Education of the Freedmen

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Education of the Freedmen

Newspaper editorial

By: Anonymous

Date: February 10, 1866

Source: Editorial staff. "Education of the Freedmen." Harper's Weekly. (February 10, 1866): 53.

About the Author: Harper's Weeklywas first published on January 3, 1857, and ran for almost six decades. It is considered to have great historical importance in the present day, as it provides an accurate snapshot of events, mores, culture, and political opinions of its time. During its publication run it was a politically, and therefore historically, influential periodical. It provides a quite detailed chronology of American events and culture during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, as well as a general picture of life and times during that era.

INTRODUCTION

Prior to the abolition of slavery, there was no system of formal education for African American slaves, nor for free blacks. In many areas of the country, particularly in rural or frontier regions, there was no public school system at all. By the mid–1800s public schools, known as common schools, were just beginning to take hold in the Northeast; where no public schools existed, private schools offered education for the wealthier citizens and, through charitable donations, for some poor white children. Overall, the options for the less privileged, whether black or white, were few or nonexistent.

Throughout the South, slaves were not permitted to learn to read or write, to possess paper or writing instruments, or to own books of any kind, regardless of ability to read them. Any form of education for slaves, beyond what was specifically necessary in order to perform their duties, was expressly forbidden and punishable by law. A few white people, primarily those associated with schools or churches, ran underground night schools for slaves, but they did so at great personal risk and were forced to abandon their efforts if discovered.

The north, where slavery had been abolished by the early 1800s, was considerably more liberal in its educational efforts, but racial segregation in education was the norm. In 1787, a facility called the African Free School was opened in New York City. By the early 1820s, seven schools for African Americans were operating in Manhattan, and all were receiving public educational funding.

Before the Civil War ended, a large cadre of teachers from the North had been selected by various aid societies and professional educators' associations to travel to the South and create schools for both African American and white children, albeit in separate school systems, as there was to be complete segregation in education and in all other areas of public life.

After the end of the Civil War, and throughout the Reconstruction period, these northern teachers traveled deep into the South to educate the freedmen (and women and children). At the time, it was the norm in the South for teachers to be marginally educated, and they often had minimal (if any) secondary education. The same was not true in the North. Many of the teachers had completed high school, and quite a few had college degrees. During Reconstruction, the largest percentage of the teachers were white and female, although a significant number were free female African Americans from the North.

PRIMARY SOURCE

#x0022;The Freedmen," said our martyr President, "are the Wards of the Nation." "Yes," replied Mr. Stanton, "Ward in Chancery." What is our duty to them as their guardians? Clearly, to clothe them if they are naked; to teach them if they are ignorant; to nurse them if they are sick, and to adopt them if they are homeless and motherless. They have been slaves, war made them freedmen, and peace must make them freemen. They must be shielded from unjust laws and unkindly prejudices; they must be instructed in the true principles of social order and democratic government; they must be prepared to take their place by-and-by in the great army of voters as lately they filled up the ranks in the great army of fighters. The superstitions, the vices, the unthriftiness, the loitering and indolent habits which slavery foisted on the whites and blacks alike, who were cursed by its presence in their midst, must be dispelled and supplanted by all the traits and virtues of a truly Christian civilization.

The North, that liberated the slave, has not been remiss in its duty to the freedman. The common school has kept step to the music of the advancing army. Will-son's Readers have followed Grant's soldiers everywhere. Many of the colored troops on the march had primers in their boxes and primers in their pockets. They were namesakes, but not of the same family. Charleston had not been captured more than a week before the schools for freedmen and poor whites were opened there. It is proposed now to educate all the negroes and poor whites in the South—as a political necessity; in order that henceforth there may be no other insurrections, the result of ignorance, either on the part of the late slave or that late slaveholder. Ignorance has cost us too much to be suffered to disturb us again. In free countries it is not the intelligent but the ignorant who rebel. Ambitious men could never induce an enlightened people to overthrow a free Government. It was because there were over 600,000 white adults in the slave States, and 4,000,000 of slaves who could neither read nor write, that Davis and Toombs and Slidell had power to raise armies against the nation. Let us prevent all social upheavals in the future by educating all men now.

The National Freedmen's Relief Association of New York—of which Francis George Shaw is President and Joseph B. Collins Treasurer—has been the most active of the agencies in relieving the wants and dispelling the ignorance of the freedman. It has expended during the last four years three quarters of a million of dollars in clothing the naked; in establishing the freedmen on farms; in supplying them with tools; in founding orphan homes; in distributing school-books and establishing schools. They have over two hundred teachers in the South at this time. They support orphan homes in Florida and South Carolina. They teach ten thousand children, and large numbers of adults. They have instituted industrial schools to educate the negro women to be thrifty housewives. They are continually laboring, in brief, to make the negroes self-reliant and self-supporting. They appeal for additional aid. There are but a thousand teachers for freedmen in all the Southern States; whereas twenty thousand could find immediate employment. The National Relief Association could find pupils for 5000. It has but 200. As the work is a good and great one, and as the officers of this Society are eminent citizens of New York, we heartily commend their appeal to the generosity of our readers.

SIGNIFICANCE

As teachers from the North began to move into the South, a variety of educational systems began to be created, both for newly freed slaves and for the itinerant and lower socioeconomic classes of whites. The teachers set up an entire educational system, spanning the range from early and elementary education through secondary schools and colleges. They provided not only rudimentary training but also schools for theology, literature, and classical studies. The goal was to provide as broad a base of opportunities as possible. In addition to the more traditional forms of didactic and classroom-based education, educators established centers for technical and vocational training and for a variety of useful skills, such as sewing, cooking, woodworking, and the like.

When the Freedmen's Bureau was established in 1866, it was led by General Oliver Otis Howard (1830–1909), who was deeply committed to seeing that all newly freed slaves were afforded abundant educational opportunities. It was his core belief that true freedom could only be attained by those who had the means to live independently in society—and that the basis for achieving freedom was found in a thorough education. Because of his beliefs, dedication, and the perseverance that he and others associated with him brought to the task, a matrix of colleges and universities designed to prepare African Americans to succeed in the scientific, medical, business, teaching, and other respected professions was created. Although many considered the Freedmen's Bureau to have fallen short of its overall mission, the academic infrastructure created by Howard and his colleagues had a profound impact on the evolution of education, and educational institutions, for southern African Americans.

Howard and his colleagues recognized that there were growing needs in the African American community for many types of professionals. It was their belief that blacks should be given the opportunity to become educated in every possible area in order to meet those needs, rather than having such positions filled by whites, creating yet another social imbalance of power. It was Howard's belief that a strong college and university system was necessary in order to more fully meet the needs of the growing free black population. During the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, two educational models predominated: vocational and industrial training schools, and classical colleges and universities, which typically offered programs of study in theology, education, and medicine. In the classical model, all students were required to study classical languages such as Latin and Greek, physics, and mathematics. Howard believed that the post-secondary systems also needed a school for the study of law, and it was his conviction that schools should be well funded, whether they were public or private institutions, in order to provide the greatest possible educational opportunities for all who sought them. Howard University, the first black-centered college in America, was named in honor of General Howard.

Howard, when put in charge of the Freedmen's Bureau, was given economic support to set up school systems on a large scale. Prior to the creation of the bureau, education of freedmen was largely overseen by the American Missionary Association and other aid and relief societies, who operated with a much more limited budget derived primarily from charitable donations. In 1865, according to Semiannual Reports on Schools for Freedman, there were reported to be more than fifteen hundred teachers working with more than ninety thousand children. By the Tenth Semiannual Report on Schools for Freedmen, published in 1870, there were 4,239 schools employing 9,307 teachers for 247,333 students. The superintendent of schools under the Freedmen's Bureau reported that the total educational budget in 1870 was about one million dollars.

The creation of the educational system for freed-men, and the rapid rise in educational institutions of all kinds, set the stage for developing the philosophy that education ought to be freely available and publicly supported. Although some public school systems had been established in Massachusetts and elsewhere prior to the Civil War, there was, in additioin, a groundswell movement aimed at making primary and secondary education compulsory for all people, regardless of race.