Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry

views updated May 14 2018

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry

The American politician Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry (1815-1903) was the main force behind improved education in the South in the latter half of the 19th century.

Born on June 5, 1815, in Lincoln Country, Ga., J. L. M. Curry was the son of a slaveholding family that ultimately moved to Alabama. He graduated from the University of Georgia and the Harvard University Law School. While at Harvard, Curry heard a lecture by Horace Mann that awakened his zealous interest in universal education.

In 1845 Curry was admitted to the Alabama bar, and he quickly gained prominence as a lawyer. Three terms in the Alabama Legislature preceded 4 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. During the Civil War he served first in the Confederate Congress and then as a colonel on the staffs of generals Joseph E. Johnston and Joseph Wheeler.

Shortly after his 1866 ordination as a Baptist minister, Curry accepted the presidency of Howard College in Alabama. He left that post in 1868 to become a professor of English, philosophy, and law at Richmond College, Va. Meanwhile, New England philanthropist George Peabody had donated $2,000,000 as a fund for the improvement of Southern schools. When the directorship of the Peabody Fund became vacant, Curry was immediately nominated. As one endorser stated: "He is so manysided, so clear in his views, so judicious and knows so well how to deal with all classes of men. His whole being is wrapped up in general education, and he is the best lecturer or speaker on the subject in all the South." In 1881 Curry received the appointment. He later became special agent for a similar educational endowment, the Slater Fund.

His supreme goal, Curry stated, was to "preach a crusade against ignorance." He practiced as well as preached, for he was the inspiration behind the establishment of normal schools in 12 Southern states; he was the chief organizer of elementary schools in a number of major cities; and he constantly prodded state legislatures to create more and better rural schools. His 40 reports and 10 addresses on education at this time dominated the subject. Two historians, Thomas D. Clark and Albert D. Kirwan, wrote: "Scarcely a major educational advance was to be made in the South between 1881 and 1902 that was not influenced in some way by J. L. M. Curry; in fact his name became synonymous with public education."

In his last years Curry served as special minister to Spain, president of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Southern Baptist Convention, and president of the Southern Historical Association. He died on Feb. 12, 1903, in Asheville, N.C., and is buried in Richmond, Va. His statue is one of two memorials placed by Alabama in the U.S. Capitol's "Hall of Statuary."

Curry's writings included Constitutional Government in Spain (1889), William Ewart Gladstone (1891), The Southern States of the American Union (1895), The Civil History of the Government of the Confederate States (1901), and a number of religious tracts.