The Pursuit of Education: Black Children and Public Education in the 19th Century US

The history of African American education in the 19th century United States is a testament to the resilience, determination, and unwavering belief in the transformative power of knowledge. Despite facing systemic oppression, legal barriers, and pervasive racism, African Americans relentlessly pursued educational opportunities, laying the foundation for future generations and contributing significantly to the advancement of American society.

Seeds of Knowledge: Early Efforts During Slavery

The denial of education to African Americans was a deliberate tool employed to perpetuate the institution of slavery. White people denied education for African Americans during slavery. Anti-literacy laws, in force in many southern states since the 1830s, criminalized teaching enslaved people to read and write. However, this did not extinguish the thirst for knowledge. Enslaved African Americans created their own hidden education systems. For example, enslaved African Americans would form secret groups to teach each other how to read and write. These groups and systems would have to be hidden due to great risk associated (usually threat of physical violence). These clandestine efforts, often carried out in secret, demonstrate the profound value placed on literacy and learning within the enslaved community.

Reconstruction Era: A Glimmer of Hope

The Reconstruction Era (1863-1877) following the Civil War brought a period of significant, though often short-lived, progress in African American education. Legislatures of Republican freedmen and whites established public schools for the first time during the Reconstruction era. Hundreds of schools for blacks were created in the South by the government, by white religious groups, and by the blacks themselves. Northern missionaries founded numerous private academies and colleges for freedmen across the South after the war. Integrated public schools meant local white teachers in charge, and they were not trusted. The black leadership generally supported segregated all-black schools. The black community wanted black principals and teachers, or (in private schools) highly supportive whites sponsored by northern churches.

The Freedmen's Bureau and Northern Allies

The Freedmen's Bureau, established by the federal government, played a crucial role in establishing schools for black children across the South. In the era of Reconstruction, the Freedmen's Bureau opened 1000 schools across the South for black children using federal funds. Enrollments were high and enthusiastic. Overall, the Bureau spent $5 million to set up schools for blacks and by the end of 1865, more than 90,000 Freedmen were enrolled as students in public schools. Many Freedman Bureau teachers were well-educated Yankee women motivated by religion and abolitionism. Half the teachers were southern whites; one-third were blacks, and one-sixth were northern whites. Black men slightly outnumbered black women. The salary was the strongest motivation except for the northerners, who were typically funded by northern organizations and had a humanitarian motivation.

Northern benevolent organizations, such as the American Missionary Association, provided funding and staffing for numerous private schools and colleges in the South. The American Missionary Association, supported largely by the Congregational and Presbyterian churches, had helped fund and staff numerous private schools and colleges in the South, who collaborated with black communities to train generations of teachers and other leaders. These institutions were instrumental in training African American teachers and leaders.

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The Desire for Education as a Foundation for Freedom

The African-American community engaged in a long-term struggle for quality public schools. Historian Hilary Green says it "was not merely a fight for access to literacy and education, but one for freedom, citizenship, and a new postwar social order." The black community and its white supporters in the North emphasized the critical role of education is the foundation for establishing equality in civil rights. The widespread illiteracy made it urgent that high on the African-American agenda was creating new schooling opportunities, including both private schools and public schools for black children funded by state taxes. Historian James D. Anderson argues that the freed slaves were the first Southerners "to campaign for universal, state-supported public education". Blacks in the Republican coalition played a critical role in establishing the principle in state constitutions for the first time during congressional Reconstruction.

Segregation and its Impact

Public schools were segregated throughout the South during Reconstruction and afterward into the 1950s. The Republicans created a system of public schools, which were segregated by race everywhere except New Orleans.

The black community advocated for black teachers and principals, recognizing the importance of culturally relevant education and role models.

Challenges and Obstacles

Despite these advancements, significant challenges remained. The rural areas faced many difficulties opening and maintaining public schools. In the country, the public school was often a one-room affair that attracted about half the younger children. The teachers were poorly paid, and their pay was often in arrears. Conservatives contended the rural schools were too expensive and unnecessary for a region where the vast majority of people were cotton or tobacco farmers. They had no expectation of better education for their residents. Chronic underfunding led to constantly over-populated schools, despite the relatively low percentage of African-American students in schools overall. In 1900, the average black school in Virginia had 37 percent more pupils in attendance than the average white school.

Post-Reconstruction Era: Jim Crow and the Fight for Equality

The end of Reconstruction in 1877 marked a turning point, as white Democrats regained power in Southern states and implemented Jim Crow laws, which enforced segregation and curtailed the rights of African Americans. After the white Democrats regained power in Southern states in the 1870s, during the next two decades they imposed Jim Crow laws mandating segregation. They disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through poll taxes and literacy tests. Services for black schools (and any black institution) routinely received far less financial support than white schools. In addition, the South was extremely poor for years in the aftermath of the war, its infrastructure destroyed, and dependent on an agricultural economy despite falling cotton prices.

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Separate and Unequal

The "separate but equal" doctrine, established by the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), provided a legal justification for segregation. However, the reality was that schools for black children were consistently underfunded and lacked the resources available to white schools. Segregated schools for blacks were underfunded in the South and ran on shortened schedules in rural areas.

The Role of Black Educators

Despite the challenges, African American educators played a vital role in their communities. Continuing to see education as the primary route of advancement and critical for the race, many talented blacks went into teaching, which had high respect as a profession. Education was one of the major achievements of the black community in the 19th century. Blacks in Reconstruction governments had supported the establishment of public education in every Southern state. Despite the difficulties, with the enormous eagerness of freedmen for education, by 1900 the African-American community had trained and put to work 30,000 African-American teachers in the South.

Higher Education and the Morrill Act

The federal government's Morrill Act of 1862 provided funding for land-grant colleges in each state. However, many Southern states refused to admit black students. In response, the second Morrill Act of 1890 required these states to establish separate institutions for black students in order to receive funding for their white colleges. In 1862, the Congress passed the Morrill Act, which established federal funding of a land grant college in each state, but 17 states refused to admit black students to their land grant colleges. In response, Congress enacted the second Morrill Act of 1890, which required states that excluded blacks from their existing land grant colleges to open separate institutions and to equitably divide the funds between the schools. The colleges founded in response to the second Morill Act became today's public historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and, together with the private HBCUs and the unsegregated colleges in the North and West, provided higher educational opportunities to African Americans.

These institutions, known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), became crucial centers of learning and leadership development for the African American community.

Community Efforts and Philanthropic Support

African Americans formed fraternal organizations across the South and the North, including an increasing number of women's clubs. They created and supported institutions that increased education, health and welfare for black communities. After the turn of the 20th century, black men and women also began to found their own college fraternities and sororities to create additional networks for lifelong service and collaboration.

Philanthropic organizations, such as the Rosenwald Fund, provided crucial support for the construction of schools for black children in the rural South. Julius Rosenwald was a philanthropist who owned Sears, Roebuck, and Company. He was responsible for establishing the Rosenwald Fund. After meeting Booker T. Washington in 1911, Rosenwald created his fund to improve the education of southern blacks by building schools, mostly in rural areas. More than 5,300 were built in the South by the time of Rosenwald's death in 1932. He created a system requiring matching public funds and interracial community cooperation for the maintenance and operation of schools.

Resistance and Advocacy

The struggle for equal educational opportunities involved legal challenges, activism, and community organizing.

Early Legal Battles

The case of Sarah Roberts vs the City of Boston is a case about a five-year-old girl named Sarah Roberts and her parents, who tried to send her to a nearby, predominantly white school during the Jim Crow era of segregation in the United States. She was denied admission, however, based on her race as an African American girl, marking an early effort to challenge racial segregation through the education system. The Sarah vs City of Boston case likewise laid the groundwork for many future racial challenges for equal opportunity, especially in education. Although the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled against the Roberts family, the hearing ultimately highlighted the injustice of segregation in the United States Education System. Additionally, the ideas from this challenge were known to herald the well-known 1954 Brown vs.

The NAACP and the Fight for Equal Schools

In the 1930s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched a national campaign to achieve equal schools within the "separate but equal" framework of the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. White hostility towards this campaign kept black schools from necessary resources.

Freedom Schools

An activist of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964, Charles Cobb, proposed that the organization sponsor a network of Freedom Schools. Originally, Freedom Schools were organized to achieve social, political, and economic equalit… The Freedom Schools of the 1960s were first developed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. They were intended to counter what Charles Cobb refers to as the âsharecropper educationâ received by so many African Americans and poor whites. Through reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and civics, participants received a progressive curriculum during a six-week summer program that was designed to prepare disenfranchised African Americans to become active politiÂcal actors on their own behalf (as voters, elected officials, organizers, etc.). Nearly 40 Freedom Schools were established serving close to 2,500 students, including parents and grandparents.

Northern Experiences: Philadelphia as a Case Study

While the South faced its unique challenges, the North was not immune to racial discrimination in education. An article titled Delay and Neglect: Negro Public Education in Antebellum Philadelphia, 1800â1860, written by Harry C. public school system was designed for poor white children, which is incredibly on brand. But what many donât realize is that even during a time when white supremacy and slavery were widely accepted, there were people who rejected this rhetoricânamely, members of the predominantly Quaker Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

In 19th-century Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania school laws of 1802, 1809, 1812, and 1819 explicitly included the advancement and education of poor Black children. Yet the people assigned to allocating funding, maintaining schools, and overseeing the growth and expansion of a free public education system for everyone in the United States made concerted choices not to implement those laws.

Segregated schools were deliberately underfunded and unequipped. School buildings, teachers, and curriculums were subpar compared to those for white students. It was the original âseparate but equal.â When new schools were built for white children, Black students were moved into the older, crumbling buildings.

Black Agency and Resistance in Philadelphia

Despite the obstacles, the Black community in Philadelphia demonstrated agency and resilience in their pursuit of education. Two Black Women Cause The City of Philadelphia to Level Up Black Schools in 1827. Public school education began in 1818 in Philadelphia but due to racial discrimination, the first Black public school didn't open until three years later, on St. Mary's Street (now Rodman) and on Gaskill. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society was instrumental in pushing city officials to fund a Black public school.

The Lombard Street School stayed open for the rest of the Century - later being renamed to âThe Forten Schoolâ. This is where Octavius Catto and his best friend, Jacob C. White Jr, went to school.

Black teachers were finally allowed to work in Philadelphia public schools in 1854.

The earliest documented Black teacher for Black students in Philadelphia was Eleanor Harris who worked at the Pennsylvania Abolition Societies Cherry Street school in 1793.

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