African American Education System, Essay Example

As soon as they were freed, southern freed slaves demanded they should receive a proper education. In 1829, legislative had passed a law making it a crime to teach slaves to read and write. Even in the 1860s, white’s attitudes toward blacks being able to read and write discouraged many blacks from seeking proper education. For example, ‘The white inhabitants of the State who have been opposed to the education of the colored people have occasionally resorted to threats and violence, and thereby effected the breaking up of schools in several instances.” (Addresses and Ceremonies at the New Year’s Festival) As a result, President Lincoln established the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865. The purpose of the organization was to assist the tens of thousands former slaves and slave owners in the South and the District of Columbia. After the war, nearly four million former slaves were freed with merely the clothes they had on their backs. The war dislocated families from their homes; in essence the war created the same affect for white slave owners as slavery itself had done for slaves. All were facing starvation. For example, “There were in this department, when I assumed command, many thousands of colored persons without employment or home, who were decimated by disease and death of the most frightful character. To these, natives of the plantations in the department have been added many thousand fugitives from the surrounding States, of every age and condition. There are not, 500 persons that are not self-supporting…” (Excerpt from John Hope Franklin) The Bureau’s overall goal was to establish a new social order for former slaves and slave owners. It also issued food to the starving; operated hospitals, helped dislocated people locate family, help legalize slave marriages, advocated education, and provided work. When the first schools for blacks opened in 1865, the classes were overcrowded. In Georgia alone, 8,000 former slaves were going to school for the first time. Although the federal government and other benevolent citizens aided the cause financially, African American primarily funded the education of former slaves during Reconstruction. Many literate blacks opened self-sustaining schools that benefited former slaves. The Bureau assisted the freed slaves by renting buildings, providing books and transportation for teachers, and offered protection from white extremist. Even with the financial assistance of the bureau, the freedman provided a large portion of the financial assistance for their schools themselves. They provided funding for the monthly tuition fees, salaries for the teachers, for the purchase of land and buildings, and the materials required to build schools on the land they had previously purchased. Some schools were run totally independent of northern or bureau influence or assistance. For example in Florida, “The schools have been encouraged by State action. A law was passed appointing a general superintendent, with assistants, whose duty it is to establish colored schools in all the counties. A tax was levied upon the colored people to support this system, and the organization of schools begun” (Addresses and Ceremonies at the New Year’s Festival) In the state of Alabama, freedman represented nearly half of the state’s population. Ironically, they were required to pay taxes for schools that neither they nor their children could attend.

During the years of 1865-1866, African Americans in the District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and Maryland began to develop their first organized school. In the early months following the War’s end, freed African Americans held meetings to discuss issues that affected former slaves. Number one on the list was education. This meeting led to one statewide convention that was held in Raleigh on September 29-October 3. One hundred-six men from thirty-four states attended the meeting. (Minutes of the Freedmen’s Convention) With the assistance of The Freedmen‘s Bureau, they organized day school for children, night school for adults, and some classes on Sundays. Each of the schools provided basic educational training that included classes in reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. The schools also offered classes in basic trade and domestic education. Students learned sewing, proper hygiene, punctuality, and other life skills. To many surprise, the school enrolled a large number of students. At the beginning of the school year most schools had an average of 1,723 students. By the end of the school year, the smallest number of students was and 2,042. From January to May 1866 enrolment increased dramatically; however it always decreased in June. This increase and decrease corresponded with agricultural burden. Often, rural farmers came to the city in search of work during their off season. These workers often took advantage of an opportunity to take some classes. During high peaks, there were not enough schools to accommodate the number of people wanting to enroll. As a result, classes were constantly over crowded, which lead to the ongoing search for more accommodations. By the end of the year in Alabama, there were a total of twenty-six schools. By the end of t he next year there were a total of forty-six skills. These schools were supported financially by African Americans and their supporters.

African American former slaves sought the aid of The American Missionary Association, the American Baptist Home Mission Society and other Northern religious societies. were in charge of and hired the teachers. They sought these organizations because they believed in evangelical abolitionism. According to their beliefs, slavery was not only a sin against God, but a sin against mankind because it denied African Americans the opportunity to be independent moral beings. In their minds, in order for a person to be truly free, he had to free of both physical and spiritual bondage. Consequently, education served many purposes. First, they felt that receiving an education allows a person to make intellectual growth, which was needed to understand the word of God. Next, it allowed spiritual growth through the reading and studying of God’s word.

Two years after the war, blacks served for the first time in history in governmental positions. Some were elected to the United States Congress. A total of six hundred African American were in legislative positions. Fourteen were in the House of Representatives. Two were U.S. Senators. Thousands more had other positions as judges and sheriffs. Yet, a few African Americans served as administrators during the initial years of the Freedmen‘s Schools. Eventually racial stereotypes and attitudes began to flare because of the lessoned number of African American teachers in the schools. African Americans wanted to create and maintain their own schools without the aid of the Freedmen‘s Bureau and Northern supporters. Because the schools were supported by tuition, many blacks still could not attend because they could not afford to. For example, McKaye noted: “The colored people,” says Col. Hanks, “manifest the greatest anxiety to educate their children, and they thoroughly appreciate the benefits of education. I have known a family to go with two meals a day, in order to save fifty cents a week to pay an indifferent teacher for their children.” (McKaye) Sadly some of these schools reinforced what former slaves had been taught on plantation-that some blacks were better than others because of their skin shade; the schools strengthened class differences between African Americans- there were the elite, middle-class, working-class, and poor African Americans. So, although African Americans valued education and were trying to make conditions better for former slaves, they too were promoting some of the slave mentalities that they had been taught. For example, “The freedmen show an appreciation of the educational advantages that are now extended to them.” (Excerpt from John Hope Franklin)

Works Cited

Addresses and Ceremonies at the New Year’s Festival to the Freedmen on Arlington Heights; of the educational condition of the colored people in the southern states and other facts. Washington D. C. McGill and Witherow, 1867.

Excerpt from John Hope Franklin, ed. Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Extract from the Minutes of the Freedmen’s Convention, Held in the City of Raleigh, on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th of October, 1866.

McKaye, James, The Mastership and its Fruits: The Emancipated Slave Face to Face with his Old Master. A Supplemental Report to Hon Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War New York, Wm. Bryant and Co, 1864.