock." Chaves charged white children two and a half dollars per qu&er and African-American children one dollar and three quarters.145 Chaves taught his dual school at least until April 1830, when the editor of the Register, Joseph Gales, reported having attended the examination of the free Afri- can-American students. In an 1832 letter to Mangum (who may very well have been a student of Chaves' prior to serving in the Senate), Chaves indicates that he has just built a school-house and has made arrangements to remain in Raleigh.146 There is some indication that Chaves taught this dual school until his death in 1838.14'

New Bern, North Carolina also had at bast one long running and well established school. This new Bern school was run by John Stuart Stanley and at times taught by Frances Griffith Stanley, John Stuart Stanley was the grandson of a prominent slave- owner, John Wright Stanly, and an African-American woman, most likely enslaved on his plantation. John C. Stanley, John Stuart's father, was a free African-American barber and privately educated his children in Mew Bern. John Stuart Stanley was born as a second generartion h e African-American, owned a prosperous store, and ran a school for free children. Frances Griffith Stanley, who had married John Stuart Stan- ley, taught in the school and raised six children, including Sara who would go to Oberlin College md later return South to teach for the American Missionary Associa- tion. This school, which Frances Stanley taught, was probably opened from about 1830 until 1857 when the family moved to C l e ~ e l m d . ~ ~ ~ Richard Hancock may have attended the Stanley school; Mancock was born to free parents in New Bern on No- vember 22, 1832, and was sent to a privately operated school there. He apparently completed a common school course at this school by the time he was thirteen.'49

Hiram Rhodes Revels attended school in Fayetteville. Revels was born to free parents on September 27, 1827, Revels' autobiography describes this school: "I was early imbued with a love of howledge and it was my determination to educate myself, and become a professional man, and religious teacher. My first educational advantages were when I was between eight and nine years of age. . . . Two fine colored schools were taught in Fayetteville, one by a colored and the other by a white lady. 1 attended


the former, and together with other colored youths was fully and successfully instructed by our able and accomplished teacher in all branches of learning, embraced in the curriculum of that school."'50 After moving to Indiana and attending a Quaker Seminary, Revels moved to Baltimore, and between 1857-1863, he was a minister of an A.M.E. Church and the principal of an African-American high school. In 1863, Revels founded a school for freedmen in St. Louis.15' At about the same time in Fay- etteville, John S. Leary attended a school taught by an African-American woman for about eight years, prior to 1861, quite possibly the same school that Revels had attended.152

The 1850 census for North Carolina provides some further scattered evidence as to schooling. John Hope Franklin compiled a listing by County for the 217 free African- American students (113 male, 104 female) attending school: Wake County, 52 students; Robeson, 47; Craven, 46; Macon, 12; Montgomehy, 7; Randolph, 6; Alamance and Halifax, each with 5 students; Davidson, Hyde, and Watauga, with 4 each; Cleve- land, Duplin, Gates, and Wilkes each with 3; Anson, Beaufort, and Warren each with 2; and Ashe, Caswell, Chowan, Columbus, Richmond, Suny and Wayne each with one.153 Wake County contains Raleigh, and the high number of students for Wake no doubt reflects the schools of Raleigh, and Craven County contains New Bern and probably reflects those schools. Robeson County borders Cumberland County where Fayetteville is, and both Robeson and Cumberland had exceptionally large free Afri- can-American populations in 1860;154 but Cumberland, according to these records had no African-Americans in school in 1850. This is obviously inaccurate as Fayetteville had schools which Leary and Revels attended. In any case, the number of students was clearly not fewer than 217, and this in no way counts enslaved students or clandestine schools.'55

Virginia had not even half the number of reported students in the 1850 census, but probably had an equally large network of schools for free and enslaved African-Amer- i c a n ~ . ' ~ ~Willis Augustus Hodges, for instance, was born to free parents in Blackwater, Princess Anne County, Virginia on February 12, 1815. Hodges writes in his autobiography: "Until this time [about 18221 the kee people of color in this part of Virginia were allowed to receive education. Many did receive enough to be able to read and write. Father sent his children to school to a poor white woman whose name was Wil- son. This woman taught us to read, etc. I was between 7 and 8 when I began to go to school, and continued for several months, which is all the schooling I have ever had. Father, finding it hard to give his children an education in a proper manner, by sending them to Mrs. Wilson's house, resolved to try to educate my brother William J., who was 12 years older than myself, that he (William) might teach the rest of the children. My father, therefore, sent him to the city of Norfolk to school, where he got a tolerable good ed~ca t ion ." '~~ William J. Hodges, instead of simply returning home as his father had planned, became an outspoken critic of enslavement and discrimina- tion against free African-Americans, and was arrested and tried for agitation and forg- ing papers for enslaved African-Americans to escape under a pretext of altering a due-

Maria Louise Moore was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1800 to a Scotch father and a free African-American mother. In 1820, Maria Moore married Adolph Richards who had been born in Guadaloupe and had been educated in London. Oper-

29 AFRICAN-AMIIERICAN SCHOOLING

ating a shop for wood-turning, painting and glazing, Adolph Richards was among a small elite of free African-Americans in Fredericksburg, as was Maria Moore's family. They had fourteen children together, and made every effort to school them. William De Baptiste, a free African-American, allowed his home to be used for a school first taught by an African-American and later by a Scotch-Irishman; this school continued clandestinely after Virginia banned the teaching of African-Americans. Richard De Baptiste, who would later be elected President of the American Baptist Missionary, and who was born to William and Eliza on November f 1, 1831, was a pupil at this school when it was held clandestinely in the De Baptiste home.159 The Moore-Rich- ards' sons and daughters seem to have been sent to this school, and they later sent one boy to the Washington D.C. school maintained by John F. Cook.I6"

Other clandestine schools seemed to have existed throughout Virginia. John Malvin, born in 1795 in Dumfries, Prince William County to a free mother and enslaved father, desired to learn from a very early age. Sometime between 1813 and 1827, Malvin asked an old enslaved African-American man, who h e w how to read and write, to teach him. The man consented, and they whispered to each other so as not to be overheard. Malvin left Virginia for Ohio shortly after this, and in 1832 helped to found an organization in Cincinnati to educate African-American children.I6l Similarly, William Grimes was born in 1784 in King George County to a white planter and an enslaved woman. Although Grimes himself was not schooled, he was apprenticed as an assistant to a white doctor, he writes in his autobiography that his brother, "the mulatto, was sent to school, and I believe had his freedom when he grew up." Grimes eventually escaped, and since he wrote his autobiography in 1855, acquired literacy skills at some point.162

Susan Boggs was interviewed in Canada in 1863, and told the interviewer about schooling her son in a clandestine school in Norfolk. Boggs said: "I had my son taught to read and write while I was there in a secret school, but I was always so busy in getting a little money to pay for it, that I never learned to read myself."'63 Boggs later escaped to Canada. But she offers an interesting view of some of the difficulty in securing schooling: getting the money to pay the teacher. Boggs indicates that she would have, had she been able to, also learned to read and write, but the demands to get the resources to school her son also kept her too busy to attend. It is unclear from the interview when this school operated and when Boggs escaped. In Pe-tersburg, a mixed-color teacher apparently went house ts house, teaching African- Americans secretly. Many of these families may have also had difficulty in raising sufficient amounts of money to pay this teacher. Nevertheless, given the transient structure of the school, it was probably the primary employment of this teacher.'64

In Charlotte County, Eevi Pollard was born enslaved in about 1850. We told an interviewer. "On Sunday evenings us have a man named Dr. Beale Bassette dat Mars bought from some Quaker people. He wuz a preacher, en on Sunday evenings he open his house fer de niggers' chillun ter cum git education. He have Sunday School, where he read de Bible en pray, den he use de New York Primmer with great big letters in hit. He shows us how ter make 'em en us wuz learnin' good when Missy Smith take us bo0ks."'6~ Pollard goes on to explain that Smith did not approve of teaching enslaved African-Americans so she took away their books. Bassette was probably allowed to continue preaching, but he was restricted from teaching a school


on the plantation at which he was also enslaved. Beale did perform marriage ceremo- nies for a number of enslaved residents on the p1anbati0n.l~~

In a series of "Sketches of Old Virginia Family Servants," Betty Brown is depicted as teaching a school near Yorktov~n, Virginia. Brown was the enslaved waiting maid of the widow of General Thomas Nelson, who was killed in the U.S. revolution. Al- though the dates of Brown's life and teaching are uncertain from this sketch, the unidentified author does give a few details of Brown's teaching: "I have only one thing more to tell you of Aunt Betty. She fulfilled the command to give liberally of such things as she had. Her little learning was used for the benefit of all the young of her class, to whom she had access. She had a regular school for all who would come to her, and while learning them to read, I doubt not she often told them the story of re- deeming love."167 Brown, then, taught as many of the enslaved children as she possibly could, although it is uncbar where and how she leamed to read. This school probably operated from just after the revolutionw war for a number of years.

Not far from Yorktown, in Seaford, Virginia, another clandestinely taught school is suggested by the autobiography of Elizabeth Sparks: "I ain't gonna tell yer any more. Cain't tell yes all I know. 01 Shop might come back an' git me. . . . Once in a while they was free nigguhs come fum somewha&. They could come see yer if yer was their folk. Nigguhs used to go way off in the quarters an' slip an9 have meetins. They called it stealin' the meerin9. The children used to teach me to read. Schools! Son, there warn't no schools for niggers. Slaves went to bed when they didn't have anything to do."168 Sparlks gives only a hint that teaching was part of these meetings. It seems possible that the fear that her former owner would come back and get her led to some hedging in answering the interviewers questions, but Sparks does seem to link secret meetings and being taught by children, suggesting that part of the meetings at least, were used for schooling. Her disclaimer about schools seems more a reference to formal schooling than to the clandestine schools more common within enslaved communities.

Narratives from African-Americans enslaved in Maryland offer similar views of clandestine schools. Perhaps the best known teacher of a clandestine school in Mary- land is Frederick Bouglass. Writing about teaching while enslaved in Baltimore about 1833, Douglass says: "In Baltimore I could occassionally get into a Sabbath-school, amongst the free children, and receive lessons with the rest; but having learned to read and write already, I was more a teacher than a scholar, even there. When, however, I went back to the eastern shore and was at the house of Master Thomas, I was not allowed either to teach or to be taught. The whole community, with but one exception, among the whites, frowned upon everything like imparting instruction, either to slaves or to free colored persons. That single exception, a pious young man named Wilson, asked me one day if I would like to assist him in teaching a little Sabbath-school, at the house of a free colored man named James Mitchell. The idea was to me a delight- ful one, and I told him I would gladly devote as much of my Sabbaths as I could command to that laudable work. Mr. Wilson soon mustered up a dozen old spelling- books and a few testaments, and we commenced operations, with some twenty scholars in our school. . . . At our second meeting 1 learned there were some objections to the existence of our school; and sure enough, we had scarcely got to work. . . . when in rushed a mob, headed by two class-leaders, Mr. Wright Faribanlis and Mr. Garrison


West, and with them Master Thomas. . . . One of this pious crew told me that as for me, I wanted to be another Nat Turner. . .

Douglass' very briefly run school offers a number of interesting insights. First, this school, although co-taught by Douglass and a white man, was run in the home of a free African-American rather than the home of the white; this is an interesting example of cross-caste work. Second, it offers a rather unique view of interracial teaching, although Douglass does not provide details of the two times the school was run. Third, one of the important jobs that Mr. Wilson performed, if nothing else, was to ac- quire the textbooks for the school to use. And fourth, despite the presence of a white teacher, the school was broken up, as so many other attempts to form schools were stopped by hostile and violent whites. Douglass' re-telling the accusation that he wanted to be another Nat Turner, indicates again the dominant attitude of white planters that literacy and schools led to insurrection, and anyone engaged in teaching or learning wanted to overthrow white rule. Yet Douglass, while certainly wanting to do just that, also says that part of learning to read was good work because it allowed the enslaved to read the gospel, suggesting that the reduction, made by whites, of schooling only being trained toward insurrection was simplistic.

Douglass was to teach again, this time while enslaved at the farm of Mr. Freeland about 1835-1836. Douglass says the conditions at Freeland's farm were better than previous places at which he had been enslaved, but most importantly, at Freeland's, Douglass found himself in a group of smart and trusted companions. He writes:

Henry and John Harris were brothers, and belonged to Mr. Freeland. They were both remarkably bright and intelligent, though neither of them could read. Now for mischief! I had not been long here before I was up to my old tricks. I began to address my companions on the subject of education, and the advantages of intelligence over ignorance, and, as far as I dared, I tried to show the agency of ignorance in keeping men in slavery. Webster's spelling-book and the Columbian Orator were looked into again. As summer came on, and the long Sabbath days stretched themselves over our idleness, I became uneasy, and wanted a Sabbath-school, where to exercise my gifts, and to impart the little knowledge 1 possessed to my brother-slaves. A house was hardly necessary in the summer time; I could hold my schools under the shade of an old oak tree as well as anywhere else. The thing was to get the scholars, and to have them thoroughly imbued with the desire to learn. Two such boys were quickly found in Henry and John, and from them the contagion spread. I was not long in bringing around me twenty or thirty young men, who enrolled themselves gladly in my Sabbath- school, and were willing to meet me regularly under the trees or elsewhere, for the purpose of learning to read. It was surprising with what ease they provided themselves with spelling-books. These were mostly the cast-off books of their young masters or mistresses. I taught at first on our own farm. All were impressed with the necessity of keeping the matter as private as possible, for the fate of the St. Michaels attempt was still fresh in the minds of all. Our pious masters of St. Michaels must not know that a few of their dusky brothers were learning to read the word of God, lest they should come down upon us with the lash and chain. . . . After getting school nicely started a second time, holding it in the woods behind the barn, and in the shade of the trees, I succeeded in in- ducing a free colored man who lived several miles from our house to permit me to hold my school in a room at his house. He incurred much peril in doing so, for the assemblage was an unlawful one. I had at one time more than forty scholars, all of the right sort, and many of them succeeded in learning to read. I have had various employments during my life, but I look back to none with more satisfaction. An attachment, deep and permanent, sprung up between me and my persecuted pupils, which made my parting from them intensely painful. Besides my Sunday-School, I devoted three evenings a week to my other fellow slaves during the winter.170


Douglass points out that the school drew not only from within the boundaries of Free- land's farm, but from neighboring farms as well, indicating that schools crossed the boundaries of the farms to draw from geographic regions rather than specific white properties. In fact, this school may have been the only time that this group of en-slaved men, from different farms, gathered together. It is curious that Douglass' school taught only men; it seems to be one of the few enslaved schools that supported a sex- based distinction of students rather than taking anyone who could get to the school.

Douglass' 1833 school in Baltimore was one of many in a long tradition of schooling for that city. In 1797 the Baltimore African Academy was opened by a group of free African-Americans.171 This may well have been the school opened by a group of African Methodists in a building on 5th Street. At least in 1812, this African Method- ist school was being taught by Daniel Coker, who also served as pastor to the congregation and was one of the 16 founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). The daughters of George Bell who taught probably the ealiest African-Ameri- can school in Washington D.C., attended Coker's school between 18 12-1 8 1 5.172 In 1818, Coker changed the name of the school to the Bethel Charity school, which employed two teachers, had 95 students, and a supporting committee of 3 whites and 9 African-American men. In 1828, Bethel Charity merged with the African Methodist Sharp St. Church And in 1833, this school was reported to be very large.174 The Sharp Street school was taught by William Watkins, and had about seventy students.175

In 1803, a deed conveyed a lot and building to a group of free African-Americans, and bound them to use it as a school for "African children" and as an African Meth- odist Episcopal Church. In 1805, a new building was erected and an appeal for public funds was issued; and in 1811, they purchased the adjoining lot, and operated the school continuously after that point, until 1828 when it became known as Union Sem- inary under the direction of a free African-American teacher, William Li~e1y . I~~ And by 1833, at least two other schools were being operated, one under the direction of William Livingston in an African church at Saratoga and North Streets which had about eighty students, and a second at the Methodist Bethel Church on east Saratoga, taught by John F ~ r t i e . l ~ ~ at-William Gibson, who would later teach in Louisville, tended Fortie's school for a number of years after about 1834.178

Many, although not all of Baltimore's schools were affiliated with African-American churches. By 1841, the Baltimore Station of the AME church was operating one day school with 50 students and one teacher. And in 1842, the "Frenchtown" circuit of the AME, which was within the Baltimore Conference area, ran 2 day schools. And by 1843, the AME reported 3 day schools within the Baltimore C0nferen~e.I~~ In June 1829, a religious society of African-American women opened a school for African- American girls. This school is reported to have taught French, English, ciphering and writing, sewing in all its branches, embroidery, washing and ironing, at a cost of 48 dollars per year for tuition and boarding. This group of women seems to have immi- grated from Santo Domingo, and formed the St. Frances Academy in connection with the Oblate Sisters of Providence Convent in Baltimore. The stated aim of the school was to train either mothers or household servants. The sisters purchased a three story brick building for their school and residence (on Richmond Street).I8O A number of


free women, who graduated from this Academy opened schools of their own in Baltimore.18'

In 1835, Nelson Wells, a free African-American, left ten thousand dollars to appointed trustees to be appropriated for the education of free African-Americans. The Wells school was established in 1835 and was still running after the Civil War.Ig2 A number of schools had much shorter durations than the Wells School. For instance, in Hagerstown, a day school ran for a short time, but was quickly forced to close; the Wayman family ran a school for a brief time in Caroline; and a mixed-color man named Hall ran a short-lived school in Anne Ar~nde1 . I~~ But in general, the church-affiliated schools in Maryland seem to have been mostly in Baltimore, and were domi- nated and sustained for very long stretches of time. The 1850 census showed Mary- land with 1,616 free African-Americans enrolled in schools; this is by far the highest number for a southern state.Is4

Part 4 African-American schools in Washington, D.C. have been probably the most studied

of any in the South.Is5 Washington, here consists of its pre-1846 designation. In 1846, Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia, and the schools in Alexandria therefore came under Virginia law which forced a number of them to close. However, the similarities between Alexandria and Washington as compared to the development of schooling in the rest of the upper South, and the pre-1846 unity of the city, warrants its treatment as a single local region. Washington remained a city of the South, and although schools for enslaved African-Americans were certainly run, far more attention has been given to the formal schools of free African-Americans. The 1850 census showed only 467 free African-Americans attending school in Washington, but like the rest of the figures of the 1850 census, this is probably considerably underestimated.Is6

In 1807, George Bell, Nicholas Franklin and Moses Liverpool built the first schoolhouse specifically for the schooling of African-American students. Bell, Franklin and Liverpool had been enslaved in Maryland and Virginia. Franklin and Liverpool were caulkers, employed at the Navy Yard. Bell was enslaved in Washington, the house-servant of Anthony Addison. Sophia Browning, George Bell's wife, was enslaved in household of Rachel Pratt, the mother of Governor matt of Maryland; Sophia Brown- ing saved some four hundred dollars by selling garden produce in Washington, and with the help of a Methodist preacher, bought her husband's freedom, and shortly after, Bell bought Sophia Browning's freedom. Two of the Bell's daughters, born free, attended Daniel Coker's school in Baltimore. Bell, Franklin and Liverpool's building was used as a schoolhouse from in completion in 1807 for a number of years, and then until 1818 as a residence. The school was taught by a white man, Mr. Lowe, between about 1807 and probably 1814.Ig7 The building may have been burned down in 1814, during the war of 1812, when the Navy Yard was burned.Ig8

By 1818, the building had been rebuilt, and was again being used as a schoolhouse, now known as the Bell School. The reorganized school was sponsored by the newly founded Resolute Beneficial Society, a group of free African-Americans; and on Au- gust 29, 1818 the Society ran a notice that the school would receive "free people of color and others," indicating that the students were both free and enslaved. The notice


also specified that the curriculum would include: reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar and other branches of educa t i~n . ' ~~ A night school was also organized by the Society to take place in the schoolhouse. The Society hired a white teacher, Mr. Pied-mont, for two or three years, and then about 1820, John Adams, an African-American shoemaker was hired to teach. The school ran until about 1822, when Adams began another school, and the schoolhouse again became a residence for part of the Bell family.'"

In 1810, another African-American taught school was begun by Anna Maria Hall. Hall's school, on First street, just behind the Capitol, operated between 1810 and 1820, at which time Hall moved the school to a house on A street. Hall had been born in Prince George County, Maryland and had been schooled along with some white children in Alexandria. Hall suported her family by teaching between 1810 and about 1835; her schools were large and successful throughout this period. She was an assistant teacher in John Prout's free school beginning in about 1833, which had about 150 students. Hall's 1810 school was probably one of the first schools taught by an Afri- can-American woman in Washington.lgl

Maria Becraft founded a school for African-American girls in 1820. Becraft was born in 1805 in Washington to free parents; her father was chief steward at the Union Hotel and her mother had gone to school and taught in Washingt~n. '~~ Marie Becraft had attended a school taught by a white man named Henry Potter, whose school operated for an unclear number of years starting in 1809, for about 1 year, and then transfemed to Mary Billing's school for about 8 years. Billings, an English woman, taught day and night schools between 1810 and 1825, until she became too sick to continue. Upon graduation in about 1820 at the age of fifteen, Becraft opened a school on Dunbarton street in Washington, and taught a tuition school there for 7 years. Becraft then moved her school to Fayette street across from the convent, into a larger space, and taught 30-35 students per year for the next four years. This school was a Catholic seminary for girls. In August 1831, Becraft joined the convent of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an African-American order of nuns which ran the St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, and turned her seminary school over to Ellen Simonds and some of her other students. Becraft, after changing her name to Sister Aloyons, taught at the St. Frances Academy in Baltimore until her death, December 16, 1833.Ig3 A second Cath- olic school was taught for a number of years in Georgetown by Nancy Grant about 1828.1g4

Henry Smothers built a schoolhouse on the comer of Fourteenth and H streets about 1823. Smothers had been a student of Billings also, and then opened a school on Washington street in Georgetown about 1820, before he moved it to Washington; the Western Academy, taught by Smothers, opened in Washington and was operated for a short time until Smothers moved into the new schoolhouse when it was completed in 1823. Smothers continued teaching for two more years, with about 150 students per year. Smothers was silcceeded in running this school in 1825 by John Prout. The school under Prout's teaching, was governed by a Board of Trustees, and was known as the Columbian Institute. This school was supported by a twelve and one half cents per month subscription rate, but the tuition fee was apparently not compulsory: Prout admitted anyone who wanted to attend. Afer a few years of financial difficulty, the


school changed to a regular tuition school. In 1834, John F. Cook took over teaching from Rout. Cook was the third Afsican-American head teacher at this school.

Cook had been enslaved until about 1828, when his aunt, Alethia Tamer had been able to purchase his freedom. He had learned to be shoemaker when he was young, but due to a physical injury to his shoulder, he took an assistant messenger's job in 1831. Cook had attended the Smothers and $Pout school, before 1831, but his job did not allow him to continue. By 1834, Cook had successfully prepared himself to teach, and took over the teaching in the Smothers schoolhouse. However, a number of schools were attacked during the Snow Riot sf September 1835, when ;a group of white mechanics attacked Benjamin Snow, an African-American restaurant owner near the Navy Yard, and then attacked other African-Americans throughout Washington, fo- cusing especially on destroying schools and churches. Cook was particulxly endan- gered, and was forced to flee the city. The rioters marched on the Smothers schoolhouse and destroyed all the books m d furniture, and part of the building itself. Cook, moved to Columbia, Pemsylvania, and taught a school until 1836 when he returned to Washington.

In 1836, Cook reopened his school as the Union Seminary. Cook developed a three year course of study, and divided the school into male and female departments, the latter being taught for a number of years by Catherine Costin. The school had between 100 and 150 students per year during the next twenty five years. At one point, Cook tried to limit the number of students in order to run a high school, but the demand was too great, and the school maintained its size. Cook sent two of his own sons to Oberlin, and upon their return, they also taught schools. Eliza Anne Cook, one of John Cook's daughters also taught a school until 11866; she taught her own school with about 25 or 30 students on Sixteenth street between K and L between 1854-58, and then taught in the Smother's schoolhouse. Cook's second daughter was teaching in a public school in 1871. John Cook died on March 21, 1855, and John F. Cook Jr. took over the teaching for two years, when his brother George Cook took over teaching duties; George Cook moved the school from the Smothers Schoolhouse in 1858 to the basement of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, and kept the school running until July, 1859. John Cook Ja. built a new schoolhouse in 1862, and continued teaching in Washington until 1867.'95

Louisa Parke Costin established a school in her father's house in 1823, the same time that Smother's schoolhouse had been built. Louisa Parke Costin and six siblings attended bi-racial schools in Washington. At the age of 19, Louisa Park Costin opened her school which she taught until her death in 1831. Zn 1832, when her sister Martha returned from an African-American convent school in Baltimore, she reopened the school which she taught in until 1839.'% Mary Wormley taught her own school from about 1830 until about 1832. Mary Wormley's brother William built a schoolhouse for her, and helped send her the "Colored Female Seminary of Philadelphia" which was taught by Sarah Douglass. Mary \Vormley's school became v e y successful just before her health forced her to stop teaching. And in 1834, William Thomas Lee opened a school in the Wormely schoolhouse, but this school was destroyed by white rioters during the Snow Riots of 1835. Sometime after the riots, Margaret Thompson repaired the building, and opened her own school in it. In 1846, Thompson opened another school with about 48 students which lasted for a number of years as well.'97


Benjamin McCoy opened a school in 1833 on L between Third and Fourth Streets. McCoy had been schooled in the Willing's and Smother's schools. The following year he moved to Massachusetts Avenue, and continued to teach there until 1836 when he replaced John Cook as teacher in a school in Columbia, Pennsylvania for a year. Re- turning to Washington in 1837, McCoy reopened his school in the basement of the Asbury church. For the next 12 years he taught in the Asbury church.lg8 Also in 1833, James Enoch Ambush opened a school in the basement of Israel Bethel Church. For the next 10 years, Ambush taught in varying locations until he built a schoolhouse on E street, near Tenth. Ambush named his school the Wesleyan Seminary, and taught this school for 32 years.lg9

In Alexandria, Alfred Parry began teaching a night school sometime in the 1830s. Pany was born enslaved in Alexandria in 1805, and attended a Lancasterian school organized in about 1813 by an association of free African-Americans and taught by a white Methodist pastor. Parry's night school attracted a great deal of attention in 1837, when the mayor of Alexandria declared that the school was illegal. Pany hired a white man to be present in his school, and without approval or further intervention, continued to teach. Not long after this, Pany opened a day school which he taught until 1843. He taught between 75 and 100 boys and girls, and a number of enslaved students each term. Some slave-owners apparently paid tuition. Near to the Lancasterian school, Sylvia Morris taught a school. Between about 1826 and 1846, Morris taught a flourishing school which may have been attended by Mary Kelsey. In 1846, when Al-exandria was retroceded to Virginia, this school, along with a number of other Alexan- dria schools were forced to close.200

Between 1830 and 1861, Washington also housed a fair number of African-Ameri- can taught schools which ran either more sporadically, or about which I have found less material. Robert Brown taught a small school for a number of years beginning in about 1830; Fanny Hampton taught a school on Nineteenth and K streets between 1833 and about 1842; Margaret Hill taught in Georgetown for a number of years beginning in about 1840; Joseph Mason who had attended Prout's and then Cook's schools, taught a large school of about 100 stbldents in Georgetown between 1840 and 1860; Alexander Cornish taught for about six years beginning in 1840, and had about 40 students per year, and in 1846 Cornish was succeeded by Richard Stokes; Mrs. Al- exander Hays taught from 1841-1845, and was succeeded by Mr. Hays from 1845- 1847 who also taught a night school; John Thomas Johnson taught a very large school, numbering 200 students at its height, in a schoolhouse he built between 1843- 1849; Elizabeth Smith taught a school between 1843 and 1860 near Capitol Hill; similarly, Charlotte Gordon taught between about 1846 and 1861, at three different locations in Washington; Charles Middleton between 1848 and 1857; Charlotte Beams taught a school, whcih became a school for girls, for a number of years starting in 1850; Isabella Briscoe taught in Georgetown between 1850 and 1861; James Shorter taught in the Israel Bethel Church for a short time about 1851; Annie Washington taught about 60 students for several years beginning in 1857; the St. Vincent de Paul Society ran a series of schools between 1858 (in the Smothers schoolhouse) and 1861, with between 100 and 150 students per year; Thomas Mason taught a large school of about 100 students for two years (1859-61); and William Hunter, Chauncey Leonard,

and Eliza Brooks each taught large schools for about a year each between 1859 and 1861.201

Washington was certainly not lacking privately run schools. Arabella Jones began teaching in 1852 and ran a school for a number of yesus. Jones had been schooled at the St. Francis Academy in Baltimore and by her parents. The 1852 prospectus for Jones' school, the St. Agnes Academy, set out the terms for the school: board and tuition cost eighteen dollars per quarter, French lessons cost five dollars, music lessons cost ten dollars, bedding cost two and the "use of piano" cost one dollar; Jones suggested that interested people who could not pay, write to her. Jones wrote: "The object of this academy is of great importance, particularly to those who are devoid of schools in their vicinity, and also to society at large. Here the poor are educated gratu- itously, the orphans clothed, educated, and a good wade given them. Females in this age are naturally destined to become either mothers of familes or household ser-v a n t ~ . ' ' ~ ~ ~ prospectus offers somewhat rare view of gendered educational Jones' a practices that were probably common by at least I850 in Washington. Although Jones probably brought this gender ideology from St. Francis in Baltimore, many of the schools in Washington most likely shared the gender-based cuPkculurn that prepared girls to be either mothers or domestic worlters; it is interesting that Jones who had been trained in a school with a similar mission began to teach upon graduation, and did not immediately become either a domestic worker or a mother.

Emma Brown, who was one of Myrtilla Miner's students, taught a school in Wash- ington as well. When Miner went north to recuperate, Brown and a white woman named Emily Howland took over the teaching of Miner's School for Colored Girls be-tween autumn 1857 and November 1858. During a period when Howland returned to the North to care for her mother, Brown ran the school. In an October 7, 1858 letter to Howland, Brown writes: "My school is prospering. There are twelve scholars, all interested in their studies and endeavoring to excel. 1 tried to get up a class for the students you mentioned but all say that they have their living to work for and though they would like to learn, have no time to spare. . . . They are trying to pass a bill here, the object of which is to make all free colored persons pay five dollars for the privilege of living in the Capital of this fpee and glorious republic. It is to [be] hoped that such an unjust and odious bill will be cast aside. The girls that I asked to organ- ize a class are indignant because of this detestable bill, yet they will not endeavor to elevate themselves by education, and thus overthrow such vile laws, which must be annihilated by the mightiest of the weapons-kn~wledge?~ Brown's conception of the role of education is fairly evident: that it was a tool in the struggle against oppression. And while she suggests some disgust with her prospective students who turned her down for lack of time, Brown also points to some of the obstacles that had to be faced in running a school.

In a letter to Miner from Washington dated November 5 , 1858, Brown writes: "Miss Howland has returned accompanied by Miss Anna Searing (a Quaker) as assistant teacher. When I found that my services were no longer needed I had some idea of opening in Georgetown, but Miss Howland persuaded me to study and delay teaching until spring." Miner supported Brown's idea of opening her own school, although Dorothy Sterling points out that the flattering and self-deprecating tone Brown used in her letters to Miner were absent from other letters, suggesting that Brown deeply felt

I


the hostility Miner expressed towards African Americans.204 In the summer of 1859, Brown did open her own school while she was waiting to go to Oberlin College. Re- turning home in 1861, Brown again began to teach her own school in Washington; by 1864, Brown was teaching a school in the Ebenezer Church on Capitol Hill which was run by the Board of Trustees of Public Schools of the District of Columbia.205

African-American taught and run schools prior to 1861 in the South constitute a significant community based effort to build and sustain institutions based on the social and cultural beliefs of those communities. These histories are critical to an understanding of the beliefs and values of Southern African-American communities, and to an understanding of how these beliefs and values formed the foundation on which communities built institutions in the face of overwhelming oppression. The widespread, successful efforts to create schools as institutions in the face of overwhelming repression provides critical knowledge about how African-Americans viewed themselves and made sense of the struggle for equality and justice.

NOTES

There is some disagreement about the nationality of Mary Kelsey's father: Robert Engs p. 12, (Free-dom's First Generation, Philadelphia: 1979) says that he was French, based on interviews with the family in 1973; Lewis C. Lockwood p. 5 (Mary S. P e a k , The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe, Boston, 1863; reprinted New York: 1969) says that he was an Englishman, and most people have cited Lockwood in claiming his English heritage. It is not particularly relevant here in either case.

Lewis Lockwood, Mary S. P e a k p. 6. It seems likely that Mary Kelsey attended Sylvia Morris' school in Alexandria because it seems to be

the only school operated by an African-American woman in Alexandria at the time (M.B. Godwin, Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia, 1871 p. 284, reprinted New York: 1969). It is possible that Kelsey attended school in D.C. (of which Alex- andria was still part at the time); if so, three other schools would be possible: Mrs. Anne Marie Hall (at First St.), Miss Maria Becraft (Fayette St., in Georgetown), or Miss Louisa Parke Costin (A St.) [all of these are discussed by Godwin, and I will return to them later].

Godwin, Special Report p. 284; Lockwood, Mary S. Peake p. 7. Godwin says that Nuthall taught in Al-exandria between 1833-1836 and then he moved his school to Georgetown; Lockwood says that Nuthall's school was the last attended by Kelsey in Alexandria in 1839, which would imply that Nuthall was still teaching there, but it is possible (even likely) that Lockwood considered Alexandria and D.C. the same, and inaccurately said Alexandria. If this is true, it would be more likely that Kelsey attended any of the four schools listed in the footnote above.

Lockwood, Mary S. P e a k pp. 6-7; Sylvia Dannett (Profile of Negro Womanhood Vol. 1, Yonkers: 1964-66) p. 160. It seems common at this period that boys and girls received the same official school sub- jects, but that girls additionally learned sewing and needlework as a way to earn a living. As an extensive example, see the annual reports of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia between 1857-1865.

Eockwood, Mary S. P e a k p. 12. 'Lockwood, Ibid. p. 13.

Engs, Freedom's First Generation pp. 12-13 Lockwood, Mary S. Peake p. 15; Engs, Freedom's First Generation pp. 12-13.

lo Eockwood, Mary S. Peake pp. 13-14; Dannett, Profiles p. 160. l 1 Lockwood, Mary S. P e a k p. 13. I Z Lockwood, Mary S. P e a k p. 14; Engs, p. 13. l 3 Engs, Freedom First Generation pp. 13-14.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCHOOLING 39

l4 Ibid. p. 13. In a footnote, Engs writes that the AMA was wrong, never able to comprehend the com- plexities of race relations.

Engs, Freedom's First Generation p. 52, p. 91; Lockwood, Mary S. Peake p. 14. l 6 Engs, FreedomS First Generation pp. 17-22. l7 Ibid. p. 26. la Engs, Freedom's First Generation p. 47; The American Missionary Magazine (AMM) October 1, 1861

Supplement, vol. 5, no. 10, pp. 258-9. Mary Peake's salary is discussed: American Missionary Association Manuscripts (AMAM) Virginia role 1 (HI-4349), letter from Lockwood on December 4, 1862.

l 9 AMM, November 1861, vol 5, no. 11, p. 257. Some historians have identified a Mrs. Bishop and not a Mrs. Bailey; this document clearly says Mrs. Bailey, and I believe they are actually the same person.

20 AMAM (HI-4342) Virginia role 1, letter from Lockwood to "Dear Brethren" on December 21, 1861. Most historians have ignored the first reference to the school in the Hygeia Hospital and located the beginning of the Wallace school later at Mill Creek Bridge. Lockwood says that he started a school at Mill Creek Bridge but only after having brouble finding a man to teach. He found Wallace in the Hygeia Hospital and I believe these letters indicate that Wallace was the teacher of both schools, but that the school was moved.

2 1 AMM, November 1861, vol. 5, no. 11, pp. 258-9. 22 AMM (HI-4364), June 1862, in a letter from Mary Peake to S.S. Jocelyn. 23 For instance: AMAM (HI-4361) Jan. 30, 1862; AMAM (HI-4362) Jan. 31, 1842; AMAM (HI-4372)

February 13, 1862; AMM Supplement Oct. 1, 1861, pp. 245-6. 24 Carter G. Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (orig. Washington, D.C.: 1919, reprint

Salem, New Hampshire, 1986). 25 On questions of religious difference, see for example: African Muslims in Antebellum America: A

Sourcebook, Allan D. Austin (New York, 1984) [includes a reprint of remarks presented at the American Lyceum by Theodore Dwight Jr. based on his talks with Lame Kebe, an African Muslim teacher]; almost all of the work on enslaved African-American women has been done in the last fifteen years, much of it in the last five: Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow (New York, 1986); Dorothy White, Ar'n't I A Woman? (New York, 1985); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household (Chapel Hill: 1988); Dorothy Sterling, We Are Your Sisters (New York, 1984); Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg (New York: 1984); Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood (Oxford, 1987); on class there are a fair number of attempts to apply Marxist analysis to enslavement in the South. I would broadly define three types of these analyses: first, some theorists have tiied to prove the class nature of slavery by "demonstrating" that slavery was economically beneficial; these theories claim a rational market system as a way to understand enslavement (I would include Fogel and Engerman here). A second group has tiied to assert that the South was a pre-capitalist economy and enslavement can be understood as a pre-capitalistic mode of production which had to go as the rational capitalist market created a crisis resulting in the Civil War (this has been the dominant stance I think). A third group of theorists has argued that as a result of the Southern commitment to enslavement as a social system, the economy remained a rurdagricultural one (I would inlcude Eugene Genovese and Elisabeth Fox-Genovese). John Blassingame has offered a class-status model: "Status and So- cial Structure in the Slave Community: Evidence from New Sources," in Harry P. Owens, ed. Perspectives and Irony in American Slavery, p. 142, cited by Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love p. 41.

26 This sentence is paraphrased from Joan Wallace Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), p. 2.

27 Lockwood, Mary S. P e a k p. 49. 28 See, for example: Lawrence Levine, Black Culture, Black Consciousness (Oxford 1977); Thomas Web-

ber, Deep Like the Rivers (New York: 1978); John Blassingame, The Slave Communiry (Oxford 1979). 29 While schools may not have been the most important survival mechanism, they do give some indica-

tion that African-Americans had agency and cannot be positioned solely as victims as some historiography has done. Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750-1925 (New York 1976); Vincent Harding, There is a River (New York 1981); Lawrence Levine Black Culture, Black Consciousness (Oxford 1977).

Lockwood, Mary S. P e a k p. 32. " Engs, Freedom's First Generation p. 13. 32 AMM: September 1871, vol. 15, no. 9. Lockwood also refers to Mary's mother and Thomas Peake as

light in color (pp. 5, 15: Mary S. Peake). The distinctions of color that Lcckwood draws suggest some simi- larity between biological theories of race and Lockwood's ideology, lighter color was equated with a higher


intellectual capacity. Lockwood's willingness to write Peake's biography and to basically ignore people like Peter Herbert (who was not described as being light in color), may have been based on some conception of "white-blood" which was a common race ideology at the time. Historians who have used Lockwood's text face the problem of deciphering Lockwood's racial ideology in looking for historical events he reports.

33 Suzanne Lebsock, in The Free Women of Petersburg (New York 1984), suggest that there was a relative gender equality among free African-Americans in Petersbwg and suggests some reasons why this might have been.

34 Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters (New York 1974) pp. 108-114. 35 Ibid. p. 116; in The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color (Baton Rouge 1977, p. 79) Gary

Mills provides population numbers for free people of color: 1785 1,175 1810 7,585 1820 10,476 1830 16,710 1840 25,502 1850 17,462 1860 18,647

36 Berlin, Slaves p. 124. " Alice Dunbar-Nelson, "People of Color in Louisiana" in The Journal of Negro History Vol. 1 (1916)

p. 361 and Part 11, Vol. 2 (1917) pp. 61-2. I have substituted African-American for "Negro," and I have also substituted Creoles of Color and mixed color for the French gens de couleur. See also, Mills, The For- gotten People; Berlin, Slaves; Leonard Cuny, The Free Black in Urban America (Chicago 1981); Richard Wade, Slavery in the Cities (Oxford, 1964).

Dunbar-Nelson ("Louisiana" part 11, p. 365) says that part of the Black Code of 1724 freed any enslaved African-American who was appointed by herthis master as a teacher. The earliest schools in Louisi- ana for African-Americans were taught in French by Ursuline nuns beginning in 1727 (Betty Porter, "The Hisory of Negro Education in Louisiana," The Louisiana Historical Quarterly, Vol. 25, Jan-Oct. 1925, New Orleans, La.).

39 Nathan Willey, "Education of the Colored Population of Louisiana," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 33, June-Nov. 1866, p. 249. Willey has probably relied in large part on oral interviews (judging from most of the rest of the article), and the phrasing he uses is most likely an accurate reflection of the way in which the enslaved thought about the threat faced if an enslaved African-American was caught reading. Whether or not a "statistically significant" number of people were put to death for reading is, I think, totally irrelevant. The perception of the possibility of death for reading is more important than what statistical percentage were killed, and I have used Willey's description as a reflection of that perception. " Paul Gatson, Cleveland Gazette, September 15, 1883, Vol. 1 no. 4. Herbert Gutman, in an unpublished

history of "Reconstruction Schools" (held at the New York Public Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division as part of the Herbert Gutman Papers) cites Gaston and offers a disclaimer that it has not yet been verified as accurate or inaccurate. Gastons's article ran between August 25 and October 6, 1883, in the Ga-zette which was a weekly, African-American owned Newspaper.

41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Virginia Harris autobiography p. 4, in The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (general eds.

George Rawick, Jan Hillegas and Ken Lawrence eds. Westport, Ct., 1972) supplement series 1: Volume 8, part 3, Mississippi Narratives, p. 940. " Gaston, Cleveland Gazette, September 29, 1883. 45 Gaston, Cleveland Gazette, October 6, 1883. " Betty Porter, "Education in Louisiana" p. 731. 47 Willey, "Colored Population" p. 248; Dunbar-Nelson, "Louisiana" part 11, p. 65; H.E.Sterkx, The

Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana (Rutherford, N.J., 1972) pp. 268-9. Sterkx, Ante-Bellum Louisiana p. 233; David C. Rankin, "The Origins of Black Leadership in New

Orleans During Reconstruction" Journal of Southern History (Vol. 40, no. 3: August 1974) pp. 437-440. 49 Sylvester Sostan WicMiffe autobiography in The American Slave Vol. 5 parts 3 and 4 (972) p. 156, p.

2 of the interview. 50 Rankin, "Black Leadership" pp. 433, 437-40.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCHOOLING 41

5 1 Willey, "Colored Population" p. 247, the dates for the school are not clear. 52 Willey, "Colored Population" p. 248; Sterkx, Ante-Bellrun Louisiana p. 269 (names the school Lancas-

terian); Porter, "Education in Louisiana" p. 735; Judy Riffel, ed. A History of Pointe Coupe Parish (Baton Rouge, 1983) p. 54.

53 In general, the Lancaster schools seemed to have been mostly concerned with standardization, obedi- ence and promptness. The Grimble Bell school may have been more influenced by the methods of self- teaching than the social control aspects of Lancasterian schooling. See also: Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Re- public (New York, 1983) pp. 40-44. Kaestle indicates that the New York African Free School adopted a Lancasterian model just after 1805.

54 Porter, "Education in Louisiana" p. 735; Sterkx, Ante-Bellum Louisiana p. 271. 5 5 Sterkx, Ante-Bellum Louisiana p. 271. 56 Dunbar-Nelson, "Louisiana" p. 65. The John F. Cook who ran this school might actually be John F.

Cook, Jr. who taught a school in Washington D.C. about 1855-57 and then again between 1862-67. I have been unable to ascertain what Cook did in the intervening years (1857-1862). John E Cook, Sr., who also taught in D.C. in the 1830s, was forced to relocate from D.C. to Pennsylvania, so it is unlikely that Cook, Jr. ever lived in St. Louis as Dunbar-Nelson says the New Orleans teacher did. It appears that these are different individuals who lived in similar locations at reasonably similar times.

57 James Anderson, The Education of B lacb in the South (Chapel Hill, 1988) p. 7. 58 Sterkx, Ante-Bellum Louisiana p. 272. 59 James A. Clement Jr. and Gloria Iglesias eds., Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana: 1850 Census (federal),

Southern Genealogical Institute: 1977, p. 95. " Rankin, "Black Leadership" pp. 437-440. 6' Ira Berlin, Slaves p. XVI. The destinction between the upper and lower South are not attempts to claim

some sort of unity within these regions, or that this regional division is constant over time, but the develop- ments in the upper and lower regions are distinctive enough, I think, to warrant separation. J. D. B. DeBow (Statisitical View of the United States, Washington, 1854) gives lower South African-American schooling figures from the 1850 census as: Georgia, 1 male; South Carolina, 80 total; Florida, 66 total; Texas, 20 total, Alabama, 68 total; and Mississippi, 0 (or unreported).

62 Some of the African-Americans may have come from the north as well, as gradual emancipation in some northern states was met by northern slave-owners selling enslaved African-Americans to regions of the South. Mostly, though, the migration was due to the tremendous agricultural-labor needs, and the willingness of upper South slave-owners to make huge profits by selling enslaved African-Americans.

63 Susie King Taylor, Reminiscenses of My Life: A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs (originally published in 1902, Boston by the author, reprint New York, 1988) pp. 29-30. Taylor went on to be a nurse and teacher during and after the Civil War. See also: Whittington B. Johnson, "Free Blacks in Antebellum Sa- vannah" in The Georgia Historical Quarterly (Volume LXIV, no. 4, Winter 1980) p. 425. " Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Counhy Georgia 1750-1860 (Knoxville, 1985) p.

197. Smith says that it is impossible to determine if Mary is Matilda. 65 Ibid. p. 197. Smith interviewed Veroncia Arnold, a descendant of "Mother" Beaseley." Froumontaine is variously identified as Troumaintaine (Ira Berlin, Slaves p. 305), Fromotin (Smith,

Rice Culture p. 196), Froumontaine (Richard R. Wright, A Brief Historical Sketch of Negro Education in Georgia, Savannah, 1894, p. 20), and Fromontin (Joseph Frederick Waring, Cerveau's Savannah, Savannah, 1973, p. 66). Although Smith says that the only Fromotin appears in the Savannah City Register, I have chosen Wright's spelling because his style indicates a certain familiarity with Froumontaine's school and he seems to know two of the school's pupils. Second, City Registers habitually misspell and "Americanize" names, and since Froumontaine was born in Santo Domingo and no doubt canied his name from there, my guess is that Fromotin is an "Americanized" version. I have no question that these names all refer to the same individual however. Wright also refers to him as the "colored Frenchman" (p. 20).

67 Wright, Historical Sketch p. 20: "At least two of old Julian's pupils still live at Savannah." 68 Whittington Johnson, "Antebellum Savannah" p. 425; Herbert Gutman "Reconstruction Schooling,"

an unpublished manuscript (in the Herbert Gutman Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library) pp. 4-5; Henry Swint, Dear Ones at Home (Nashville, 1966) p. 190 reprints newspaper arti-cle from the Worchester Evening Gazette, dated, Savannah December 1865, in which Lucy Chase reports meeting a man who formerly taught a clandestine school and who seems to be James Porter.

69 Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love (Chapel Hill, 1980) p. 73.


70 Jeff Johnson autobiography in The American Slave supp. 1, Vol. 8, no. 3. The interviewer remarks that Johnson would have been too young to remember this school, which might draw into question the accuracy of Johnson's story.

7 ' M. B. Godwin, Special Report p. 340; Gutman, "Reconstruction Schooling" p. 3a-4. 72 Eugene Smith autobiography, in The American Slave (Vol. 13, no. 3 and 4) p. 230. 7' Gutman, "Reconstruction Schooling" p. 6. Despite the different spellings of the name, these are clearly

the same person. 74 Ella Belle Ramsey autobiography, in The American Slave (supp. 2, Vol. 8, no. 7) pp. 3229-3230. 75 John Trowbridge, The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities (Hartford, CT, 1866) pp.

490- 1. 76 June 0.Patton, "The Black Community of Augusta and the Struggle for Ware High School 1880-

1899," in New Perspectives on Black Educational History, ed. Vincent Franklin and James Anderson (Bos- ton, 1978) p. 45.

77 The Loyal Georgian (Vol. 1, no. 1, Augusta Georgia, January 20, 1866), one of Georgia's fust African- American newspapers, was edited by Thomas P. Beard; this paper ran weekly announcements of what schools were being held and where, and "S. W. Beard" is listed throughout as one of the teachers. C. W. Birnie, "Education of the Negro in Charleston, South Carolina, Prior to the Civil War" (Journal of Negro History, Vol. XII, no. 1, 1927) p. 19, reports that one of the schools taught in Charleston was that of Si- meon Beard.

78 Woodson, Ed. Prior to I861 p. 167; William Simmons, Men of Mark (orig. Cleveland 1887, reprint: NY: 1968) pp. 162-64, gives information on Morris. It is also possible that Trowbridge (The South) is wrong about the employment of the white woman as an assistant to Beard.

79 This is the only SPG school which I have decided to include here. This school is somewhat unique in that it hired Hany and Andrew to teach while other SPG schools employed whites to teach. But this is a borderline school for me: while it was probably tightly controlled by white missionaries of the SPG, and it was funded by SPGers, that two African-Americans were teaching the school for twenty years has led me to include it. I have excluded other SPG schools because I consider them to be white-missionary schools and therefore outside of the "community" based schools that I am concerned with. Carter Woodson, Ed. Prior to 1861 pp. 33-34; C. W. Birnie, "Ed. in Charleston" pp. 14-15; C. E. Pierre, "The Work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Among the Negroes in the Colonies," in Journal of Negro History (Vol. 1, No. 4, 1916) p. 352; Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt: Urban L$e in America 1743-1776 (New York, 1955) p. 175. For the work of Dr. Bray's Associates, who followed up on some of the educational work of the SPG, and for lists of names of African-American students of the Bray schools see: John C. Van Home, Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery (Urbana, 1985).

Berlin, Slaves pp. 73-4, 76; Bimie, "Ed. in Charleston" pp. 15-6, 18, 20. Birnie, "Ed. in Charleston" p. 19; Jennie Armstrong, in a letter to The National Freedman (dated:

Charleston, January 1, 1866, Vol II, February 1866, pp. 7-9) refers to Miss Weston's arrest. Simmons, Men of Mark p. 428.

83 Rawick, The American Slave Vol. 19, p. 146-7. Volume 19 includes previously printed (1941) narratives and interviews, unfortunately, many do not give the names of the writers or tellers, as this one did not.

84 Rawick, Ibid. "William Oliver's autobiography," Vol. 3, No. 3-4, p. 218-9. 85 Rawick, Ibid. "Ransom Simmons' autobiography," Vol. 3, No. 3-4, pp. 91, 103.

Frederika Bremer, Homes of the New World (New York, 1853) Vol. 2, p. 499 87 James Stirling (Letters from the Slave States, London 1857) is quoted in Richard Wade, Slavery in the

Cities (Oxford, 1964) p. 174. 88 The American Missionary (November 1870, Vol. XIV,no. 11) pp. 44-45, letter dated Charleston, Au-

gust 19, 1870, but unsigned. This is almost definitely an AMA teacher sent from the north: the letter be-gins, "It is now vacation" and includes such references as "our school meeting" and "our highest class" which indicate to me that this person was teaching. Part of the point of the in-depth description of the pre- intervention schools is to "show" how much progress has been made. Gutman ("Reconstuction Schooling" p. 4) seems to think that this school, and both Trowbridge's and Dennett's references to schools are actually all about the same school taught by "Miss L." I disagree: given the number of clandenstine schools in Charleston, and the descrepancies in the stories of them, it seems more likely that they are different schools.

89 John Richard Dennett, The South As It Is: 1865-1866 (ed. by Henry Christman, New York, 1965) pp. 217-8. Some very serious questions might be asked about why Dennen names the mother's guardian but not


the teacher or the mother. This is a clear example of an active prmess of silencing, drawing this type of historical material as much into question as narratives. Further questions might be asked about why Dennett was so little concerned why the teacher's father, the way he acquired the skills to teach and if and how he ran a school. " Trowbridge, The South p. 570. 9' Eliza Ann Taylor autobiography, in Charles Perdue, et al. eds. Weevils in the Wheat (Charlottsville,

1976) p. 284. 92 De Bow, Statistical View p. 1 4 4 . 93 Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas 1821-1861 (Baton

Rouge, 1989). Campbell says, and I think it is accurate, that this is the only book length treatment of enslavement in Texas. He pulls together a number of dissertations, W A narratives, and primary souces; but, curiously, he ignores some obvious sections of the WPA narratives: for instance Irella Walker (see the next paragraph), who tells of attending a clandestine school. Instead, Campbell concludes that formal educaion was almost entirely lacking, was not desired, and had no status or benefit (p. 175-6).

94 I have found no secondary material on African-American schools in Texas before intervention at all. Most of the texts that might be expected to have at least passing reference have none.

95 Irella Battle Walker autobiography, in Rawick, The American Slave supp. 2, Vol. 10, part 9, pp. 3931- 3937. This is a very interesting autobiography, but equally interesting is the revision about schooling that took place. Rawick included a different (edited) version of this autobiography in Vol. 5 of the original se-ries, where the school reference has been edited to read: "Old man Jack James work at day and have night school at night. He have long boards for benches and let dem down by ropes from de rafters and have blue back spellers. He point to de letters with de long brook straw and dat's how we learn our A B C's (p. 123)" The inteviewer (and therefore the most likely editorial suspect) was Alfred E.Menn. The reason I have raised the issue of how Menn seems to have drastically altered and lost references to schooling in his edited version here, is because other interview with a woman enslaved by Washington indicates a very different situation. Menn also conducted this interview, but only a single (probably edited) version has been found by Rawick (supp. 2, Vol. 5, pant 4, pp. 1730-1738): The interviewee is Rosina Hoard, born in April 1859. As I quoted, Hoard recalls that Washington did not care if the enslaved held night school in their cabins, but Washington's son George, taught fieldworkers while Washington was not looking. Hoard supports Walker's histories, although hers are different, but I am left wondering if Menn did not edit out more information about these schools from Hoard as he did from Walker.

% Campbell, Empire p. 266. 97 A. C. h i t autobiography, Rawick, The American Slave supp. 2, Vol 8, part 7, p. 3200-3203. 98 Julia Blanks autobiography, Rawick, The American Slave Voli. 4, parts 1-2, pp. 93-97. 99 Jenny Proctor autobiography, Rawick, The American Slave Vol. 5, parts 3-4, pp. 208-214. I m Clara Young autobiography, Rawick, The American Slave supp. 1, Vol. 10, pant 5, pp. 2400-2401. lo' Thomas Cole autobiography, Rawick, The American Slave supp. 2, Vol. 3, part 2, pp. 783-801. I o 2 Randall Miller ed. "Dear Master" Letters of a Slave Family (Ithaca, IVY, 1978) pp. 198-263. Miller

introduces the letters as a whole and also provides helpful introductions to each writer's letters. lo' Horace Mann Bond, Negro Education in Alabama (New York, 1969) p. 15. '04 Ibid. p. 15. Io5 Nathan Willey, "Colored Population" p. 249. I have read Willey's somewhat obscure description of

Rogers' location to imply that this school was located in Alabama; it is possible that Willey's description could be read to mean that the school was in Mississippi.

Io6 Ibid. Io7 Ibid. Io8 Ibid. I W Mark Oliver autobiography, Rawick, The American Slave supp. 1 , Vol. 9, part 4, pp. 1659-1671. "O Mandy Jones autobiography, Rawick, The American Slave supp. 1, Vol. 8, part 3, pp. 1226-1242 (both

interviews are here). Gutman, "Reconstruction Schooling" p. 5. Gutman offers both spellings of Granson's name, but I am

not sure where the "Grandison" spelling is from, so H have decided to stay with more recognizable spelling Haviland uses.

!I2 Sylvia G. Dannett, Profiles (Yonkers, 1962, 1964) Voi. 1, p. 74.


Laura S. Haviland, A Woman's Life-Work (orig: Chicago, 1889; reprinted: New York, 1969) pp. 300-1. Gutman ("Reconstruction Schooling" p. 5) also quotes Haviland; as does Gerda Lemer, Black Woman in White America (New York, 1973) pp. 32-3.

I t4 Haviland, Ibid. The most interesting thing about the quote is that up until that point it is unclear as to wheher or not Haviland actually met Granson; it is clear that she did.

Gutman, "Reconstruction Schooling" p. 45; M.B.S., "Repon" undated, The Freedmen's Bulletin 1 (May 1865), p. 101.

) I 6 Ira Berlin, Slaves pp. 183-216. H7 The earliest school I can locate was run by the Presbyterians in Kentucky: this school was apparently

begun in 1827. See: An Address to the Presbyterians of Kentucky, proposing a plan for the instruction and emancipation of their slaves, by a committee of the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, published by Charles Whipple, Newburyport, 1836, p. 8; see also, Alice Allison Dunnigan, The Fascinating Story of Black Ken- tuckians: Their heritage and Traditions (Washington, D.C., 1982) p. 167.

Dunnigan, Ibid. p. 167. Leonard Curry, The Free Black Urban America, 1800-1850 (Chicago, 1981) p. 159.

Iz0 Carter Woodson, Ed. Prior to 1861 p. 274. Woodson cites simmons Men of Mark p. 829, but for a slightly fuller biography of Adams, see, J. H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists (Cincinnati, 1885) Vol. 2, pp. 657-9.

Iz1 Curry, Free Black p. 159; De Bow Statistical View p. 144. These statistics, as I have mentioned elsewhere, are notoriously inaccurate, under-representing and excluding vast numbers of African-Americans, but, if nothing else, a family response question such as schooling might set an absolute bottom number of school attendees.

Iz2 Woodson, Ed. Prior to 1861 pp. 219-220. Iz3 Simmons, Men of Mark p. 603. Iz4 Ibid. 626. Iz5 Woodson, Ed. Prior to 1861 p. 219. Iz6 Hannah Davidson autobiography, in Rawick The American Slave Vol. 16, Ohio Narratives, p. 26-32. Iz7 Arnold Gragston autobiography, in Rawick The American Slave Vol. 17, p. 146-149. Iz8 Daniel Wadkins, in A History of the Colored Schools of Nashville, Tennessee compiled by G. W. Hub-

bard (Nashville, 1874) pp. 4-5. Wadkins chapter of Hubbard's book is something of an autobiography: he is involved at some time in every school he refers to, and is to some degree tracing his own teaching history. I might note that some people spell his name "Watkins" but I have decided to spell it the way it is spelled in Hubbard's book, presuming that he spelled his name as it appears.

I z 9 Wadkins, Ibid. p. 5; Anita Shafer Goodstein, Nashville 1780-1860 (Gainesville, ma., 1989) p. 151. 130 Simmons, Men of Mark p. 620. "I Ibid. Wadkins, Schools of Nashville p. 5; Goodstein, Nashville 1780-1860 pp. 151-2. 132 Loren Schweninger "John H. Rapier, Sr.: A Slave and Freedman in the Ante-Bellum South," in Civil

War History (John Hubbell, editor: Kent State University Press, Vol. XX, No. 1, March 1974) pp. 23-25. This is a complicated genealogy, but an important family.

13' James P. Thomas autobiography (original manuscript) Moorland-Spingam Research Center, Howard University, pp. 13-15; Schweninger has reprinted this autobiography as: From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Enfrepeneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas (Columbia: 1984) and the corresponding pages are: pp. 31-33.

Is4 Loren Schweninger, James T.Rapier and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1978) p. 4-5; Wadkins, Schools of Nashville p. 6

Richard and Harry were sent to Buffalo, New York. The rest of the family, including the daughters, were apparently not schooled at all. Letter from John H. Rapier Sr. to Henry K. Thomas, February 28, 1843, Florence Alabama, Moorland-Spingam Research Center, Howard University, Rapier Family Papers; Schweninger reprints part of this in his article in Civil War History.

"6 Letter from John H. Rapier Sr. in Florence, Alabama to Richard Rapier in Buffalo, New York, April 8, 1845. Schweninger has quoted this in Civil War History (p. 26) and cites the Rapier papers at Moorland- Spingam.

I 3 l Wadkins, Schools of Nashville p. 4; Schweninger, Rapier pp. 5, 18-19. 138 Wadkins, Schools of Nashville pp. 5-6.

AFRICAN-AIL1[ERICAN SCHOOLING

139 Ibid., p. 6. It is tempting to think that "S. Thomas" is Sally Thomas, but none of her sons or grand- sons who left written records indicates that she taught.

l a Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave (Milwaukee, 1879) pp. 100-101. Charles Coon ed., The Beginnings of Public Educaton in North Carolina (2 Vols., Raleigh, 1908) re-

prints the restrictive law and when they were passed (and who voted for and against them) for anyone who is interested.

March 10, 1832 letter from Chaves to Willie P. Mangum is quoted in: Edgar W. Knight, "Notes on John Chavis," The North Carolina Historical Review (Vol. VII, No. 3, July 1930) p. 327. Knight also dis- cussess Chaves' early education and the varying historical accounts of this schooling, the most prominent of which have Chaves attending Princeton; Knight doesn't say this is wrong, rather he says there is no indication and no documentation whatsoever.

Knight, "Notes on John Chavis" pp. 329-30. Ibid. pp. 332-338. Reprinted in Charles Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies 1790-1840 (Raliegh, 1915) p. 515. Knight, "Notes on John Chavis" pp. 339-40, 345. Knight reprints part of the letter to Mangum dated

July 21, 1832. M. Grant Batey, John Chavis: His Contributions to Education in North Carolina (Masters Thesis,

North Carolina College at Durham, Durham 1954) p. 49. Some of Batey's material seems to be drawn from the sources that Knight questions such as when Chaves was born, but the dates of this school seem accurate.

Ellen NicKenzie Lawson with Marlene D. Merrill, The Three Sarahs (New York, 1984) pp. 48-64. My estimate for the starting date of the school is very conservative; since Sara was the fourth child and was born in 1836, and the school had been running for some time prior to Frances Stanley's marriage, the school may very well have been operating considerably before 1830.

Simmons, Men of Mark pp. 405-409. Is0 "The Autobiography of Hiram Rhodes Revels," edited and with notes by Joseph Borome, as reprinted

from Midwest Journal Vol. 5, No. 1, (Winter 1952-53) pp. 80-81; see also, Gerald Wheeler, Hiram Rhodes Revels: Negro Educator and Statesman (Masters Thesis, University of California [campus unspecified], June 1949) pp. 2-7.

l 5 ] Ibid. Borome's notes to Revels autobiography, "The Autobiography" p. 81. I s 2 Simmons, Men of Mark pp. 432-435.

John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina 1790-1860 (New York, 1971) p. 169; De Bow, Statistical View p. 144.

Franklin, Ibid., pp. 16-17. Is5 There is a curious lack of slave narratives for North Carolina; it is not that there are none, but that

there seem to be fewer than I would expect. De Bow, Statistical View show that there are a total of 64 students listed for the Virginia 1850 census. Willis Augustus Hodges, autobiography, edited and introduced by Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., in Free

Man of Color (Knoxville, 1982; originally published in serial form by The Freeman, an African-American newspaper in Indianapolis, in 1896) pp. 8-9.

Is8 Gatewood, Ibid., introduction pp. XXV-XXVI. Is9 W. B. Hartgrove, "The Story of Maria Louise Moore and Fannie M. Richards," in The Journal of Ne-

gro History (Vol. 1, no. 1, 1916) pp. 23-33; Simmons, Men of Mark pp. 352-357 (a biography of De Baptiste).

I" Hartgrove, "The Story" p. 25. I will return to Cook's school in the D.C.-Alexandria section. North Into Freedom: The Autobiography of John Malvin, Free Negro 179.5-1880, ed. by Allen Peskin

(Ann Arbor, MI, 1987; orig. Cleveland: 1966; Malvinvs autobiography orig: Cleveland, 1879). 162 William Grimes, The Life of William Grimes, the Runnaway Slave, (New Haven, 1855). 163 Susan Boggs autobiography, in Slave Testimony ed. by John Blassingame (Baton Rouge, 1977) pp.

420- 1. 164 Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War

(London, 1970) 165 Levin Pollard autobiography in Weevils in the Wheat ed. by Charles Perdue, Thomas Barden, Robert

Phillips (Charlottesville, 1976) p. 229. I" Ibid.

4-4 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

16' Sketches of Old Virginia Family Servants (Philadelphia, 1847) Although there is a preface by Bishop Meade, I am unclear as to the authorship of the sketches, as well as to the dates of Brown's life and teaching.

Elizabeth Sparks autobiography, in Rawick, The American Slave (Vol. 16, parts 1-6, pp. 50-54). Ib9 The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass (orig.: Hartford, Ct., 1881; reprint: Se-

caucus, N.J., 1983) p. 105. This is the last of Douglass' three autobiographies, and recent commentaries on the three have suggested that this is the fullest version and includes much of the early two.

'lo Ibid., pp. 148-150. Curry, Free Bhck p. 156.

172 M. B. Godwin, Special Report (New York, 1969), p. 196; Woodson, p. 140. 173 James M.Wright, The Free Negro of Maryland 1634-1860 (New York, 1971; written in 1921) pp.

202-3. 174Charles Varle, A Complete View of Baltimore (Baltimore, 1833) p. 33. 175 Woodson, Education Prior to 1861) p. 141. '16 Woodson, Education Prior to 1861) p. 141; Wright, Free Negro pp. 203-4.

Simmons, Men of Mark pp. 545-48. 178 Varle, View of Baltimore p. 133. '19 Daniel Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Vol. I (Nashville, Tenn. 1891; re-

printed: 1968). Iu0 Godwin, Special Report pp. 205-6; Woodson, Education Prior to l a 1 pp. 139-140; Edgar #night ed.,

A Documentary History of Education in the South Before 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1953) Vol. 5, p. 474, reprints a notice in the Free Press of Tarborough, North Carolina, Feb. 5 , 1830.

I u 1 Woodson says there were 5 or 6 of these schools taught by African-American women who attended the Academy, but gives no names, places, or dates of the teachers or schools (Education Prior to 1861 p. 141).

I u 2 Woodson, p. 143. Iu3 Wright, Free Negro P. 207. I u 4 De Bow, Statistical View p. 144. Iu5 Godwin's study is extremely important documentation of pre-intervention schools. Everyone who has

written after him on these schools uses this report. Except in a few cases, I will cite Godwin rather than people who wrote after him, since they almost all cite him as their source. M. B. Godwin, Speical Report.

I u 6 De Bow, Statistical View p. 144, Godwin (Special Report p. 195) also cites an 1807 Washington census which lists 494 free African-Americans and 1004 enslaved African-Americans. From this he implies that the 1807 population could only have had a limited number of students.

l U 7 Godwin, Special Report pp. 195-97. I u 8 This is from an unsigned, undated single page document held at the Moorland-Spingarn Research

Center, Howard University (document: OG 359). The rest of the information on this page corresponds to Godwin's account, so this seems to be an accurate account.

I u 9 Godwin, Special Report reprints the National Intelligencer notice (pp. 197-98) which ran August 29, 1818.

I w Godwin, Special Report p. 198. 19' Ibid., p. 200. 19* Catherine Isabella Quint, The Role of American Negro Women Educators in the Growth of the Com-

mon School (PhD Dissertation, Boston University, 1970) p. 93-96. Quint does not provide details about Becraft's mother's schooling or teaching.

193 Ibid., Quint, Negro Women Educators pp. 93-96; Godwin, Special Report pp. 204-5; Marianna Davis, Contributions of Black Women to America (Columbia, South Carolina, 1982) Vol. 2, p. 267.

194 Godwin, Special Report p. 212; Lillian G. Dabney, The History of Schools for Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1807-1947 (Washington D.C., 1949) p. 7 . Dabney relies almost exclusively on Godwin for this early period, but she has broken down his narrative into a chronological chart which is very helpful.

'95 Godwin, Special Report pp. 199-203, 216. '%Ibid., pp. 203-4. I9l Ibid., pp. 211-213; Dabney, Schools in BC p. 7 . 19& Ibid., p. 213. I" Ibid., p. 204.


2ca Ibid., Special Report pp. 283-4. 20' Godwin, Speical Report pp. 204-217; Dabney, Schools in DC pp. 7-10. 202 Godwin, Special Report p. 222, in an end-note. 203 Dorothy Sterling ed., We Are Your Sisters (1984) pp. 193-94. Sterling reprints Brown's letters in two

parts: from 190-202, and from 286-293. 2M Ibid., pp. 190-94. 205 Ibid.

You have printed the following article:

African-American Schooling in the South Prior to 1861David FreedmanThe Journal of Negro History, Vol. 84, No. 1. (Winter, 1999), pp. 1-47.Stable URL:


This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from anoff-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Pleasevisit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.

Notes

37 People of Color in Lousiana: Part IAlice Dunbar-NelsonThe Journal of Negro History, Vol. 1, No. 4. (Oct., 1916), pp. 361-376.Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191610%291%3A4%3C361%3APOCILP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2





48 The Origins of Black Leadership in New Orleans During ReconstructionDavid C. RankinThe Journal of Southern History, Vol. 40, No. 3. (Aug., 1974), pp. 417-440.Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642%28197408%2940%3A3%3C417%3ATOOBLI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS- Page 1 of 3 -

NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28199924%2984%3A1%3C1%3AASITSP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191610%291%3A4%3C361%3APOCILP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2&origin=JSTOR-pdf



http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642%28197408%2940%3A3%3C417%3ATOOBLI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q&origin=JSTOR-pdf







77 Education of the Negro in Charleston, South Carolina, Prior to the Civil WarC. W. BirnieThe Journal of Negro History, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Jan., 1927), pp. 13-21.Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28192701%2912%3A1%3C13%3AEOTNIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S



79 The Work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Among theNegroes in the ColoniesC. E. PierreThe Journal of Negro History, Vol. 1, No. 4. (Oct., 1916), pp. 349-360.Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191610%291%3A4%3C349%3ATWOTSF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O







http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28192701%2912%3A1%3C13%3AEOTNIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S&origin=JSTOR-pdf


http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191610%291%3A4%3C349%3ATWOTSF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&origin=JSTOR-pdf





159 The Story of Maria Louise Moore and Fannie M. RichardsW. B. HartgroveThe Journal of Negro History, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Jan., 1916), pp. 23-33.Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191601%291%3A1%3C23%3ATSOMLM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

160 The Story of Maria Louise Moore and Fannie M. RichardsW. B. HartgroveThe Journal of Negro History, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Jan., 1916), pp. 23-33.Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191601%291%3A1%3C23%3ATSOMLM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P






http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191601%291%3A1%3C23%3ATSOMLM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2992%28191601%291%3A1%3C23%3ATSOMLM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P&origin=JSTOR-pdf

Documents

African-American Schooling in the South Prior to 1861 ... · taught a primary school in Alexandria for about twenty years (about 1826-1846) until Alexandria was retro-ceded to Virginia