A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience : A Record of Struggles and Triumphs [1 ed.] 9781443889551, 9781443881166

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A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience

A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience: A Record of Struggles and Triumphs Edited by

Hazel Arnett Ervin and Lois Jamison Sheer

A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience: A Record of Struggles and Triumphs Edited by Hazel Arnett Ervin and Lois Jamison Sheer This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Hazel Arnett Ervin, Lois Jamison Sheer and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8116-3 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8116-6

To our mothers and fathers who were our first teachers

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... xii Acknowledgments .................................................................................... xvi Landmarks and Milestones .......................................................................... 1 Personal Testimonies Tracts and Dialogues from Thomas Bacon’s Sermons Addressed to Masters and Servants ............................................................................. 22 Bishop Meade In Secret Places, Acquiring Literacy in Slave Communities ..................... 25 Heather Andrea Williams Chapter VII from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave .................................................................................... 35 Frederick Douglass Slave Testimony: “We Slipped and Learned to Read” from When I Can Read My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South .......................................................................................................... 41 Janet Duitsman Cornelius Letter from a Female Reader to the Editor of Freedom’s Journal 1827 ... 65 Letter to Samuel May, Jr., General Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1854 ............................................................................................. 67 Josephine Brown “The Schoolmarms” Excerpted from We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century ................................................... 69 Dorothy Sterling

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Boyhood Days from Up from Slavery ....................................................... 80 Booker T. Washington Black Colleges from American Higher Education, A History ................... 89 Christopher J. Lucas Chapter VIII: I Go South from The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois .... 98 W.E.B. Du Bois Harvard in the Last Decade of the 19th Century from The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois .................................................................................... 104 W. E. B. Du Bois “Schaal” from Jocelyn Elders, MD—From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America .............................. 109 Dr. Jocelyn Elders and David Chanoff “Let Down Your Bucket” from Jocelyn Elders, MD— From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America ............................................................... 113 Dr. Jocelyn Elders and David Chanoff A Life of Learning ................................................................................... 123 John Hope Franklin A Family Legacy from The Measure of Our Success, A Letter to My Children and Yours.......................................................... 138 Marian Wright Edelman Alma Mater from The Autobiography of Malcolm X............................... 141 Malcolm X The Introduction from Vernon Can Read! A Memoir .............................. 145 Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Interview with Melba Patillo Beals (A Member of the Little Rock Nine) Scholastic, Inc.......................................................................................... 152 The Trial from In My Place ..................................................................... 158 Charlayne Hunter-Gault

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UGA: The Beginning from In My Place ................................................. 168 Charlayne Hunter-Gault Reflections of Family and Education from Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud – A Memoir ................................................ 186 Cornel West School Days ............................................................................................. 195 Oprah Winfrey Two Positives from Gifted Hands ........................................................... 202 Ben Carson M.D. with Cecil Murphy Litigations Federal Court Decisions, School Reform, and African American Education: An Annotated Bibliography .................................................. 214 Adria Allen and Patricia Walker Swinton Intellectual Perspectives The Quest for ‘Book Learning’: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom ............................................................................................ 226 Christopher M. Span and James D. Anderson Epilogue: Black Education in Southern History from The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 .......................................................... 244 James D. Anderson The Practical Value of Higher Education ................................................ 251 Kelly Miller The Talented Tenth.................................................................................. 256 W. E. B. DuBois Book Reviews (1. Vanessa Siddle Walker. Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South; and 2. Jacqueline Jordan Irvine and Michele Foster. Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools) ................................................... 262 Michael Fultz

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A Book Review (Vanessa Siddle Walker. Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South) ........ 266 Valinda W. Littlefield American Values, Social Goals, and the Desegregated School: A Historical Perspective .......................................................................... 268 V. P. Franklin The African American High School Experience in Perspective .............. 285 Charles V. Willie, Antoine M. Garibaldi and Wornie L. Reed Marva Collins, Her Way .......................................................................... 309 Toni O’Neal Mosley Twenty-Five Lessons for Life from The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours.......................................................... 317 Marian Wright Edelman The Religious Needs of Negro Students .................................................. 329 Benjamin E. Mays Independent Neighborhood Schools: A Framework for the Education of African Americans .............................................................................. 336 Joan Davis Ratteray Relevance Remains: Historically Black Colleges (and Universities) Needed ..................................................................................................... 345 Roderick L. Smothers, Sr. Fighting for Our Lives ............................................................................. 348 Gloria Ladson-Billings Maintaining Social Justice through Culturally Responsive Classroom Management ............................................................................................ 358 Lloyd E. Hervey Reflections on America’s Academic Achievement Gaps: A Fifty Year Perspective............................................................................................... 362 Freeman A. Hrabowski III From DuBois to Obama: The Education of Peoples of African Descent in the United States in the 21st Century ................................................... 374 Carol D. Lee

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Bibliography ............................................................................................ 402 Index ........................................................................................................ 445

PREFACE

The witness, the telling of ... story, is a ritual, a performance which remembers, encodes, and perpetuates the possibility of . . . survival. . . . Finally, by their witness . . . , the stark reality of a community’s history becomes, in time, a shared mythological drama. —Gale Jackson, The Way We Do: A Preliminary Investigation of the African Root of African American Performance, 1991 Let lessons of stern yesterdays…be your food, your drink, your rest. —Negro Tales (1912) Apply your heart to instruction/ And your ears to words of knowledge. —Proverbs 23:12

A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience is a collection designed to broaden understanding of a historically rooted education ethos within Black America, and to deepen appreciation of what has been the role of family, the function of community, and the responsibility of church and academy in promoting a constructive “way of thinking” about the education of African Americans in American society. Constituting the make-up of A Community of Voices are witnesses (from slaves, escaped slaves, sons and daughters of skilled workers and professionals to journalists, non-profit organizers, federal employees, academicians and education historians) who, in their narratives, memoirs, letters, sermons, book chapters, interviews, and scholarly articles document and record a history of a people’s struggles and strategies to realize the ideals of education in American society. This community of voices, however, when functioning as witnesses, when engaged in the actual act of remembering and encoding performances, goes beyond mere history. These witnesses also posit memories of 1) recurring goals and ethical persuasions from within the African American family, church and community on education, and 2) the added values of a Community’s intentional “way of thinking” about education as a pre-condition to survival and to a better way of life in America. Finally, from this community of voices, especially among the witnesses who are within the academy, chronicled are scholarly critiques of African American education,

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and offered are scholarly recommendations for the continuity of an effective African American education ethos. History, culture, and linguistics inform the context of A Community of Voices. Within the collection, there are 41 entries which communicate how African Americans seeking to acquire literacy have had to face social, political, and economic barriers as well as mutilations of limbs and even death in early American history. But, also communicated in the 41 entries are deeper meanings of survival and triumph by way of education. Cultural critic Ralph Ellison reminds us that in the recall of African American experiences in America, meaning is to be found not only in writers’ historical recollections and summaries of injustices, but also in their larger concerns about the group’s "struggles [for its] humanity.” He writes, For us the question should be, What are the specific forms of that humanity, and what in our backgrounds is worth preserving or abandoning.

Ellison has detailed in his research what are those specific forms [of humanity] found across cultures, even across African American culture, and which ones continue to surface as worth being preserved. He writes, [T]hose rites, manners, customs, and so forth, which insure the good life..., boundaries of feeling, thought and action which [a] particular group has found…[are] wisdom in symbols which express the group’s will to survive..., and those values by which the group lives and dies.

Echoed in A Community of Voices is what is valued by the group in its struggles for its humanity and its survival. In African American arts and letters, literary and scholarly writers are expected to address the specific forms of their humanity worth preserving. They often employ recurring themes, symbols, and images as rhetorical tools “to remember, encode and perpetuate the possibility of survival [and a better life].” In A Community of Voices, the largely assembled African American writers are no exceptions. When readers trust the text provided in this collection and its rhetorical tools (e.g., the repetitions of manners and customs, behavioral patterns, and rhetorical uses of symbols, rituals and cultural images), readers are able to explore within a contextual space what is the deeper multiplicity of meaning in the African American experience surrounding education and what is deemed as worth preserving and passing on. The context of A Community of Voices is also informed by philosophy. The words and actions of the assembled witnesses challenge negative messages perpetuated historically from the outside world which in essence say that in America people of African descent are incapable of reasoning

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and that reasoning, a natural ability, comes for the darker people by means of nurture rather than by nature. In the respective texts within A Community of Voices, witnesses assemble as collective voices, especially from the 1700s to the early-1970s, and they illustrate philosophically just how the Black community has successfully shielded its members from destructive messages from the outside world by way of 1)constructive guidance from the family; 2) moral lessons of steadfast determination as well as symbols of resilience and perseverance from the church; 3) inspirational stories of resilience and perseverance from African American newspapers and magazines; and 4) encouragement from teachers who insist Black lives are special and that they matter. To substantively engage readers in discussions about education and the African American experience in America, especially from the 1700s to the early-1970s and then beyond, the editors intentionally guide discussions to ensure that there are inclusions of not only Black America’s tragic struggles for education but also its struggles for its humanity. In short, in this collection, it has been important to include history and memory, but equally included are specific forms which have emerged as worth preserving—e.g., identity, literacy, freedom, dignity, family, community, etc. Also, the editors of A Community of Voices intentionally guide the thematic, philosophical and theoretical discussions. For example, before each entry, included is an italicized preface, directing attention to the following: x the repetitions of themes (e.g., identity, freedom, resistance and liberation, and journey towards upward mobility); x repeated behavioral patterns (e.g., the African American slave as property, or the group consciousness among African Americans, or the symbolic investitures of reading and writing in Black America); x rituals such as the covert mission to become literate and to undermine attempts by White owners’ to control the slaves’ intellect and memories of the past which carried potent implications for the present; and, x symbols (i.e., literacy, the black voice, ancestors, the church, the community, and the family). These prefaces also point out rhetorical clues which for generations have signaled to individuals of color and to a race specifically what is worth struggling for and worth preserving---e.g., familial, spiritual, education and community goals. As documented in this collection, between the 1700s and the early1970s, an education ethos in Black America is consistent and influential.

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By the late 1970s, however, such an ethos wanes. Education historian James Anderson often argues that gains after Brown v. Board of Education inspired access to educational opportunities and upward mobility among Black Americans, but such gains also led to great economic divides within the larger Black community, especially in the mid-1970s when greater numbers of African Americans began to migrate to the suburbs, leaving behind a vulnerable urban and rural Black America. Such a great divide in Black America also calls into question today’s complexity of class strivings and educational disparities within the African American experience. Imperative is that at one point in history, in spite of social, political and economic barriers, a now divided community once moved as a single community from slavery to freedom to middle-class, largely because of a shared education ethos. How did such an experience lose its tenor, especially among urban and rural Black Americans? To assist in addressing today's challenges of education in Black America, the once measurable continuity of outcomes of cultural goals, practices and rituals surrounding an African American education ethos, especially from the 1700s to the early-1970s, has been recaptured in A Community of Voices via a selection of personal testimonies by wellknown and not-so well-known African Americans; litigation summaries; intellectual perspectives based on certain themes and practices in Black education; a Chronology of landmarks and milestones in Black education; a comprehensive bibliography; and an index of authors and subjects. After such a compilation, anticipated are reformers of African American education who will, to quote Proverbs 23:12 (a book from the Scriptures on wisdom in the form of counsel) “apply your heart to instruction/and your ears to words of knowledge.” The editors wish to thank head librarians Rosa L. Martin at Paine College and Teresa Ojezua at Philander Smith College for their selfless assistance as researchers. Thank you also Donna Young, Geneva Smitherman, and Jon Young. To the editors and typesetters at Cambridge Scholars Publishers, a heartfelt thank you is in order for your commitment, support, and interest in our subject. We are extremely grateful. Thank you also Janet Sims-Wood and Jennifer Jordan for your continued assistance as scholars and colleagues. Last, to Dr. Willis B. Sheftall, mentor and former Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Morehouse College, we thank you for your leadership and informal conversations about education and the African American experience. Hazel Arnett Ervin Lois Jamison Sheer

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors are grateful to the following who granted us permission to reprint: Adria Allen and Patricia Walker-Swinton. "Federal Court Decisions, School Reform, and African American Education: An Annotated Bibliography." Printed with permission of the authors, 2015. James D. Anderson. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 by James D. Anderson, 1988. Copyright (c) 1988 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.unc. edu. Melba Patillo Beals. "Interview with Melba Patillo Beals." From scholastic.com/teacher website. Copyright (c) 1998 by Scholastic Inc. Reprinted by permission of Scholastic, Inc. Gloria Ladson-Billings. " Fighting For Our Lives." Reprinted by permission of Journal of Teacher Education 51, No. 3 (2000): 206-12. Ben Carson with Cecil Murphy. Taken from Gifted Hands by Benjamin Carson. Copyright (c) 1996 by Benjamin Carson. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com Janet Duitsman Cornelius. When I Can See My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South. Reprinted by permission of The University of South Carolina Press. W. E. B. DuBois. From Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life From the Last Decade of 19th Century. Used by permission of International Publishers, 235 West 23 Street, NY, NY, 10011. Jocelyn Elders with David Chanoff. "Let Down Your Buckets." In From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America, 1996. Used by permission of the author, Jocelyn Elders.

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Jocelyn Elders with David Chanoff. "Schaal." In From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America, 1996. Used by permission of the author, Jocelyn Elders. Marian Wright Edelman. The Measure of Our Success. Copyright (c) 1992 by Marian Wright Edelman. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. John Hope Franklin. A Life of Learning by John Hope Franklin, the 1988 Charles Homer Haskins Lecture. Reprinted by permission of son, John W. Franklin. V. P. Franklin. "American Values, Social Goals, and the Desegregated School: A Historical Perspective," published in New Perspectives on Black Educational History (GK Hall, 1978). Michael Fultz. Review of Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South by Vanessa Siddle Walker and Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools by Jacqueline Jordon Irvine and Michele Foster. Used by permission of History of Education Quarterly 37, No 4 (Winter 1997): 452-55. Lloyd E. Hervey "Maintaining Social Justice through Culturally Responsive Classroom Management." With permission of author, Lloyd E. Hervey, 2015. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. "Reflections on America's Academic Achievement Gap: A Fifty-Year Perspective." 2004 Low Lecture at University Maryland Baltimore County. With permission of Freeman A. Hrabowski, 2015. Charlayne Hunter-Gault. "The Trial" and "UGA: The Beginning" from In My Place by Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Copyright @1962 by Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Vernon E. Jordan. Vernon Can Read! A Memoir. Reprinted by permission of Perseus Books Group, 2008. All Rights reserved by Copyright Clearance Center, Dept 001, P. O. Box 843006, Boston, MA 02284-3006. Carol D. Lee. "From DuBois to Obama: The Education of Peoples of African Descent in the United States in the 21st Century." Reprinted by permission of Journal of Negro Education, 78, No. 4 (2009): 367-84.

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Valinda W. Littlefield. Review of Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South by Vanessa Siddle Walker. Reprinted by permission of Journal of Southern History, LXIV, No. 3 (August 1998): 568-69. Christopher J. Lucas. From American Higher Education, A History (c) 1997 by Christopher Lucus. Reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan. All Rights reserved. Benjamin E. Mays. "Religious Life and Needs of Negro Students." Reprinted by permission of Journal of Negro Education, 9, No. 3 (1940): 332-43. Kelly Miller. "The Practical Value of the Higher Education of the Negro" (1915). Faculty Reprints. Paper 148. Reprinted by permission of Curator of the Kelly Miller Foundation, Inc. Toni O'Neal Mosley. "Marva Collins, Her Way." Reprinted by permission of Technos Quarterly Vol 2,No. 2 , Summer 1993. Joan Davis Ratteray. "Independent Neighborhood Schools: A Framework for the Education of African Americans." Reprinted by permission of Journal of Negro Education 61, No. 2 (Spring 1992): 138-47. Roderick L. Smothers, Sr. "Relevance Remains: Historically Black Colleges (and Universities) Needed." Arkansas Democratic Gazette/Arkansas Online, December 31, 2015. Christopher M. Span and James D. Anderson. "The Quest for 'Book Learning': African American Education in Slavery and Freedom." In The Companion to African American History, edited by Alton Hornsby, Jr., 295-311. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005. Permission Granted. Dorothy Sterling. From We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Dorothy Sterling. Copyright @ 1984 by Dorothy Sterling. Used by Permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Booker T. Washington. "Boyhood Days." Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington (Dover Publications, Inc., 1995). Used by permission of the publisher. Charles V. Willie, Antoine M. Garibaldi and Wornie L. Reed. The African American Struggle for Secondary School, 1940-80: Closing the Achievement

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Gap by John L. Rury and Shirley A. Hill, 2012. Used by permission of Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027. Cornel West. From Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud--A Memoir by Cornel West, 2009. Used by permission of The Tavis Smiley Foundation, 4434 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90043. All Rights Reserved. Heather Andrea Williams. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom by Heather Andrea Williams, 2005. Copyright (c) 2005 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.unc.edu. “Oprah Winfrey” by Katherine Krohn. Text copyright © 2005 by Katherine Krohn. Reprinted with the permission of Lerner Publications Company, a division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

LANDMARKS AND MILESTONES

1600s 1624 Born to indentured Africans in Jamestown, Virginia and christened “William” in the Church of England is the first African American child. 1641 Recognized as lawful in the English Colony of Massachusetts is Slavery. Recognition of Slavery in other colonies followed: Connecticut, 1650; Virginia, 1661; Maryland, 1663; New York and New Jersey, 1664; South Carolina, 1682; Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, 1700; North Carolina, 1715; and Georgia, 1750. 1695 Assigned to Maryland is Rev. Thomas Bray by the Bishop of London (UK) to convert and to educate enslaved African Americans. 1696 Invited to Goose Creek Parish in South Carolina by Rev. Samuel Thomas and several local ministers are enslaved African Americans for religious instructions and for instructions on reading the Bible. 1700s 1704 Opened by Elias Neau, a Frenchman, is a private school for African Americans in New York City. Other schools in New York that followed include: 1787, opened is the African Free School, known also as the first free school in New York City. 1740 Outlawed in the State of South Carolina are both the teaching of reading to enslaved African Americans and to employing enslaved African Americans as scribes. 1744 Established in Philadelphia by The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel is a mission school for enslaved African Americans. Provided are two African American teachers. Other private schools established in Philadelphia include: 1750 established by Anthony Benezet, founder of the Abolitionist Society, is a private evening school in Philadelphia for enslaved African Americans; 1770, opened in Philadelphia by Anthony Benezet and other Quakers is a school for African Americans; and 1789, established are evening schools for African American adults by Quakers in Philadelphia who also organize the Society for the Free Instruction of the Orderly Blacks and People of Color.

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1755 Funded is a private school in Virginia for enslaved African Americans by Hugh Bryan, a wealthy South Carolina planter. Other schools established in Virginia include: 1764, opened in Williamsburg, Virginia by the Editor of a white newspaper in the same city is a private school for African Americans; and 1797, established in Alexandria, Virginia for enslaved African Americans is a school by Abolitionists of the city. Hired is an African American teacher. 1770 Opened by Quakers is a co-educational Negro School for free and enslaved blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1774 Established is a private school for Free African Americans of Charleston, South Carolina. Other private schools established in Charleston include: 1790, recommended by the Methodist Conference, which met in Charleston, South Carolina, is the establishment of Sunday schools for poor African and white children to teach reading and piety; and 1790, established is a school by Free African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina. 1777 Ratified is the Declaration of Independence. Opened by Quakers of New Jersey is a school for African Americans based on recommendations from the Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting 1787 Ratified by the U. S. Congress is the U. S. Constitution. Presented by Prince Hall and other African Americans of Boston is a petition to the City legislature for “equal school facilities.” 1788 Outlawed in the State of New Jersey is the teaching of enslaved Africans to read. 1790 Recorded by Census Bureau: Ninety-two percent of blacks in the United States are slaves. 1791 Ratified is the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution confirmed: States now will have rights not granted to the federal government. Education now becomes a right of the states. 1793 Enacted by Congress is the First Fugitive Slave Law. The legislation makes it a criminal offense to harbor a fugitive slave or to prevent his or her arrest. 1798 Established in Boston is a school by Free African Americans of Boston. 1799 Recorded as the first black person on record to attend an American college or University is John Chavis, a Presbyterian minister and teacher. There is no record, however, of his receiving a degree from what is now Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

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1800s 1800 Ratified by South Carolina legislators is a statute which prohibits teaching both enslaved and free Africans Americans to read. Other states that prohibit (or continue to prohibit) teaching enslaved and/or free African Americans include:1823, passed by Mississippi legislature are statutes which forbid educating enslaved and free African Americans; 1825, passed by southern colonies are restrictive laws against slaves assembling or learning to read; 1829; enacted by North Carolina are statutes which prohibit teaching and learning by African Americans; 1830, ratified by Louisiana legislature are statutes which forbid educating enslaved African Americans; 1830, forbid by the Virginia General Assembly is the teaching of African Americans—enslaved or free—to read or write; 1831, ratified by North Carolina and Virginia legislatures are statutes which outlaw teaching enslaved African Americans. 1832, Enacted in North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and even Connecticut are statutes which prohibit teaching slaves; 1832, Outlawed in the State of Alabama is the teaching of enslaved African Americans; 1833, Ratified by Georgia legislature are statutes which make it unlawful for any person to permit a slave, “Negro or person of color,” to transact business for slave owners in writing; 1834, enacted in southern states are laws that will punish anyone who is caught teaching or assisting any slave in learning to read or write; and 1834, passed by South Carolina legislature is a law prohibiting teaching of any African American children, free or enslaved. Willed by Robert Pleasants of Virginia is a schoolhouse and 350 acres to benefit African American children. 1801 Established is a school for one day a week for African American children by the Abolition Society of Wilmington, Delaware. 1804 Awarded by Middlebury College is an honorary Master’s degree to Lemuel Haynes, an African American who fought in the Revolutionary War. 1807 Opened by Quakers of Philadelphia is the Adelphi School for poor children. Other schools opened by Quakers include: 1809, established by Quakers and Abolitionists of Philadelphia is Clarkson Hall School for African Americans; and 1816, established by Quakers of North Carolina is a school for African Americans which is opened two days a week. 1808 Opened is a school in Raleigh, North Carolina by John Chavis, a free black. Chavis teaches whites during the day, and free and

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1820 1823

1824

1826

1827 1828

1829

1832 1833

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enslaved blacks are taught at night. Beginning in 1831, white authorities in Raleigh forbid Chavis from teaching African American students. Established by Union Society are schools for African American adults. Founded in Charleston, South Carolina is the Charleston School for Free Negroes. Opened in the 1820s were two primary schools for black children in Boston, Massachusetts. Awarded is the A.B. degree by Middlebury College to Alexander Lucius Twilight who is considered the first African American to graduate from an American college. Funded by New York City are seven African Free Schools. Free education for all black children in New York City becomes available. Awarded by Amherst College is the B. A. degree to Edward A. Jones; Awarded by Bowdoin College is the A. B. degree to John B. Russwurm. Founded in New York City is Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper. Edward Mitchell graduates from Dartmouth College. He is believed to be the fourth African American to graduate from an American college. Established exclusively to educate African American girls is St. Frances Academy of Baltimore, Maryland. Excluded from Ohio public schools are African Americans. The exclusion ends in 1849. Organized at the African Baptist Church which is at Boston’s Beacon Hill is the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Organized is the American Anti-Slavery Society; Mobbed and later arrested for conducting an academy for African American females is Prudence Crandall, a Quaker and White woman of Canterbury Connecticut. Eventually, Crandall’s academy is closed. Abolished is Slavery in the British Empire. Distinguished is Oberlin College of Ohio as the first college in the West to enroll African Americans and women. Opened for African Americans is the Noyes Academy of Canaan, New Hampshire. The Academy is forced to close by a mob of whites who used a hundred yoke of oxen to pull the school to a swamp outside of the town. Established in Pennsylvania is the Cheyney State Training School [now Cheyney State University] for the education of African Americans.

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1839 Passed in Connecticut is a law that makes it illegal to establish schools for African Americans. Closed is private school for African American females, established by Prudence Crandall in Canterbury, Connecticut 1848 Barred from white public schools in Boston, Massachusetts is Sarah Roberts. Filed by her father, Benjamin Roberts, is the first school integration suit. The case is lost in1849. Outlawed by the State of Ohio are African Americans and persons of color from attending public school. 1849 Established for educating African Americans is the Allegheny Institute and Mission Church, later called Avery College in Alleghany, Pennsylvania. 1850 Recorded by Census Bureau: United States population: 23,191,876. Black population: 3,638,808 (15.7 percent). Rejected by the Massachusetts Supreme Court are the arguments of Charles Sumner in the Boston school integration suit which established the “separate but equal” precedent. 1851 Published is Abolitionist William C. Nell’s Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812, the first extended work on the history of American blacks. Revised edition of the book is published in 1855 with new title, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution. 1852 Outlawed by the State of Delaware is “free school” for all nonwhites. 1854 Founded as the first institute of higher education for black men is Ashmun Institute (now Lincoln University). Located in Oxford, Pennsylvania, the institution later graduated notables Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. 1855 Passed by Massachusetts’s legislature is a law which prohibits the exclusion of a person from a public school because of race, color, or religion. Established is Berea College of Kentucky and admitted are African Americans, but by 1904 African Americans are forbidden by Kentucky law to attend. In 1954, Berea begins again to admit African Americans. 1856 Established is Wilberforce University of Wilberforce, Ohio by the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church. Wilberforce becomes the second university founded solely for black students; Appointed as the first black President of Avery College is Martin Henry Freeman.

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Landmarks and Milestones

1857 Founded is Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, Missouri. The Dred Scott decision of the U.S. Supreme Court concludes that the U. S. Constitution does not allow slaves to become U.S. citizens and legalizes slavery in all territories. 1860 Reported by Census Bureau: Before the Civil War, there are about 487,970 free African Americans, about 1/9 of the entire African American population. While most lived in rural areas, the educational opportunities were in the cities. 1861 Opened on September 17, 1861, in Monroe, Virginia is a school for freed African Americans. The lead teacher is Mary Peake, an African American. The Civil War begins. Sent to the South during the Civil War to teach African American supporters of the Union Armies and those who were in the “liberated areas within the Union lines” are teachers from the North who are African American as well as white. 1862 Abolished is Slavery by Congress in Washington, D.C. Awarded from Oberlin College of Ohio is the first degree to an African American woman, Mary Jane Patterson. Founded as a private institution and a United Church of Christ affiliate is LeMoyne-Owens College in Memphis, Tennessee. Passed by the U. S. Congress is the Morrill Act of 1862 which provides federal funds for land-grant institutions of higher education for white students. 1863 Signed on January 1, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln is the Emancipation Proclamation. 1864 Founded as a private American Baptist Church affiliate is Virginia Union University of Richmond. Founded by Dr. Louis C. Roudanez, and published in both English and French, is The New Orleans Tribune, the first black daily newspaper. 1865 The Civil War ends on April 26, after the surrender of the Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and J.E. Johnston. Established by Congress is the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, designed to aid four million black Americans in transition from slavery to freedom. Built by the Bureau are hospitals which give direct medical assistance; black schools; and teacher-training higher education institutions. Ratified by the U. S. Congress is the Thirteenth Amendment which outlaws slavery in all states and territories. Reported by the Census Bureau: There is a 10% literacy rate in the African American community.

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Founded is Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland; Founded also are the following institutions for African Americans: Founded, as an United Methodist affiliate is Atlanta University of Atlanta, Georgia (now merged with Clark College and renamed Clark Atlanta University); Founded as a private, National Baptist Convention affiliate is Shaw University of Raleigh, North Carolina. Shaw is the first black institution to have a medical school. Reported by Census Bureau: One out of ten newly freed slaves can read and write. Founded is Fisk University of Nashville, Tennessee. Founded also as a private, AME Church affiliate is Edward Waters College of Jacksonville, Florida. (1867-1877) Reconstruction: Established by Carpetbag governments, mission societies, and Freedmen’s Bureau are schools for newly freed African Americans. Established by George Foster Peabody is a fund of $2 million to aid in educating black and white youth in “the more destitute portions of the southern and southwestern states.” Founded are the following institutions of higher education for African Americans: Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte, North Carolina; Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland; Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia (originally known as Augusta Institute); Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Talledega College in Talledega, Alabama as a private United Church of Christ affiliate. Founded is Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia. Ratified by the U. S. Congress is the Fourteenth (14th) Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Extended to states are the liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to former slaves. Given, among others, are black citizenship, Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Founded as institutions of higher learning for African Americans include: Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina as an United Methodist Church affiliate; Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, (Clark College is now merged with Atlanta University and renamed Clark Atlanta University); and Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana as private and both United Methodist Church and United Church of Christ affiliates.

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Landmarks and Milestones

1870 Abolished is the Freedman’s Bureau; Ratified by the U. S. Congress is the Fifteenth (15th) Amendment which gives African Americans the right to vote. Influenced by Quakers, the Pennsylvania legislature passes statutes that advocate education of the poor and attendance of African American children to schools with whites. Reported by Census Bureau: 81% of African Americans in the US are illiterate (compared to 8.5% of white Americans); 9.1% of African American children attended school (compared to 50% of white Americans children). Declared by Virginia Law is the following: that "…white and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school but in separate schools…." Founded as an African Methodist Episcopal affiliate is Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina; Founded as a private American Baptist Church is Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina. Founded is the Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia, which later became Lucy Laney High School. 1871 Employed by Virginian schools is one "Negro teacher" for every 232 school-aged African - American children. Founded is Alcorn State University in Lorman, Mississippi. 1872 Founded as a private African Methodist Episcopal church affiliate is Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas. 1873 Founded is the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Founded as an United Methodist Church affiliate and for women is Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina; Founded as an United Methodist Church affiliate is Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. 1875 Founded is Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, Alabama; Founded as a private, United Presbyterian Church of North America affiliate is Knoxville College in Knoxville (Mechanicsville), Tennessee. The College lost its accreditation in 1997. Classes have been canceled for fall semester 2015. The College plans to reorganize. 1876 Opened is Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, the second medical school for blacks; Founded is Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas; Founded as a private, Presbyterian affiliate is Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. 1877 Sabotaged is Reconstruction, leading to the disenfranchisement of African American citizens in the South. Affected seriously are school finances: Local school property taxes are no longer used to

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fund schools for fear that the bulk of the money raised would fund African American schools. Instead, white-dominated school boards begin using state school funds that had been allocated on the basis of the African American school population for use in white schools. Founded is Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi; Founded as a United Methodist Church affiliate is Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. Founded as a private, Alabama State Missionary Baptist Convention affilitate is Selma University in Selma, Alabama. Founded as a private, American Baptist Church affiliate is Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens, Florida; Founded as a private, African Methodist Episcopal Zion affiliate is Livingston College in Salisbury, North Carolina. Founded by Booker T. Washington is Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University); Founded is Howard University School of Dentistry; Founded as a United Methodist Church and Church of God in Christ affiliate is Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas; Founded as a private, African Methodist Episcopal affiliate is Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia. The College lost its accreditation in 2002. The College has remained opened, reorganized, and plans to regain accreditation; Founded is Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Founded is Spelman College, an institution for women. Founded as a Christian Methodist Episcopal Church affiliate is Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee; Founded as a United Methodist Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Affiliate is Paine College in Augusta, Georgia; Founded is Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia. Founded as a private, Baptist church affiliate is Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock, Arkansas. Founded is Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Kentucky; Founded as a private African Methodist Episcopal affiliate and two-year college is Shorter College in Little Rock, Arkansas; Founded as a private, Baptist church affiliate is Virginia University at Lynchburg in Lynchburg, Virginia; Founded is University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne, Maryland. Founded as a public, African Methodist Episcopal church affiliate is Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio; Founded is Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida. Jim Crow laws are enacted throughout the nation.

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Enacted is The Second Morrill Act which provides for the “more complete endowment and support of the colleges” through the sale of public lands. This funding leads to the creation of 16 historically black land-grant colleges. Founded is Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia. The African American-to-white ratio of per pupil spending in the South declines. (1890 to 1910) Black population 7,488,646 (11%); U.S population: 62,947,714. Founded is Delaware State University in Dover, Delaware; Founded is Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, North Carolina; Founded is North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina; Founded is West Virginia State University in Institute, West Virginia. Founded is Winston-Salem State University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded as a Methodist Episcopal Zion church affiliate is Clinton Junior College in Rock Hill, South Carolina; Founded as a private, Christian Methodist Episcopal church affiliate is Texas College in Tyler, Texas. Founded is Bluefield State College in Bluefield, West Virginia; Founded is Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia. Plessey vs. Ferguson, a U.S. Supreme Court decision sanctions segregation, upholding “separate but equal” school systems. Founded as a private, Seventh-day Adventist affiliate is Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama; Founded is South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Founded is Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma; Founded as a private, Episcopal Church affiliate is Voorhees University in Denmark, South Carolina; Established by Alexander Crummell in the annals of Arts and Sciences in Washington, D.C. is the American Negro Academy. Cummins v. Georgia, a State Supreme Court decision determines that a Georgia school board is not obligated to open a public high school for African American children. Instead, if an African American child wished to go to high school but lived in a county without a public high school for African Americans, the family or child had to migrate to where one was located. Founded as a public, Episcopal Church affiliate is St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas.

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1900s 1900 Founded is Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Report by NCES, the illiteracy rate of African Americans fell to 44% (from 80% in 1870). Black population: 8,833,994 (11.6%); U.S. population: 75,994,575. 1901 Founded is Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana. 1902 Founded by Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a former slave, is the Palmer Memorial Institute which is located in Sedalia, North Carolina. Palmer is a preparatory day and boarding school for blacks. The school closed in 1971. 1903 Founded is Albany State University in Albany, Georgia; Founded is Hinds Community College of Utica in Utica, Mississippi. 1904 Founded as a private, United Methodist Church affiliate is Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. 1905 Founded and led by W. E. B. DuBois is the Niagara Movement, an organization of black intellectuals. The group calls for full political, civil and social rights for African Americans and is the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Founded as a private, CME church affiliate is Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama. 1907 Alain Locke becomes the first African American Rhodes Scholar. Graduated Harvard University, Class of 1907. Taught at Howard University from 1912-16; 1921- 25; 1928-1953. 1908 Founded as a private, Baptist and Educational Missionary Convention affiliate is Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina. 1909 The N.A.A.C.P (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is founded. Founded is the National Training School for Women and Girls in Lincoln Heights, Washington, D.C. by Nannie Helen Burroughs. 1910 The National Urban League, a nonprofit, community-based organization, is founded. Founded is North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. 1912 Founded is Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas; Founded is Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee. 1915 Initiated by Carter G. Woodson is the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Changed in 1972 to the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. Founded as a private, Roman Catholic church affiliate is Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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1916 Founded by Carter G. Woodson is The Journal of Negro History. Published by the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Renamed Journal of African American History. 1922 Founded is Concordia College, Selma in Selma, Alabama. 1924 Founded as a private, Baptist church affiliate is American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee. 1927 Founded is Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. 1929 (1929-1935) The Great Depression occurs. Established is graduate and professional education at Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. 1932 Founded is The Journal of Negro Education at Howard University. 1933 Published is Carter G. Woodson’s The Miseducation of the Negro. 1935 Founded is Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. The NAACP wins a suit against the University of Maryland law school and African Americans are admitted. 1936 Ruled by the Maryland Court of Appeals: The University of Maryland Law School must admit black applicant Donald Gaines Murray after previously denying him admission based on his race. 1938 Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada is decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Required by the ruling: The state must either allow Lloyd Lionel Gaines to attend the University of Missouri School of Law or create another school that would provide the same education for him. In response, the university builds a black law school. Three months after the ruling, Lloyd Gaines leaves his apartment to buy postage stamps. He is never seen again. 1940 Reported by Bureau of Census, the illiteracy rate of blacks (and others) decreased from 79.9% (1870) to 11.5% (1940). NCES reported that the difference in the black and white school attendance rates narrowed from 23 points in 1900 to 7 points in 1940. Reported by Census Bureau: 25% of U.S. population and 8% of the African American population, age 25 and over, had at least a high school diploma. 1944 Established to raise money for private historically black colleges is The United Negro College Fund, Inc. Founder of UNCF is Frederick Douglass Patterson. Established is the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act which, among others, covers cost associated with getting an education. 1948 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Sipuel v. University of Oklahoma that Ada Sipuel be admitted to the law school at the University of

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Oklahoma. The ruling states that blacks have the right to a legal education of the same quality as whites. Conducted by Kenneth Clark, an African American psychologist, is the now famous “doll” study. The findings of this study are cited in the 1954 Brown decision. In 1955, the study is published under the title Prejudice and Your Child; Argued successfully by Thurgood Marshall is Sweatt v. Painter before the U. S. Supreme Court. The case challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial Segregation. Founded is Mississippi Valley State College in Itta Bena, Mississippi. Led by Thurgood Marshall, Special Council of the NAACP, Brown v. Board of Education overturns Plessey v. Ferguson. "Separate" is found not to be "equal." Admitted to the University of Alabama but permanently expelled on technicality by the university trustees is Autherine Lucy, an African American female. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is established. Enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, are the Little Rock Nine, the first black students to attend the high school [Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Pattillo Beals]. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to ensure integration of the all-white Central High School after Governor Orval Faubus refuses to desegregate the school. Founded is the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded is Southern University at New Orleans in New Orleans, Louisiana. Escorted by Federal Marshalls, Ruby Bridges (Hall) becomes the first African American child to integrate a white southern elementary school (William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana). Black Studies is starting to become defined as an academic field of study. A National Education Association (NEA) study finds that 30,000 black teachers had lost their jobs since 1954. The job loss, in seventeen southern and border states, was attributed to desegregation and discrimination.

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Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College hold a sit-in at the lunch counter of an F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina. The sit-in spurs a series of sit-ins in the South to demand racial equality. Reported by U. S. Census Bureau: Median school years completed by race and gender: white males – 10.6 and females – 11.0; black (and other races) males – 7.9 and females – 8.5. Followed by a court order, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes are allowed to matriculate at the University of Georgia. Reported: The term “affirmative action” is coined by Hobart T. Taylor Jr., a black Texas lawyer, who edits President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, which created the Presidential Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Desegregated are all of the formerly all-white high schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Elementary schools remain segregated. Ordered by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, or be held in contempt, the Mississippi board of higher education admits African American James Meredith. The African American matriculates at the University of Mississippi after 12,000 National Guard are sent to the campus to protect him. Ordered by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Clemson University admits Harvey Gantt. Blocking the front doors, of the University of Alabama, the state’s Governor, George Wallace prevents two black students from matriculating. U. S. President John Kennedy orders the Alabama National Guard to facilitate the matriculation of the two students— Vivian Malone (Jones) and James Hood. John Edgar Wideman – second African American Rhodes Scholar; Undergraduate: University of Pennsylvania. Reported: Federal Civil Rights Act—No program receiving federal funds may discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin or sex. Created is the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service. Established is the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, which is established to enforce civil rights in education; Based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Affirmative Action policies are instituted. Implemented are explorations for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program. The first national assessments are held in 1969. Voluntary assessments for the states begin in 1990.

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1965 Established is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) which provides resources for children from low income households (Title I); for textbooks, instructional material and library resources (Title II); to create educational centers and provide supplemental services (Title III); to promote research and training (Title IV); to improve educational state agencies (Title V); and to address additional support for elementary and secondary education (Title VI). 1967 Reported by the U. S. Census Bureau: 51.1% of U.S. population and 30% of the African American population, age 25 and over, had at least a high school diploma. 1968 Thomas Williamson, Rhodes Scholar from Harvard College. A suit is filed against the Tennessee public higher educational system. The settlement, known as the Geier Consent Decree, requires the diversification of the entire school population at all colleges and universities within the system and provide support programs. 1969 Founded is the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), a membership organization representing presidents and chancellors of HBCUs. Harold Griffin, Rhodes Scholar from University of California at Los Angeles. 1971 Supreme Court orders busing to desegregate schools in a large Urban district in Charlotte, North Carolina and unanimously supports busing as a means to achieve integration of schools in America. Kurt Schmoke, Rhodes Scholar from Yale University. Richard Taylor, Boston University’s first Rhodes Scholar. Franklin D. Raines, Rhodes Scholar from Harvard College. Willie Bogan, Rhodes Scholar from Dartmouth College. Jerome Davis, Rhodes Scholar from Princeton University. 1972 Outlawed is sex discrimination in Title IX of Amendments to Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 1974 Submitted to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare are plans from eight states, mainly in the South, to desegregate their state universities. Included are as follows: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Plans from Mississippi were rejected and Louisiana was sued for not presenting a plan. 1975 Court ordered desegregation plan for Jefferson County Public School (Louisville, KY) lead to forced busing.

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Founded is the Westside Preparatory School in Garfield Park, Chicago by Marva Collins Several other preparatory schools are opened by Collins. The Westside school closes in 2008. Randall Kennedy, Rhodes Scholar from Princeton University, Class of 1977. Karen Stevenson, first African American women Rhodes Scholar; Undergraduate: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Class of 1978. James Hildreth, first African American Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas; Harvard University, Class of 1979. Reported by the U. S. Census Bureau: Median school years completed for white males at least 25 years old – 12.6 and for females – 12.5. For black (and other races) males – 12.2 and females – 12.1; By 1991: white males – 12.8 and females – 12.7; black (and other races) males – 12.6 and females – 12.5. Initiated is the first annual Black College Day, held in Washington, D.C., attracting 18,000 students who aim to increase attention to black colleges and universities. President Jimmy Carter signs Executive Order 12232, a federal program to strengthen HBCUs and increase funding. President Ronald Reagan signs Executive Order 12320 which creates the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and encourages federal support for HBCUs. Mark Alleyne is the first Rhodes Scholar from an HBCU. Born in Barbados, he graduated from Howard University. Founded is the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Inc. Reported: Some 200 students take over the New Africa House at the University of Massachusetts to protest racial incidents on campus. After six days, the university administration established new procedures to expel students who were found guilty of racial violence, and to promote a more diverse curriculum. Closed due to financial problems is Bishop College of Dallas, Texas. Opened is Harlem Children’s Zone and Promise Academy in Harlem New York City as an experiential charter school by Geoffrey Canada. In United States v. Fordice, the Supreme Court orders 19 states to take immediate action to desegregate their public higher education systems. Improving America’s Schools Act (ISA) amended and reauthorized the ESEA of 1965.

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Nima Warfield of Morehouse College becomes the first African American Rhodes Scholar from an HBCU. 1995 Ordered by a federal judge to desegregate, whites-only scholarship programs were set up at two predominantly black public universities, Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University. Improvements were also required of the infrastructure and academic programs at both schools. Within the first four years of the six-year program, white enrollment increased an additional 3%. 1996 Passed is Proposal 209 in California: The State of California shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. A similar proposal passed in Michigan in 2006 (i.e., Proposal 2). A proponent of the proposals is Wardell Anthony “Ward” Connelly, an African American, founder and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute. Spelman College’s capital campaign reaches $114 million which becomes the largest in the history of HBCUs. 2000s 2000 Jefferson County School District (Louisville, KY) is freed from a court supervised desegregation plan of 1975, which required the merger of Louisville and Jefferson County school district to achieve integration based on busing and racial quotas. 2000 Goals 2000: Educate America Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1994. Expected was the fulfillment of eight national educational goals, including the demonstration of student competency on assessment measures. 2002 Signed into law is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which reauthorized and amended ESEA of 1994. Replaced were national goals with state created assessment standards administered in selected grades. Expected were reports of improved performance annually. U.S. District Judge approved a $503 million settlement in case of Jake Ayers Sr., who sued the state of Mississippi in 1975 claiming that the state’s black colleges and universities were underfunded. Appeal made to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied. Founded by Tim King in Chicago, Illinois, is Urban Prep Academies, a nonprofit organization designed to establish first allboys public charter high schools. Opened in 2006 is the Urban Prep

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Charter Academy for Young Men, Englewood Campus. Opened in 2009 is the Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, West Campus. Opened in 2010 is the Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, Bronzeville Campus. In Gratz v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the racesensitive admissions policy at the University of Michigan that used a numerical formula which gave extra points to black applicants. But in the companion case Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upholds an Affirmative Action program at the University of Michigan Law School, thus affirming the 1978 Bakke ruling that race can still be considered in admissions decisions. The Court says that only “narrowly tailored” affirmative action plans will be acceptable and hinted that in 25 years’ time, such race-sensitive admissions plans should no longer be Necessary; Immediately after the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Gratz and Grutter cases, the Center for Equal Opportunity sends letters to a large number of colleges and universities threatening to file complaints with the Office for Civil Rights if they continue to use race-based admissions programs that do not fall under the Supreme Court’s new “narrowly tailored” guidelines; National Association of College Admission Counseling survey shows that 33 percent of all colleges and universities use race as a factor in the admissions process. Reported by the Department of Education: George W. Bush administration changes the formula for Pell Grant eligibility. About 89,000 low-income students will no longer receive a Pell Grant. Reported: Parties agree to settle the 25-year-old racial desegregation case concerning the higher education system in the state of Alabama. Reported by the U. S. Census Bureau: 29% of U.S. population and 19% of the African American population, age 25 and over, had completed 4 years or more of college. Ruled by the U. S. Supreme Court: Voluntary racial quota plans for school admission to achieve desegregation in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky are unconstitutional, a violation of the equal protection to individuals. Ruled by the U. S. Supreme Court: In a 5-4 decision in the case Parents Involved in Community School v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al., the school districts in Seattle and Louisville could not use the factor of race to assign students to public schools.

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2009 Coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) is state-led effort to develop Common Core State Standards in states, District of Columbia, and territories. Passed by the U. S. Congress and signed into law by President Obama is an Economic stimulus bill which includes nearly $7.2 billion in extra funds for the Pell Grant program for low-income college students. Announced is President Obama’s Race to the Top Initiative, a grant-based reform incentive for states to improve teaching and learning in K-12 schools. Reported by the Department of Education is that blacks received 10.3% of all bachelor’s degrees conferred, 12.5% of all master’s degrees, and 7.4% of all doctorate degrees. Founded is Urban Prep Academies, a nonprofit organization to establish first all-boys public charter high schools. Opened in 2006 is Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, Englewood Campus. Opened in 2009 is Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, West Campus. Opened in 2010 is Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, Bronzeville Campus. Founded is the HBCU – General Education Alliance, Inc. 2012 Introduced is President Obama’s Executive Order 13621 on White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans to improve educational outcomes at all levels. 2013 Sent from NAACP Legal Defense Fund is a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce opposing H.R. 5, the Student Success Act, which would adversely affect minorities and others by removing federal control and placing local control over aspects and resources in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Reauthorization. 2014 The Pulaski County Special School District in Arkansas remained under court ordered supervision to complete the final goals to achieve unitary or desegregated status. Released by the U. S. Department of Education are new eligibility rules for the Parent PLUS Loan. 2015 Signed into law by President Obama is the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a bill that revises and replaces No Child Left Behind.

PERSONAL TESTIMONIES

From “Tracts and Dialogues” Bishop William Meade’s (In the Appendix of Thomas Bacon’s Sermons Addressed to Masters and Servants) Read the following dialogue between a Slave on the Wilkins’ southern plantation and Mr. Jackson, the owner of a nearby plantation. Examine closely the words of the Slave. As a witness to education and the African American experience in the early-1700s, what are the Slave’s conclusions about the benefits of being able to read? How well does the Slave define his spiritual and education goals within the Black community? What is communicated in this sermon about the identity of the literate Slave? What are his triumphs? What are his limitations? The following dialogue took place between Mr. Jackson the master of a family, and the slave of one of his neighbors who lived adjoining the town, on this occasion. Mr. Jackson was walking through the common and came to a field of this person’s farm. He there saw the slave leaning against the fence with a book in his hand, which he seemed to be very intent upon; after a little time he closed the book, and clasping it in both his hands, looked upwards as if engaged in mental prayer; after this, he put the book in his bosom, and walked along the fence near where Mr. Jackson was standing. Surprised at seeing a person of his color engaged with a book, and still more by the animation and delight that he observed in his countenance, he determines to enquire about it, and calls to him as he passes. Mr. J. So I see you have been reading, my lad? Slave. Yes, sir. Mr. J. Well, I have a great curiosity to see what you were reading so earnestly; will you show me the book? Slave. To be sure, sir. (And he presented it to him very respectfully). Mr. J. The Bible!—Pray when did you get this book? And who taught you to read it? Slave. I thank God, sir for the book. I do not know the good gentlemen who gave it to me, but I am sure God sent it to me. I was learning to read in town at nights, and one morning a gentleman met me in the road as I had my spelling book open in my hand; he asked me if I could read, I told him a little, and he gave me this book and told me to make haste and learn to read it, and to ask God to help me, and that it would make me as happy as anybody in the world.

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Mr. J. Well did you do so? Slave. I thought about it for some time, and I wondered that anybody should give me a book or care about me; and I wondered what that could be which could make a poor slave like me so happy; and so I thought more and more of it, and I said I would try and do as the gentleman bid me, and blessed be God ! he told me nothing but the truth. Mr. J. Who is your master? Slave. Mr. Wilkins, sir, who lives in that house. Mr. J. I know him; he is a very good man; but what does he say to your leaving his work to read your book in the field? Slave. I was not leaving his work, sir. This book does not teach me to neglect my master’s work. I could not be happy if I did that.—I have done my breakfast, sir, and am waiting till the horses are done eating. Mr. J. Well, what does that book teach you? Slave. Oh, sir! Everything that I want to know—all I am to do, this book tells me, and so plain. It shew me first that I was a wretched, ruined sinner, and what would become of me if I died in that state, and then when I was day and night in dread of God’s calling me to account for my wickedness, and did not know which way to look for my deliverance, reading over and over again those dreadful words, “depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire,” then it revealed to me how Jesus Christ had consented to come and suffer punishment for us in our stead, and brought pardon for us by his blood, and how by believing on him and serving him, I might become a child of God, so that I need be no more terrified by the thoughts of God’s anger but sure of his forgiveness and love . . . . (Here Mr. J. pursued his walk; but soon reflecting on what he had heard, he resolved to walk by Mr. Wilkins’s house and enquire into this affair from him. This he did, and finding him the following conversation took place between them). Mr. J. Sir, I have been talking with a man of yours in that field, who was engaged, while his horses were eating, in reading a book; which I asked him to shew me and found it was the Bible; therefore I asked him some questions and his answers, and the account, he gave of himself, have surprised me greatly. Mr. W. I presume it was Will—and though I do not know what he may have told you, yet I will undertake to say that he has told you nothing but the truth. I am always safe in believing him, and do not believe he would tell me an untruth for anything that could be offered him…. Mr. J. Well, sir, you have seen I trust in your family, good fruits from the beginning.

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Personal Testimonies

Mr. W. Yes indeed, sir, and that man was most instrumental in reconciling and encouraging all my people [other slaves] in the change. From that time I have regarded him as more a friend and assistant, than a slave. He has taught the younger ones to read, and by his kindness and example, has been a great benefit to all. I have told them that I would do what I could to instruct and improve them; and that if I found any so vicious, that they would not receive it and strive to amend, I would not keep them; that I their own ruin. And from time to time, I endeavored to convince them that I was aiming at their own good. I cannot tell you all the happiness of the change, that God has been pleased to make among us, all by these means. And I have been benefited both temporally and spiritually by it; for my work is better done, and my people are more faithful, contented, and obedient than before; and I have the comfort of thinking that when my Lord and master shall call me to account for those committed to my charge, I shall not be ashamed to present them. . . . Additional Readings: Carter G. Woodson, “Introduction.” The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. Salem, New Hampshire: Ayer Company Publishers, Inc., 1915. Jones, Charles Colcock. The Religious Instruction of Negroes. Princeton, NJ, 1832. Plumer, W. S. Thoughts on the Religious Instruction of Negroes. No date. Secker, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury. A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Secrets for the Propagation of the Colored in Foreign Parts. London, 1741.

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In Secret Places, Acquiring Literacy in Slave Communities Heather Andrea Williams According to Heather Williams, in the 1800s, there is a uniformed effort by slave owners and other cooperating Americans to prohibit literacy among the enslaved and even free African Americans. Discuss the “anti-literacy laws” and other statutes of the 1800s which outlaw “mental instruction(s)” of African Americans. Explain why Williams calls attention to the conduct and character of the enslaved and free African Americans of the 1800s who set for themselves educational and community goals which ensure literacy? Why does she define them as “courageous,” “persistent, ” “ingenuous,” and “willful”? Identify the education, spiritual and community goals of the slaves. Explain. Read Williams “In Secret Places” within the context of the Age of Enlightenment and then discuss the actions of enslaved African Americans who risk being caught “steal[ing] an education” or eluding the laws against teaching and learning in order to acquire literacy skills—i.e., reading, writing, and arithmetic. How do such actions of the enslaved challenge the stereotype of inferiority? Consider Williams’ analysis of strategies by Slaves to acquire literacy in the 1800s. Do you agree or disagree with Williams when she concludes that 1) there is a “slave consciousness” within the Slave community---existing in their consensus of identity and literacy; 2) there is a shift in the “slave consciousness” by the 1800s; and 3) because of slave literacy of the 1700s and 1800s as well as because of Slaves’ shared spiritual, education and community goals, there is an effort among slaves to “construct an alternative narrative” to the familiar antebellum belief of the inferiority of African Americans? Explain how the group struggles for its humanity. Placing anti-literacy laws in dialogue with the words of enslaved people enables an examination of the tensions that slave literacy provoked between owned and owner. Masters made every attempt to control their captives’ thoughts and imaginations, indeed hearts and minds. Maintaining a system of bondage in the Age of Enlightenment depended upon the master’s being able to speak for the slave, to deny his or her humanity, and to draw a line between slave consciousness and human will. The presence of literate slaves threatened to give lie to the entire system. Reading indicated to the world that this so-called property had a mind, and writing foretold the ability to construct an alternative narrative about bondage itself. Literacy among slaves would expose slavery, and masters knew it.

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Understanding how enslaved people learned not only illuminates the importance of literacy as an instrument of resistance and liberation, but also brings into view the clandestine tactics and strategies that enslaved people employed to gain some control over their own lives. While it is common to view Frederick Douglass’s antebellum struggle for literacy as exceptional (see Douglass’ account elsewhere in this book), slave narratives, interviews with former slaves, and other documents offer a view of more widespread communities of learners who also forged the crucial link between literacy and freedom…. Indeed, literacy constituted one of the terrains on which slaves and slave owners waged a perpetual struggle for control. Cognizant of the revolutionary potential of black literacy, white elites enacted laws in slave states (see Chronology elsewhere in this book) to proscribe teaching enslaved and sometimes free blacks to read and write. The timing of these anti-literacy laws often exposed the close association in white minds between black literacy and black resistance. Whether the threat to slavery came in the form of a slave rebellion or talk of abolition, southern lawmakers linked black literacy to the institution’s demise and invested powers of surveillance and punishment in a host of officials, including justices of the peace, constables, sheriffs, marshals, police officers, and sergeants. Although anti-literacy statues are often associated with Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, they in fact had their beginnings a century earlier. In 1739, in an effort to escape to Florida, South Carolina slaves killed more than twenty whites in what becomes known as the Stono Rebellion. One year later, suspecting that slaves had communicated their insurrectionary plans in writing, the colonial legislature of South Carolina inscribed its fear into a statute that outlawed teaching any slave to write or employing any slave to write. The legislature reasoned that this prohibition was necessary because permitting slaves to engage in writing “may be attended with great inconveniences.” Black people in South Carolina, however, devised methods to circumvent the law, and in 1800 the legislature explicitly acknowledged that earlier laws had been insufficient to keep blacks in “due subordination.” Teaching had moved farther underground. The legislature hoped to root it out by enacting a statute that declared any assembly of “slaves, free negroes, mulattoes, and mestizoes,” among themselves or with whites, for the purpose of “mental instruction,” an unlawful meeting. The new law broadened both the scope of prohibited activity and the categories of individuals covered. Rather than solely criminalizing the teaching of writing, the 1800 statute outlawed “mental instruction,” which could include reading, writing, memorization, arithmetic, and much more.

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Furthermore, while the 1740 statute had only prohibited teaching slaves, the 1800 law prohibited teaching slaves and free blacks. Finally, the 1800 law aimed specifically to prevent African Americans from gathering in secret places to learn “either before the rising of the sun, or after the going down of same.” The legislature had undoubtedly become aware of clandestine schools meeting before dawn and late into the night. By way of enforcement, lawmakers required magistrates to enter into such “confined places,” to “break down doors,” and to disperse such unlawful assemblages. The law subjected each person of color in the group to corporal punishment not to exceed twenty lashes. In 1829, David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, with its militant attack on slavery and its call for armed resistance, stirred fears in southern whites that the essay would inspire slaves to rebel. Rebellion, of course, was exactly what Walker hoped to provoke. Born to an enslaved father and a free mother, he had left his home in Wilmington, North Carolina, eventually settling in Boston, where, although free, African Americans led severely circumscribed economic and political lives. In the Appeal, Walker declared white Americans the natural enemies of African Americans, and he both predicted and urged warfare that would bring about the destruction of slavery. Moreover, Walker linked literacy to slavery’s demise. Powerful whites went to great lengths to deprive blacks of education because, he argued, “for coloured people to acquire learning in this country, makes tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foundation,” knowing that “their infernal deeds of cruelty will be made known to the world.” Walker hoped “all coloured men, women and children, of every nation, language and tongue under heaven, [would] try to procure a copy of this Appeal and read it, or get some one to read it to them.” Published in September, the pamphlet quickly made its way South. Walker would no doubt have proposed severe punishment for the black Baptist minister who handed the Appeal over to officials after receiving copies from a ship’s steward. The Georgia legislature wasted little time in responding. Ten days following the seizure, the legislature passed a law to quarantine any ship that carried a free black person or a slave into Georgia ports. In addition to outlawing teaching any “slave, negro or free person of colour” to read, the statute provided punishment for blacks or any person bringing into the state and circulating “any printed or written pamphlet, paper or circular, for the purposes of exciting to insurrection, conspiracy or resistance among the slaves, negroes, or free persons of color” of the state. Although a black minister may have betrayed his brethren, white legislators clearly feared that other African Americans would not be so afraid or so loyal.

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Louisiana lawmakers were also afraid. In 1830 that state’s legislature criminalized teaching slaves to read or write. Sections of the statute resonated with the panic that Walker and other abolitionists had inspired. The law punished with death, or imprisonment at hard labor for life, “whosoever shall write, print, publish or distribute any thing having a tendency to produce discontent among the free, coloured population of the state, or insubordination among the slaves therein.” Further, the statute specifically targeted anyone who “shall knowingly be instrumental in bringing into this state, any paper, pamphlet or book” that tended to excite insubordination or to cause discontent among African Americans, free or enslaved. As the northern abolition movement, prodded by African American abolitionists, shifted from a position of gradualism to immediatism, slave states ratcheted up their efforts to sustain a way of life that depended on slavery. In 1830, a critical turning point for the abolition movement, North Carolina enacted a statute that articulated the perceived kinship between slave literacy and slave control. “Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write, has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion, to the manifest injury of the citizens of the State,” the law read, “any free person, who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within this State to read or write, the use of figures excepted, or shall give or sell to such slave or slaves any books or pamphlets, shall be liable to indictment in any court of record in this State.” The law further specifically forbade any slave to teach another slave to read or write. Significantly, North Carolina’s antiliteracy stance constituted part of a larger scheme of surveillance and control over African Americans, enslaved and free. In the same legislative session, lawmakers promulgated limiting conditions for the manumission of slaves by owners, targeted runaways and those who harbored them, imposed restrictions on free black peddlers, and sought to exclude northernproduced literature that might “excite insurrection, conspiracy or resistance in the slaves or free negroes.” As was often the case, the North Carolina statute punished blacks more harshly than whites. White men and women could be imprisoned or fined between $100 and $200. Free people of color faced fines, imprisonment, or the public humiliation of whipping. Slaves convicted under the statute could be punished with “thirty-nine lashes on [the] bare back.” Notably, North Carolina’s antiliteracy law permitted teaching slaves arithmetic, likely because mathematical skill was necessary for trades such as carpentry and would therefore inure to the benefit of slave owners. Writing was strictly forbidden, however, even when a slave might use the

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skill to benefit his owner. Similarly, an 1833 Georgia statute made it unlawful for any person to “permit a slave, negro or person of colour to transact business for him in writing.” Legislators assessed the costs and benefits of having literate slaves in their midst. They concluded that the risk was too high that slaves would use writing skills to subvert owners’ power. A few months after North Carolina did, Virginia moved against African American literacy. In the spring of 1831, Virginia rendered unlawful “all meetings of free negroes or mulattoes, at any school-house, church, meeting-house or other place for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretext.” The statute also specifically outlawed the compensation of any white person for teaching slaves to read or write. Three months after the August 1831 insurrection in which Nat Turner, a literate slave, and several other slaves killed fifty-five whites in Virginia, Alabama enacted a legislative package intended to severely curtail African American activity. In addition to forbidding any person to teach any free person of color or any slave to spell, read, or write, it forbade slaves to associate with free blacks without permission of their owners, made it unlawful for five or more male slaves to assemble outside of their plantation, and made it unlawful for any person of color to “preach to, exhort, or harangue any slave or slaves, or free persons of color, unless in the presence of five respectable slaveholders.” The statute also attempted to legislate paternalism by imposing a duty on all slaveholders to “feed and clothe their slaves with a sufficiency of food and clothing for their comfort.” Legislators hoped that satisfying physical needs would stave off insurrectionary fervor…. It is clear, too, that enslaved and free black people operated schools, particularly in urban areas. As 1834 South Carolina statute suggests that the state’s two earlier attempts to prevent slaves from becoming literate had not succeeded. This third attempt at control punished anyone who taught or assisted any slave in learning to read or write. In a revealing move, the statute added a new level of detail that presumably targeted contemporary practices; it punished by fine, imprisonment, or corporal punishment “any free person or color or a slave [who] shall keep any school or other place of instruction, for teaching any slave or free person of color to read or write.” This statute aimed at African Americans who did not rely on sporadic teaching, but who instead established schools to make education more formal and methodical. White Americans’ opposition to black education was not limited to the southern states. At the same time that Virginia and Alabama enacted legislation to prohibit African American education in the 1830s, the

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northern free state of Connecticut used both legal and extralegal means to curtail education options for black people…. Enslaved people realized that those who owned them brought their awesome and arbitrary power to bear against any effort slaves made to learn to read and write. Interviewed years after slavery had ended, many recalled the barriers that whites had placed between literacy and themselves. Some slaves experienced the threats of punishment directly. Gordon Buford remembered that he and fellow slaves never learned to read and write because their master threatened to “skin them alive” if they tried. Charlie Grant’s mistress beat him with a plaited cowhide when she caught him with a book. And Belle Caruther’s master struck her with his muddy boots when he caught her studying a Webster’s blue-black speller. Others experienced secondhand the violence that could be visited upon a slave who was caught reading or writing. James Lucas reported that his owner “hung the best slave he had for trying to teach the others how to spell.” Literacy could also disrupt a sale. When Lucas’s master realized that some of the people he had purchased at an auction in Baltimore could read, he sent them back. Similarly, when Tom Hawkins’s owner discovered that his carriage driver had learned to read and write while taking the owner’s children to and from school, he cut off the driver’s thumb and assigned another enslaved man to drive the carriage. Still other former slaves had a broad and daunting sense of the punishment that might be meted out. Charlie Davis believed that he would get one hundred lashes if he so much as picked up a book, and George Washington Albright thought a Mississippi statute provided that if any slave learned to read and write, “he was to be punished with 500 lashes on the naked back, and to have the thumb cut off above the second joint.” The Mississippi statute actually prescribed punishment of thirty-nine lashes, but the expectation of even more violent punishment would surely have been enough to terrorize all but the most courageous and persistent. As slave owners and legislators suspected, African Americans, free and slave, designed all manner of strategies to elude the laws against learning. At about the same time that Virginia first put into writing its prohibition of teaching blacks to read and write, Mary and Thomas Peake, free people in Norfolk, Virginia, sent their six-year-old daughter Mary to live with an aunt in the District of Columbia so that she could attend school. She remained there until, according to Peake, the District of Columbia, too, prohibited teaching blacks. In 1847, she moved to Hampton, Virginia, where she taught black children and adults until the Civil War. In Georgia, Susie King Taylor participated in an intricate web of secrecy to become educated. Born enslaved in Georgia in 1848, Taylor’s owner permitted her

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to live with her free grandmother in Savannah. The port city of Savannah afforded a fair amount of mobility to hired slaves and had a large free black population. Taylor’s nominally free status released her from labor and from oversight by an owner, enabling her to pursue an education. Even so, she was constrained to learn in secret and with a patchwork of teachers because both the state of Georgia and the city of Savannah made it illegal to teach slaves or free people of color to read or write. Carrying schoolbooks camouflaged with paper, Taylor and her younger siblings stole, one at a time, into the home of a free black woman each morning, careful not to be spotted by the police or any white person. Twenty-five children studied their lessons in Susan Woodhouse’s kitchen each day and slipped out, one at a time, each afternoon. After two years with Mrs. Woodhouse, Taylor went to Mary Beasley, another black woman, who after teaching everything she knew to Taylor, recommended that Taylor’s grandmother find a more advanced teacher. That next teacher was a white playmate, who gave Taylor lessons for four months before joining a convent. Finally the son of her white landlord gave Taylor lessons for several months until he was conscripted into the Confederate army. Roughly pieced together as it was, Susie King Taylor’s education would have appeared veritably formal to many other enslaved people who managed to become literate. Sometimes masters’ wives, inspired by evangelical Christianity, took it upon themselves to teach slaves to read. While some owners turned a blind eye to their wives’ efforts, others badgered them into understanding the dangers inherent in teaching slaves. A few owners, however, not only tolerated but even encouraged their slaves’ interest in education, particularly when it could benefit the owners. In one unusual instance, Lucy Skipwith in Hopewell, Alabama, kept up a correspondence during the 1850s and 1860s with her absentee owner, John Cocke, in Fluvanna County, Virginia. In her letters she informed Cocke of activities on the plantation, including the progress of her plantation school for other slaves. In Virginia the state legislature passed a special law in 1842 granting permission for an enslaved man, Randolph, to learn to read and write. Randolph’s owner, Henry Juett Gray, was blind and wanted to become a teacher of the blind. According to the special act, Gray needed the services of a “servant capable of reading and writing, which object cannot be permanently secured otherwise than by the education of a young slave named Randolph.” Despite his usefulness to the young white man, the state considered a literate Randolph a potential danger and required that Henry Gray’s father, Robert Gray, “indemnify the public against any possible injury which might be apprehended from the misconduct of said slave.”

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Most enslaved people were not so fortunate; theirs was a covert mission to become literate. They truly had to “steal” an education. Some slaves hid spelling books under their hats to be ready whenever they could entreat or bribe a literate person to teach them. Some turned to white children, too young to understand that they violated the slave code, or to poor white men who did not care. Former slaves recounted stories of trading food and money for letters and words. In exchange for writing lessons, G. W. Offley fed a white boy whose father had gambled away the family’s money. Offley later traded boxing and wrestling lessons with white men for writing instructions. James Fisher gave an old man money to buy whiskey in exchange for his writing lessons. As a young enslaved boy, Richard Parker picked up old nails and traded them for marbles that he then used to pay white boys for reading lessons. He carried a primer under his hat to be ready for class at any time. In addition, he received instruction from his owner’s daughter until they were caught. “Uncle” Charles, a former slave in North Carolina, recounted that he also carried a primer under his hat and challenged white boys to tell him what a letter was, until he managed to learn the alphabet. He once traded a knife for a reading lesson from a white boy. These particular means of acquiring literacy had important gender implications, as once again enslaved males tended to have greater mobility than enslaved females. Boys and men were more likely to accompany white children off the property to school and often had wide access to public spaces in which they could convince white males to teach them. At the same time, women who worked inside the owner’s household could entice their young white charges to pass on what they learned in school. Alice Green recalled that her mother had learned to read by keeping a schoolbook in her bosom all the time and asking the white children to tell her everything they had learned in school each day. In this way, she learned enough to teach school once slavery ended. Likewise, Allen Allensworth’s mother encouraged him to “play school” with his young master who attended school every day. Enslaved people put the resources they could garner to maximum use. Mandy Jones knew of a young man who learned to read and write in a cave. She also recalled that there were “pit schools” near her Mississippi plantation. Slaves would dig a pit in the ground way out in the woods, covering the spot with bushes and vines. Runaways sometimes inhabited the pits, but they also housed schools. According to Jones, “slaves would slip out of the Quarters at night, and go to dese pits, an some niggah dat had some learning would have a school.” In South Carolina Edmund Carlisle cut blocks from pine bark and smoothed them into slates. He

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dropped oak into water to make ink, and he used a stick as his pen. Some slaves copied letters and words whose meanings they could not yet decipher onto fences and in the dirt. And, more than one hundred years later, when slave cabins were excavated, archaeologists were surprised to find, along with the predictable shards of colonoware pottery, food bones, and oyster shells, the remains of graphite pencils and writing slates, some with words and numbers still written on them. Sundays proved to be an important day for enslaved people to learn to read and write. Some slaves took advantage of the opportunity that a few missionaries offered to learn and read. Others relied on their own resources. Since the colonial period, slave managements on the Sabbath had presented a vexing challenge to slave owners. Whites struggled to maintain control over black movement on the day when slaves were not required to work, the day when whites attended church and socialized away from their homes. In South Carolina, for example, legislation passed in 1712 aimed to limit movement of blacks who congregated in Charlestown on Sundays in such great numbers as to “give them opportunity of executing any wicked designs.” Twelve years later the colony’s assembly directed white men to ride armed on Sundays in order to defend against slaves who congregated in large numbers. Evidently the legislation did not effectively curtail black behavior because over the next thirty years grand juries made several attempts to mandate stricter enforcement. Their concerns were not unfounded; in September 1739 slaves staged the Stono uprising while whites attended “divine service.” In similarly radical fashion, African Americans took advantage of their leisure time and whites’ absence on Sundays to become literate. They lurked in their designated places until masters left for Sunday outings, and then they pulled out books and pencils. Former slave Charity Bowery recalled that on Sundays on her Edenton, North Carolina, plantation, she saw “negroes up in the country going away under large oak trees and in secret places, sitting in the woods with spelling books.” In Maryland, G. W. Offley, who later paid white men and boys for writing lessons, received his first reading lessons at age nineteen from an old black man, who taught him at night and on Sunday mornings. Here were the clandestine schools that legislatures sought to eliminate, schools that convened after dark and on the Sabbath, when masters were likely to be more concerned about their own souls and their own pleasure than about the activities of the people who worked for them on the other six days of the week. In Person County, North Carolina, James Curry began his illegal lessons with his master’s son. Curry’s mother bought him a spelling book, and the lessons continued until his owner found out and forbade further

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teaching. According to Curry, though, “when my master’s family were all gone away on the Sabbath, I used to go into the house and get down the great Bible, and lie down in the piazza, and read, taking care, however, to put it back before they returned.” Just as the slaves who congregated in Charlestown, South Carolina, had used Sundays to resist their owners’ control over their bodies, slaves like James Curry took advantages of Sundays to undermine owners’ attempts to control their intellect…. In the Bible, books, and newspapers, literate slaves found a language of liberation that augmented what they learned in slave quarters. Reading gave a larger voice and conceptualization to ideas they had heard expressed by other slaves. Frederick Douglass, the most famous slave to become literate, demonstrated this progression. In a letter to his former master, Douglass wrote that at the age of six he decided to be free some day. Like James Curry, his first understanding of why he was enslaved came from hearing older black people say that their parents had been stolen from Africa by white men and sold into slavery. These narrations enunciated the community’s foundational belief that its enslavement was illegitimate, a belief that was reinforced when Douglass’s aunt and uncle escaped to freedom. His desire for freedom grew when his master made a link between literacy and freedom, and the possibility of freedom became real for him when he read a dialogue between a slave and a master. Finally, the idea that all blacks might some day be free took root when he first read a definition of the word “abolition.” Reading, then, did not introduce Douglass to the concept of freedom; rather it buttressed and augmented a developing consciousness (editors’ emphasis). Additional Readings: A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the Testimony of Friends against Slavery and the Slave Trade. Philadelphia, PA: Yearly [Friends] Meeting, 1843. Albert, O. V. The House of Bondage; or Charlotte Brooks and other Slaves. New York and Cincinnati, 1890. Adams, Nehemiah. A South-Side View of Slavery; or Three Months of the South in 1854. Boston, MA 1854. Redpath, James. The Rowing Editor, or Talks with Slaves in Southern States. New York, 1859.

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Chapter VII from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Frederick Douglass Discuss how in his excerpted narrative, Douglass raises questions about the “mental disposition” of his Christ-like mistress who, according to Douglass, is complicit in upholding the institution of Slavery and promoting illiteracy among people of color in the 1800s. Do you agree with his conclusions? Compare and contrast Douglass’ educational metaphor “shutting me up in mental darkness” with similar metaphors or behavioral phrases found in the writings of Bishop Meade, Heather Williams and Janet Cornelius (see elsewhere in this text). How are Douglass’ strategies for “steal[ing] an education” similar to or different from the provocations of slaves seeking literacy in the writings of Heather Williams and Janet Cornelius? Explain how Douglass is like the slaves in Heather Williams’ “In Secret Places…” and in Janet Duitsman Cornelius ‘ “Slave Testimonies,” when he attempts to shift the “slave consciousness” of the 1700s towards a discernible “way of thinking” of the 1800s ---i.e., about the values of reading, writing, and arithmetic? How similar are Douglass’ spiritual and educational goals to other African Americans of the 1800s? How does Douglass support other slaves in his struggles for a humanity worth preserving? Explain your answers. I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by anyone else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness….. . . . . Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The first

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step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced to practice her husband’s precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself. She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other. From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution would prevent me from taking the ell. The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent on errands, I always took my book with me, and by doing one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country. It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard. I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?” These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free.

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I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master. In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights. The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslaver. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom

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had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm. I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery, I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did anything very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of abolition. Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was “the act of abolishing;” but then I did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask anyone about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was something they wanted me to know very little about. After a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the States. From this time I understood the words abolition and abolitionist , and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves. The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, “Are ye a slave for life?” I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should be free. I pretended not to be interested in what they said, and treated them as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might be treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to their masters. I was afraid that these seemingly good men might use me so; but I nevertheless remembered their advice, and from that time I resolved

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to run away. I looked forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too young to think of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I might have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write. The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters, after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the larboard side, it would be marked thus—“L.” When a piece was for the starboard side, it would be marked thus—“S.” A piece for the larboard side forward would be marked thus—“L. F.” When a piece was for starboard side forward, it would be marked thus—“S. F.” For larboard aft, it would be marked thus—“L.A.” For starboard aft, it would be marked thus—“S.A.” I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, “I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.” I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. I then commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster’s Spelling Book, until I could make them all without looking on the book. By this time, my little Master Thomas had gone to school, and learned how to write, and had written over a number of copybooks. These had been brought home, and shown to some of our near neighbors, and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class meeting at the Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take care of the house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write.

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Additional Readings: Drew, Benjamin. A North-side View of Slavery. The Refugee; or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, New York and Boston, 1856. Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass from 1817 to 1882. London, 1882. Mott, A. Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color; with a Selection of Pieces of Poetry. New York, 1826.

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Slave Testimony: “We Slipped and Learned to Read” From When I can Read My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South Janet Duitsman Cornelius In “Slave Testimonies,” Cornelius has gathered the testimonies of slaves who stealthily sought reading, writing and math skills in the late 1800s in mid-Atlantic states such as Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Read the slaves’ testimonies and discuss their personal experiences in acquiring literacy. How do the slaves’ testimonies, compiled by Cornelius, evoke further irony of the “Nature versus Nurture” enlightenment theory, referenced earlier by Heather William in “In Secret Places”? How do the slaves’ testimonies, compiled by Cornelius, continue to support evidence of a " slave consciousness" and goal-oriented community that strives towards an “alternative narrative” in the 1800s regarding the capabilities of African Americans? Based on Cornelius’ report, how should one quantify the “quality” of education received by African Americans during the midnineteenth century in the South and in the mid-Atlantic states? Historically speaking, what remains to be the struggles faced by African Americans attempting to acquire an education in the 1800s? How successful are they, even when faced with obstacles? Specify the role of individuals within the slave community in promoting an education ethos and an alternative narrative to the national narrative regarding the capabilities of enslaved African Americans. How is humanity being preserved? Thomas Johnson, an enslaved African-American hired out to work in a Richmond tobacco factory, was intelligent, diligent and resourceful. At twenty-one he had become a Christian convert as a result of the Great Revival of 1857. He joined a Richmond Baptist church with his mother and the two of them “went down into the water hand-in-hand,” were baptized and “went on [their[ way rejoicing.” Soon after his conversion, Johnson felt a deep desire to preach the Gospel, but he was faced with two difficulties: he was a slave, and he could not read the Bible, a skill which a preacher was expected to have. His mother had taught him all she knew— the alphabet and numbers to 100—and had paid a free black man fifty cents to tutor him, but the lessons had lasted only a month, and Johnson’s owners opposed further learning. He therefore, decided it was up to him to gain the skill he needed “by taking advantage of every opportunity to learn all [he] could.”

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In later years, as a missionary speaker in England, Johnson often told how he accomplished his goal. He secreted an old Bible in his room and pored over it in his spare time, beginning with Genesis and calling out the letters of each word he could not understand: “In the b-e-ginning God c-re-a-t-e-d the heaven and the earth.” His young master read aloud a chapter from the New Testament every night and Johnson tried to get him to read the same one over and over. When Johnson knew this chapter practically by heart, he recognized the words in the chapter. Then he found identical words elsewhere in the Bible and traced identical syllables of other words. “In this way,” he related, “I got to understand a little about the Bible, and at the same time I was learning to spell.” In addition to his desire to preach, Johnson had another motive for wanting to learn to read and write. As soon as he was old enough to understand, his mother had explained to him what it meant to be a slave and the difference between the condition of black people and white people, but told him that if he would learn to read and write then some day he might be able to get his freedom. His ambition was further encouraged when fugitive slave Anthony Burns was returned to jail in Richmond, and Johnson’s owner pointed out to him that Burns was in trouble because he had written himself a pass and escaped. Johnson determined to write his own pass to freedom. He stole copies of “nice-looking” block letters from a box in a church and practiced printing them, but found “that the white people did not use the large letters of the Alphabet as I did when writing.” So he sent out to learn cursive writing. He saw that his master’s youngest son had a copy book, so he bought one for himself and practiced writing the letters over and over. In his later years as a missionary, Johnson also enjoyed telling groups how he took advantage of his young master in his efforts to learn more. Johnson bought a spelling book but could not understand all of it. At night, while the young master was studying, Johnson would choose some word from his spelling book which he didn’t know and challenge the boy to spell it. He would do so and Johnson would exclaim, “Lor’s over me, you can spell nice.” Then Johnson would go out and spell the word over and over again. He also encouraged the boy to read part of his lesson out loud for Johnson’s benefit and Johnson would compliment him and ask, “lor’s o’er me, read that again,” which the boy often did. Johnson concluded that, by fooling the child, “each week I added a little to my small store of knowledge about the great world in which I lived.” By the time war came to his hometown of Richmond, Johnson could read well enough to understand the newspapers and he was teaching his own class of pupils to read. He also met secretly for Bible study with other

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Richmond black people who could read. As he recalled later, the chapter they studied most was Daniel 11, whose prophecies they interpreted to predict an ultimate triumph for the northern army over the South. Thomas Johnson’s story, one of hundreds of accounts by AfricanAmericans of their experiences in slavery, makes clear how and why reading and writing were so important to some slaves that they would risk death or mutilation to achieve them. Slave testimony supports Paul Escott’s conclusion from his analysis of the 1930s Federal Writers Project interviews with former slaves that the antebellum South “encompassed two worlds, one white and one black, one the master’s and one the slave’s. Learning to read and write could empower slaves in their battle against the white world. Enslaved African-Americans “saw in their day-to-day experiences—from one generation to the next—that knowledge and information helped one to survive in a hostile environment.” Thomas Johnson’s story further demonstrates that learning to read and write gave a slave the satisfaction of tricking the white man out of something which was supposed to be withheld from the slave. Reading and writing, above all, pointed the way to freedom—first of all in the mind and spirit, and often in the body. Slave testimony, therefore, illustrates how acquiring reading and writing skills was an act of resistance against the slave system and an assertion of identity by the literate slaves. Slave recollections also provide insights into the laborious process of learning to read and write under oppressive conditions. Their accounts show that most slaves who learned to read began to read as children, though many adults also learned; that their motives and opportunities for learning were intermittent and that it often took years to gain even rudimentary skills; and that only the occasional slave had a chance to be in a classroom or meet with a trained teacher—though, surprisingly, some did. Most slaves taught themselves by sound and pronunciation, most often with Webster’s “blue-back” speller. Writing was harder to learn than reading, and presented the challenge of finding or making writing materials in a mostly rural society which had little use for these tools. Most slaves who learned to read and write had some relationship with whites which made this possible: they were house slaves or city workers or children who went to school with their playmates. However, some field slaves did learn and many had black teachers. Some learned in Sunday schools run by either blacks or whites. The practice of acquiring reading and writing skills was not limited to the border South or to the cities, as has often been assumed, but went on in the Deep South and in rural areas as well.

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Slave accounts also indicate the reasons it will always be hard to measure the extent of literacy among black people in the slave South. A typically ambiguous recollection comes from African Methodist Episcopal Bishop William Heard, who recounted his attendance at a white-controlled Methodist Sunday school in Elberton, Georgia as a ten-year-old slave. Heard admitted that some slaves were literate, but remembered best the prohibitions: We did not learn to read nor to write, as it was against the law for any person to teach any slave to read; and any slave caught writing suffered the penalty of having his forefinger cut from his right hand; yet there were some who could read and write [italics mine]

Whites were reluctant to teach openly and seldom bragged in print about teaching slaves; where laws were not a discouragement, custom was, and slave narratives include stories of whites who were punished for going against the community’s wishes. More common in slave accounts was the knowledge of grim punishments meted out to literate slaves. These deterred some slaves from learning or at least taught them to keep their learning to themselves. Even former slaves who wrote their own narratives tended to denigrate the possible extent of literacy among blacks. During slavery, their narratives were written in collaboration with abolitionists or for abolition purposes, so they necessarily exaggerated the prohibitions against learning. Frederick Douglass, for example, refused to admit that many slaves could read or that owners would permit them to have Bibles. Those who were prevented from learning while slaves expressed their bitterness openly and volubly for a sympathetic northern audience prepared to value literacy for its spiritual, intrinsic, and practical worth and to be shocked by its prohibition among slaves. Other accounts by former slaves written after freedom focused on the gains made by themselves and other blacks since slavery. They were therefore prone to ignore achievements made before slavery ended. Another reason the extent of slave literacy has been underestimated is the impact of what Carter Woodson termed the “Reaction” when after 1825 the South fashioned a proslavery argument, stifled antislavery sentiment, and passed restrictive laws against slaves assembling or learning to read. Woodson estimated that black literacy rates declined by half after the 1820s. However, the Federal Writers Project interviews with former slaves, added to the scores of narratives written by former slaves, added to the scores of narratives written by former slaves during and after slavery, indicate that more slaves learned to read after 1825 than Woodson

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could have known about and that the acquisition of literacy skills by southern black people did continue in large numbers after 1825. For example, George Perry, who was born a slave in North Carolina in the 1830s, related that he learned to read in 1842. Perry recollected that by the 1840s the effect of the restrictive literacy laws passed in the 1830s had subsided and that “anxiety to learn and the ability to read rapidly increased among the colored people” after that date. Accounts by former slaves, protests against the laws by southern whites, statements by whites that blacks were being taught to read, and recollections by former slave owners corroborate this. For example, more than two-thirds of those former slaves who told interviewers for the 1930s Federal Writers Project that they had learned to read and write did so in the decade between 1856 and 1865. Autobiographies and narratives by former slaves also confirm literacy activity in the decades immediately before the Civil War; at least seventy slaves who wrote their own accounts learned to read after 1836. According to former slaves who wrote their own narratives and autobiographies or who were interviewed by abolitionists or for the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, some reading and writing took place in every region and every state in the South. Former slaves related that they learned to read, or knew others who did, in border state cities or in the Deep South centers of Savannah and Charleston; in small towns in Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Tennessee; on small farms in Maryland, Alabama, and Missouri; big plantations in South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia; and the frontiers of Arkansas and Texas. The slave accounts also show the passage of restrictive laws influenced but did not halt slave literacy. Slaves and masters were aware of the existence of these laws and even exaggerated their extent. The laws, and extralegal actions where laws were not enforced, convinced whites and blacks to keep quiet about most literacy for slaves. Fear also made some slaves reject learning. Lucinda Washington, a field worker in Sumter County, Alabama, in the 1850s, for example, refused the opportunity to learn to read. She recalled that “we was taught to read an’ write, but mos’ of de slaves didn’t want to learn. [We] would hide our books under de steps to keep f’um havin to study.” Even though laws banning the teaching of slaves were seldom enforced, and were only in effect in four states for the entire period from 1830 to 1865, slaves recognized their symbolic power. Former slaves accurately recalled the existence of such laws in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia; interestingly, they inaccurately reported similar laws in other states where these laws did not exist. Tab Gross, for example, paid his owner’s son to teach him to read in Maryland in 1842.

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According to Gross, his owner stopped the lessons after three months, not because the owner objected to them, but because it was “an offense against the law of the state to teach a slave to read, for which his son would have been put in prison if found out.” This was not actually true in Maryland. Other slaves were convinced that the laws allowed reading but not writing, as reported by Elijah Marrs in Kentucky, where neither reading nor writing were prohibited. On the other hand, Benjamin Russell in South Carolina, insisted that while “we were taught to read. . . , it was against the law to teach a slave to write. The legislature passed an act to that effect.” Reading may indeed have been taught in violation of the law in the Chester community where Russell was a slave, but that was not the letter of the law in South Carolina, where both reading and writing were prohibited. The Chester community may have permitted teaching slaves where the law prevented it, but other communities banned the teaching of slaves even when the laws did not forbid it. Some “officious men” visited Moncure Conway’s Virginia home upon the rumor that his mother was teaching slaves to read. Owners were in fact allowed to teach their own slaves by law in that state, but Conway’s father was a magistrate and wanted to avoid appearance of offense, so the family stopped even Bible lessons for slaves. Charlie Hudson’s owner was more stubborn; he aroused community opposition in Georgia in the early 1860s when he agreed to let a white man, Bill Rowsey, come to the plantation and teach his slaves in the ginhouse. For three Sundays school was held; on the fourth Sunday, night riders set a coffin-shaped box in front of the ginhouse with a warning. Whatever the owner’s original sentiment has been about slave learning—he had made no effort to teach them himself—the night riders “made Marse David so mad he jus’ cussed and cussed. He ‘lowed dat nobody warn’t gwine tell him what to do.” But eventually he had to give in to the justified fears of his slaves. He had a brush arbor built for a classroom but when the night riders destroyed it also, schooling ended. Both Elisha Green and Henry Bibb remembered Kentucky patrollers, appointed by slaveholders, who broke up slave Sunday schools and whipped all the grown pupils. Patrollers invaded plantations, searching for books and papers in slave cabins, and forcing owners to protect their slaves. Doc Daniel Dowdy, quite a storyteller, was born in 1856 in Madison County, Georgia, on a plantation where his mother was the cook. He recalled an owner who came to the defense of two slaves who were Baptist preachers and could read: One old master had two slaves, brothers, on his place. They was both preachers. Mitchell was a hardshell Baptist and Andrew was a Missionary Baptist. One day the patroller chief was rambling throo the place and

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found some letters writ to Mitchell and Andrew. He went to the master and said, “Did you know you had some niggers that could read and write?” Master said, “No, but I might have . . .” Mitchell was called first and asked could he read and write. He was scared stiff. He said, “Naw-sir.” Andrew was called and asked. He said, “Yes-sir.” He was asked iffen Mitchell could. He said, “Sho’. Better ‘n me. The master told John Arnold, the patroller chief, not to bother ‘em. He gloried in they spunk.

Knowing of community opposition, sympathetic owners tried to keep slave learning quiet. As Elijah Hopkins recalled from his experiences in the Deep South in the late 1850s, “Those white people [who] thought so much of their slaves that they would teach them how to write and read . . . would teach them secretly and they would teach them not to read or write out where anybody would notice them.” On a large plantation near Buckhead, Georgia, in the 1830s, Henry Wright’s father learned to read with the help of his master’s son, but the master told him to keep it to himself, because if the men of the community found out that he could write they would cut the fingers of his hand off. Slaves who could read did risk grim punishments. In his autobiography, written after he escaped from slavery, Leonard Black declared that when he first bought a book, his master found the book and burnt it, warning him, “If I ever know you to have a book again, I will whip you half to death.” Black bought another, however, and suffered the punishment: he related that his master “made me sick of books by beating like a dog…He whipped me so very severely that he overcame my thirst for knowledge, and I relinquished its pursuit until after I absconded.” In Ashley Country, Arkansas, in 1862, Joseph Booker’s father, Albert, was charged with “spoiling the good niggers” by teaching them to read and was whipped to death when Joseph was three years old. James Lucas’ owner “hung the best slave he had” for trying to teach the others how to spell. However, the most common widely known penalty for learning to read and write was amputation. African-Americans who were slaves as children in South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Mississippi told similar stories about this punishment. Doc Daniel Dowdy recited the lesson well: “The first time you was caught trying to read or write you was whipped with a cow-hide the next time with a cat-o-nine tails and the third time they cut the first jint offen your forefinger.” Former slaves were sure that amputation was in the law: George Washington Albright, born in 1846, told how he learned to read by trickery, because “there was a law on the Mississippi statue books, that if any slave learned to read or write, he was to be punished with 500 lashes on the naked back, and to have the thumb cut off above the second joint.” Samuel Hall claimed that amputation was also the law in North

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Carolina: “If the Negro ever learned to write and it was made known, the law was that he or she must suffer the loss of a finger to keep him from writing.” While it was not true that amputation was a legal penalty, the belief in its use was widespread. None of the blacks who told these stories had actually suffered amputation for having learned to read or write, but some had personal knowledge that such atrocities had been committed for the purpose of deterrence. For example, Henry Nix, who was a slave in Upson Country, Georgia, in the 1850s, recalled that his uncle stole a book and was trying to learn to read and write with it, so “Marse Jasper had the white doctor take off my Uncle’s fo’ finger right down to de fust jint” as a “sign for de res uv ‘em.” To what extend did fear keep slaves quiet about their achievement of learning to read? The fact that former slaves remembered the atrocity stories so well from their childhood suggests that their parents and elders – and sometimes their owners – had drilled this lesson into them: don’t read, or if you do, do it with stealth. It also might give rise to speculation that the children themselves did not know how many people in a single plantation community might actually know how to read and write, since the knowledge of this possession led to so much danger. As Sarah Fitzpatrick observed from her experience as a house servant in Alabama in the 1850s, many slaves could read but “de kep’ dat up deir sleeve, dey played dumb lack dey couldn’t read a bit till after surrender.” In addition to illuminating the possible extent of literacy, narratives and interviews with former slaves also shed light on the processes by which slaves learned how to read and write, who were their teachers, and how they managed the difficult circumstances under which they had to learn. An understanding of the obstacles to slave learning can be aided by a comparison with European working people who learned to read and write. Studies of sixteenth and seventeenth century English workers who tried to acquire reading and writing skills (because of religious conversion) where these skills were seldom in demand for the working class and , in fact, were discouraged (though seldom violently, as in slavery) provided parallels and contrasts to the struggles of North American slaves. Like English workers, slaves experienced family breakup and had to struggle to find time to learn because of long working hours. The age at which a person began to read was similar: most of the English workers who did learn to read in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries began to read at seven or eight. Slaves recalled that the most common age when they began to read was also between six and eight. On farms and plantations, children were usually assigned jobs in or around the house until they were eight or

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ten and physically able to work in the field. Those who spent most of their time around the house sometimes learned as the white children learned. The slave experience was different from beginning readers in other societies in the slaves’ lack of classroom exposure. The pre-modern English workers had some acquaintance with the classroom but slaves, with a few exceptions, did not. English workers were usually able to stay in school long enough to learn to read, which usually took them from four to six months. It is much harder to compare the length of time it took for a slave to learn to read without any time in the classroom. Slave accounts give a picture of sporadic but intensive learning. Thomas Johnson was taught for only a month at the age of seven but learned two-letter syllables during that month. It took Elijah Marrs a year of night school in Kentucky to learn how to write his name and to read cursive writing, but he could only attend school a few hours a week. Other former slaves described efforts which spanned years before they could read, let alone write. Today’s reading theories illuminate the complex process of reading and explain why it can take so long. Reading is considered to be a twopronged effort, involving both decoding and comprehension. Switching from decoding to comprehension is time consuming – the best parallel is that of reading in a foreign language, in which first the words are translated (decoding) and then meaning is derived (comprehension). With fragmented time, few teacher guides, and limited vocabulary, no wonder it could take even a determined slave years to read. Add the physical threats to other obstacles and the process becomes heroic. Lucius Holsey’s account of his attempts at reading illustrates the ordeal. When he decided to learn, Holsey, a house slave, collected and sold enough rags to buy five books: two Webster’s blue-back” spellers, a school dictionary, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and a Bible. White children and an old black man taught him the alphabet, and the rest he did on his own. As he recounted: Day by day, I took a leaf from one of the spelling books, and so folded it that one or two of the lessons were on the outside as if printed on a card. This I put in the pocket of my vest or coat, and when I was sitting in the carriage, walking the streets, or working in the yard or using hoe or spade, or in the dining room I would take out my spelling leaf, catch a word and commit it to memory. When one side of the spelling leaf was finished by this process, I would refold it…with a new lesson on the outside… Besides, I could catch words from the white people and retain them in memory until I could get to my dictionary. Then I would spell and define the words, until they became perfectly impressed upon my memory.

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Holsey used decoding and then comprehension to learn. He memorized individual words and spelled new ones – decoding – and then defined them – comprehension, which impressed them on his memory. He learned from the printed page by carrying it with him, a method recommended to beginning adult readers today, and also from listening to the words, which is another path to reading. Thomas G. Sticht and James H. James, for example, propose that “in learning to read, people close the gap between auding and reading skills, that is, they become capable of recognizing in printed form words and syntactic constructions they could previously recognize only in spoken form.” An excellent demonstration of learning to read by sound comes from John Sella Martin’s account of his childhood as a slave. Separated from his mother, he was forced to work as an errand boy in a Columbus, Georgia, hotel where he listened to his white coworkers holding betting matches over spelling. In this way, he recalled, “I learned to spell by sound before I knew by sight a single letter in the alphabet.” Then he tried to spell the signs he saw along the streets. Street and store signs were common decoding manuals for urban slaves. Benjamin Holmes, for example, was an apprentice tailor in Charleston. As he carried bundles of clothing around town, he studied all the signs and all the names on the doors and asked people to tell him a word or two at a time. By the time he was twelve, he found he could read newspapers. Most slaves who learned to read, though, like other American children of that era, did so from a speller, and most often the “blue-back” speller – the book which, next to the Bible, was most common in the average home. Noah Webster’s Elementary Spelling Book, which sold over twenty million copies in the nineteenth century, would be a challenge to the beginning reader in today’s schools. Its words were printed about the size of those in a modern fifth-grade reader, it had few pictures, and its lessons were crowded on a few pages, beginning with the alphabet on one page and on to syllables and consonant combinations on the next. Its step-bystep method, which heavily emphasized pronunciation, may have been tedious in the classroom but was a useful decoding tool for the resourceful person who had to teach himself, including those slaves who took on this challenge. The speller’s wide usage was shown by the number of former slaves who could quote those first vowel and consonant combinations decades after they had learned them. These combinations were part of a common body of reference. Everyone knew how much learning was signified by having gone through the “ab, eb, ib, ob, ubs.” Several former slaves proudly remembered having mastered the speller as far as “baker” and “shady,” the first two-syllable words in the speller. To “spell to baker,” the

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beginning reader had already confronted nine pages of syllables, words, and consonant combinations, with from 80 to 200 new combinations introduced on each page, and had read one-syllable sentences like these: Fire will burn wood and coal. When you eat, hold the fork in your left hand. Good boys and girls will act well.

An illustration of how sound a foundation these first few pages provided is seen in the narrative of Thomas Jones, who escaped from slavery and wrote his own story, published in Canada in 1853. Jones worked in his master’s store in Wilmington, North Carolina, bought a speller, and eventually found a white boy who taught him every day during lunchtime for six cents a week until he learned words of two syllables. After the teaching was stopped, however, Jones continued to work through the speller by himself until he got into words of five syllables. To do this in Webster’s speller meant that he had gone through over sixty pages of new words and sentences and would have been reading sentences like these: An extemporary discourse is one spoken without notes or premeditation. Intemperate people are exposed to inflammatory diseases. A love of trifling amusements is derogatory to the Christian character.

These former slaves who claimed to be gone all the way through the “blue-back” and on to other books were reading at what would now be considered at least twelfth grade level. Former slaves recalled a reverence for the speller which was surpassed only by their regard for the Bible. Some former slaves, however, also recalled their sudden realization that they could read. Mastering the speller only provided the decoding: reading also involves comprehension, which requires that the reader bring a memory store to reading: knowledge of grammar, word associations, and general knowledge of the world. As S. Jay Samuels and Michael L. Kamil describe it, there is a “click of comprehension” when the textual information coming in from outside the head matches with the concepts stored inside the head. When she was ninety years old, Belle Myers still recalled her childhood experience with this “click of comprehension,” her sudden realization that she could read. She had learned her letters while caring for the owner’s baby who was playing with alphabet blocks. Despite brutal discouragement (her master, seeing what she was doing, kicked her with his muddy boots), Myers had slipped around and practiced her letters and studied the blue-back speller.

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One day, she recalled, “I found a Hymn book…and spelled out, ‘When I Can Read My Title Clear.’ I was so happy when I saw that I could really read, that I ran around telling all the other slaves.” Sella Martin also remembered vividly his “click of comprehension” the day he first discovered he could actually understand the ideas represented by words on a printed page. Trying to learn to read so that he could run away from slavery and be reunited with his mother, he had persuaded a fellow hotel boy to give him a few lessions from the boy’s book and had also gotten into the habit of spelling signs and trying to read advertisements on buildings. Slaves who saw him spelling out words assumed he could read, so one Sunday three older black men dragged him out into the woods, shoved a newspaper at him and said, “Dare read data ar, and tell us whut him say ‘about de bobblishunis.” Martin, afraid, decided to bluff his way through, but found to his surprise that he actually could understand enough to make out the headline: “Henry Clay an Abolitionist.” He was able to read enough words in the article to perceive that the editor was trying to show abolitionist tendencies in one of Clay’s speeches. Martin recalled, “Of course I did not make out fully all the long words…but I made a new discovery about my being able to read at all, and that, too, in a newspaper.” Reading comprehension is “the process of bringing meaning to a text.” Martin’s great desire for his own freedom and his fellow slaves’ hunger for knowledge about the climate of antislavery in their world brought meaning to a newspaper story about abolition and lead to his discovery that he could read. That night, when he returned to the city, word had spread. Martin’s hotel kitchen was unusually full of neighboring slaves, each of who had taken a book or newspaper from their owners for Martin to read, acknowledging the value and importance of his skill for the Columbus, Georgia, slave community. To the enslaved African-American, writing was an even more important skill to acquire than reading. However, studies of beginning working class readers in sixteenth century England have shown that reading was more easily achieved than writing. This was also true for nineteenth century American black people in slavery. Writing involved the making and mastery of special equipment: it was much easier to recite the alphabet than to cope with the acquisition of ink, paper, penknives, and so forth. This lack of equipment was particularly acute in the rural South, where pens and paper were not common household articles. To solve this problem, one ingenious slave cut out blocks from pine bark and smoothed them for tablets, cut sticks from white oak or hickory for pens, and soaked knots from oak trees overnight to make ink. Others simply practiced by writing with their fingers on the ground or in the sand. Frederick Douglass

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related that “my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk.” Louis Hughes learned off a wall; his friend Tom wrote figures on the side of a barn for Louis to copy. There were other reasons slaves found it harder to learn to write than to read. Owners and other whites were more reluctant to teach this potentially dangerous skill. Also, the two skills of reading and writing were entirely separated in traditional teaching. Unlike today’s learning, in which the child begins to trace letters on paper at the same time he or she is learning to pronounce them, the nineteenth century child was expected to master reading completely before going on to writing. Slave children might be taught to read while they were working in the house, but by the time they were ready to learn to write, they had to go to the fields with the adults. Also, while spellers and primers presented a methodology in successive steps for the teaching of reading, there were no “how-to” books on writing, presenting problems to the slave who wanted to teach herself or himself. When language is set down on paper it takes on a separate identity from its spoken counterpart. Self-taught writing by slaves shows characteristics similar to those by other members of societies who communicate primarily in spoken language: for example, a lack of capitalization and punctuation and grouping of thoughts in phrases rather than complete sentences. As for writing form, some aspiring learners copied the letters out of the blue-back speller but found to their chagrin that they were expected to use cursive style, not the letters printed in alphabet books. In towns slaves could at least see cursive writing, though they could ferret it out only with ingenuity: Noah Davis, bound out to a shoemaker, watched his employer write customer’s names on the lining of the boots and shoes he made and tried to imitate the writing. Frederick Douglass watched ships’ carpenters and copied their letters for shipping lumber. Slaves seldom saw any handwriting on farms, so in rural Mississippi John Warren bought a copy of the letters in cursive writing from a white boy for the considerable sum of half a dollar. He had never seen anyone write, so he didn’t know how to hold the pen correctly. However, as he related after he had escaped from slavery, “I kept that copy of the letters three years, and learned to write from it.” Warren used his skill to write three passes for himself and, with the passes, ran away to Canada. Warren’s story shows the most obvious and immediate reward for learning to write. Despite the difficulties, writing was a path to freedom. Other slaves gained temporary freedom, including Stephen Jordan, who wrote passes for himself so he could see his wife on another Louisiana

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plantation. Mobility could result from writing ability; slaves who could read and write could be chosen to travel with the master so that if anything happened to him they could write back home. The ability to read also assured some privacy. Sarah Fitzpatrick, a house slave in Alabama in the 1850s, pointed out that if a slave wanted to court a girl and couldn’t write, his master had to write his love letter for him, so “anytime you writ a note white folks had ta know whut it said.” Reading and writing could even tap white financial resources: one slave forged his master’s name on a check and was able to cash it. There were other reasons in addition to the immediately practical, however, for some slaves’ “insatiable craving for some knowledge of books,” as one former slave put it. More former slaves mentioned a desire to read the Bible as a motive than any other. To most enslaved AfricanAmericans the Bible and the black church gave central identity to their communities and their lives. Slaves were also aware of the promise of literacy as a path to mobility and increased self-worth. Messages about literacy’s intrinsic and practical value, espoused by educational reformers in England and the northern United States, had an impact even in the South. An interesting interpretation of this message came from a poor white boy who assured a slave that “a man who had learning would always find friends, and get along very well in the world without having to work hard, while those who had no learning would have no friends and be compelled to work very hard for a poor living all their days.” Lucius Holsey, who identified in many ways with the white world, “felt that constitutionally he was created the equal of any person here on earth and that, given a chance, he could rise to the height of any man,” and that books were the path to proving his worth as a human being. Another important reason was that so many owners tried to prevent slaves from gaining literacy skills. Perception by slaves that reading and writing must be extremely valuable simply because they were withheld from the slaves, and that these skills could greatly expand their world, underlay much of their desire to learn. Overcoming the barrier to learning was a small triumph over the world that kept them in bondage. As Jenny Proctor said, De say we git smater 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 til way in de night and den we ights a little pine torch and studies dat spellin’ book. We learn it too.

Slaves challenged circumstances in many ways in order to learn reading and writing skills. Slaves “borrowed” books from their owners or bought them with treasured small savings. Lucius Holsey gathered rags

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and sold them for money to buy books. Richard Parker picked up nails and sold them until he had enough money to buy a primer. Former slaves told how they used the little spare time available to them to study reading and writing. Dan Lockhart, overseer on a Virginia plantation, would carry his gun to a hollow ostensibly to go hunting, then get out his secreted divinity book and study it. John Irvine was a slave on a farm near Clarkesville, Virginia, in the 1850s and early 1860s. While holding the horse for his owners during church, he used his slate, pencil, and his young master’s books, and made up for lost time. Edmund Kelly, hired to a schoolmaster in Tennessee in the 1830s, slipped candy to the school children in exchange for a speller and a few lessons, then tried to find the time to study: “Early each night he retired with a prayer that God would guide and direct him and wake him at eleven P.M.… ” According to former slaves, who usually had to learn at night, one of the great difficulties was getting enough light to read by. Some Tennessee ex-slaves told Fisk University student interviewers that they had to slip old planks into the house in summer, where they would light them and sit down and read from the light of the fire. The trouble with light was most serious when studying had to be kept secret. His Colbert County, Alabama, master had told Wilson Northcross that if he was caught with a book he would be hung by the white men of the community, so Northcross got some old boards and carried them to his house to make a light by which to read secretly. This was a hazardous undertaking, as he recalled: I would shut the doors, put one end of a board into the fire, and proceed to study; but whenever I heard the dogs barking I would throw my book under the bed and peep and listen to see what was up. If no one was near I would crawl under the bed, get my book, come out, lie flat on my stomach, and proceed to study until the dogs would again disturb me.

The most obvious way for slaves to learn was to get the knowledge from whites. His granddaughter recalled that Beverly Nash, a barber in Columbia, “learned to read and write before 1865, because he was in favor with both white and black folks practically all his life….” Paul Jenkins recalled that in Walterboro, South Carolina, his father “learned to read, write, and cipher while he was a slave. The Jenkins family help him, he say, ‘cause he always keep the peace and work as he was told to do.” The arrangement continued to be an advantage after slavery; when Jenkins was set free, the white family helped him get settled and loaned him books. Not all white teachers were slaveowners. Some slaves paid whites to teach them or persuaded them in other ways. Sella Martin beat the white boys at marble games and exchanged reading lessons for their marbles.

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Frederick Douglass made friends with the white boys he met in the street and converted as many as he could into teachers. Some poor whites were glad to get paid for teaching a slave the alphabet or give some reading lessons. At least one Greene Country, Alabama, white teacher, William Freeman, must have taught slaves for the company, or for the satisfaction of irritating the community. As a neighbor complained: We have known of [Freeman] being drunk…but we never intended to medle with it until other things come to light he give Negroes passes goes in the old fields and woods on Sundays and is teaching them to write and cipher I do hope you will take him from this neighborhood.

White children taught their slave playmates secretly or were unaware of violation of law or custom. As a girl growing up in Charleston, Sarah Grimke was aware of the law against teaching slaves, but deliberately violated it, as she recounted: I took an almost malicious satisfaction in teaching my little waiting-maid at night, when she was supposed to be occupied in combing and brushing my long locks. The light was put out, the keyhole screened, and flat on our stomachs, we defied the laws of South Carolina.

Sometimes the children were tacitly or openly encouraged by white adults, who may have allowed their children to dare to do what they could not. One former slave in Arkansas, Eva Strayhorn, told about the relationship between Solomon, her black overseer, and his little mistress Liza: “She was his special charge and he would a died for her.” He took her to school, and she taught him to read every day. “As she growed up she kept learning more and Solomon had married and Miss Liza would go down to his cabin every night and teach him [and his wife] some more.” When his master, an Arkansas legislator, caught him with a Bible in his lap and found out Liza had taught him, he was pleased and amused and even had Solomon show off by reading the Bible to some of his friends, able to parade Solomon’s accomplishment since he had not been personally responsible for it. Former slaves also recalled that it was customary for young whites, especially young white women, to serve as Sunday school teachers for their slaves. When she was about sixteen, for example, in the late 1850s, Squire Dowd’s mistress taught him to read in a Sunday school class on his plantation of 50 slaves in Moore, North Carolina. Other times white children were unwitting teachers of their slave playmates. Milly Green, her son recalled, kept a school book hidden in her dress, and when the children came home from school she would ask them

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questions about what they had learned that day. They taught her because she was so proud of every little scrap of learning she picked up. William Head listened to the spelling matches at school when he and his sister carried lunch to his young master. He tried to memorize the speeches he heard and went to the library with the white children to study at night. Moses Slaughter’s mother used her position in the household to learn from the children through trickery; as the housekeeper, she would say to the owner’s daughter, “Come here, Emily, Mamma will keep you place for you,” and while little Emily read, “Mamma” followed each line until she too was a fluent reader and could teach her own children. A slave’ standing as an owner’s child sometimes, but not always, gave him or her an opportunity for learning. Louisiana slave Stephen Jordan, son of his master, went to school with his white half-brothers and sisters shortly before the war. Some slaveowners even sent their children by slave women North to be educated. The school established at the Ohio resort of Tawawa Springs, later Wilberforce University, housed and taught over 200 children of slaveowners in the 1850s. This preferential treatment for owners’ children was not always the rule, however. Lucius Holsey, also the son of his master, was orphaned when he was six and had to ferret out opportunities to learn on his own. Next to learning from white children, working with the women of the households offered slaves the most opportunities for reading. While some women owners of slaves were cruel and harsh, many others established bonds with the enslaved black women with whom they spent most of their time and taught them to read as part of general education and instruction. Charity Jones’ mistress, for example, taught her to read and write as part of her instruction in house management. The rest of her education included learning how to card bats and spin, weave cloth, sew, and sweep. Betty Ivery, house servant on a large plantation in Arkansas, recalled that her mistress taught her to read after the housework was done, “long after dark.” Literacy was a skill and a power which was shared with the slave community by those who learned. Enslaved African-Americans often used the knowledge they had gained to teach fellow slaves. Anderson Whitted’s father lived fourteen miles away from him, but was allowed to visit him every two weeks and taught Anderson to read on his visits. The children in Henry Bruce’s family on a small farm in Missouri learned from their white playmates and then taught each other: “The older one would teach the younger, and while mother had no education at all, she used to make the younger study the lessons given by the older sister or brother, and in that way they all learned to read” and some to write. A man on Levi Branham’s master’s Tennessee farm would make figures and letters on a

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wooden pad to teach the boys how to read and write. Teaching was, however, not only a hazzard for the black teacher, but also a terrific responsibility. Enoch Golden, known to the slaves as a “double-headed nigger” because he would read and write and “knowed so much,” was said to have confessed on his deathbed that he “been de death o’ many nigger ‘cause he taught so many to read and write.” Free African-Americans in the South also played a key role in spreading literacy among slaves. In the cities and small towns, slaves and free blacks intermingled; they worked together, belonged to the same churches, and intermarried. Even in the country, free blacks were teachers of slaves. The existence of a few literate people in a community also creates a climate where the importance and power of literacy is recognized. This was particularly true when it came to the spread of information about freedom throughout the slave South. As whites had suspected when they tried to keep literate black seamen from stopping in southern ports in the 1820s, the existence of a free, literate black population in the South was a never-ending source of information to the slaves. Also, the increase in mass literacy meant that writings by northern abolitionists and calls for freedom and literacy by northern black leaders spread into the South. In southern cities, free African-Americans led educational efforts. They taught and financed those few schools and classes for black people which did operate in the antebellum South. While the schools operated primarily for other free blacks, slaves sometimes did attend them. Also, free and slave African Americans cooperated in founding and conducting southern black churches, including the Sunday schools where many free blacks and slaves learned to read. Despite restrictions and difficulties, free black people had opportunities to gain literate skills which were seldom available to slaves. In some southern states, free blacks were taught to read and write because they were apprentices. Eighteenth century statutes in Virginia and North Carolina stipulated that apprentices, including black apprentices, be taught to read as a part of their training. Even after these were amended to exclude blacks in the early nineteenth century as a reaction to rebellions by literates Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner, free black apprentices were actually still taught to read. John Hope Franklin noted that most free Negro apprentices in Craven County, North Carolina, were still under indentures in the 1850s which specified that they were to be taught to read and write. Apprentice contracts in other states, including Louisiana, also stipulated that employers teach their charges a trade and also give them the fundamentals of reading and writing.

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Free African-Americans got their education by taking advantage of their mobility within the South, or traveled North. Carrie Pollard’s grandmother, a free servant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, sent her two daughters to school in Mobile by boat. William Pettiford’s parents sold their little farm and moved to a county in North Carolina where Pettiford could get a private education. Inman Page’s father moved his family to Washington, D.C., where Page went to George Cook’s well-respected school. Other southern free blacks who could afford to do so took advantage of the educational opportunities in the North for their children. Among those who did so were the parents of James Rapier of Florence, Alabama, who had their son taught by private tutors and then sent him to Canada. Henry Alexander, storekeeper and grain merchant in Mayslick, Kentucky, sent two of his daughters to Philadelphia to school in 1846 and three younger daughters to Oberlin in the 1850s. One of the older daughters, Maria Ann, educated in Philadelphia, then came back to teach in Covington, Kentucky. Edward Brawley’s parents sent him from Charleston to Philadelphia when he was ten; Mary Ann Shadd spent six years in school in West Chester, Pennsylvania, before she returned as a teenager to open a school for black children in Wilmington, Delaware. The Harris family left Fayetteville, North Carolina, for Cleveland so that the youngest son, Cicero, could obtain a high school education. Free African-Americans established private schools – paid schools, church schools, or tuition-free schools – throughout the South. The number and accessibility of their black schools varied considerably from city to city. Washington, D. C. was the southern city with the most private schools for African-Americans; from oral recollections and records, its District Commissioner for Education described at least seventy-two teachers for black people in the city in the antebellum nineteenth century. As an historian of urban black life recently observed, “Washington free blacks appear to have been determined to secure the advantages of education for their children at whatever cost.” Nashville and Savannah also had numbers of schools, and a historian who delved into his own and other black family records and gathered oral histories in Charleston named at least fifteen different schools and teachers for blacks in that city in the period from 1820 and 1860. In Richmond, on the other hand, laws against learning were strict, as Thomas Johnson found out when he sought opportunities for literacy. According to a northern missionary, Richmond free and slave blacks still learned to read, but were taught “by the poor whites secretly and at exorbitant rates.”

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Free blacks in Mobile had special permission to operate public schools in the city because of political privileges granted to Creoles by the Louisiana Purchase before Alabama became a state. Even where schools were not legal, free blacks operated them, often through the churches – in fact, Ira Berlin has labeled the schools operated by black churches as the chief instruments of literacy for the black community. Charleston exemplifies Berlin’s claim. All but one of Charleston’s schools for blacks were supported through the churches. One of these schools was established by black Methodists in Charleston. After Daniel Payne’s school closed in 1835 and he was forced to leave the city, his good friends William and Samuel Weston gathered a group of fellow black Methodists, organized a Board of Trustees, rented a house, opened a school and persuaded a white Methodist college student to become its teacher. The school quickly became so large that two more teachers were added. Slaves did attend the schools established and operated by free blacks. Their best opportunities came in Sunday schools, but other schools were also sometimes open to them. An example is William H. Gibson’s school in Louisville. Gibson grew up in Baltimore and studied under Daniel Payne and other black educators. In 1847 he moved to Louisville with the Rev. James Harper and began both a day and night school in the basement of a Methodist church. Many of his pupils, who numbered from fifty to one hundred, were slaves whose masters gave them written permits to attend school. In Savannah, according to Susie King Taylor, a free black woman kept a school in which she and her daughter taught twenty-five to thirty free and slave children every day. In North Carolina Robert Harris, a plasterer by trade, also held a secret school for slaves. A key group responsible for schools for African-Americans in the antebellum South was the French West Indies immigrants and their descendants. Mulattoes, or gens de couleur, fled French and Spanish slave colonies in successive emigrations after the first slave revolts in 1790 and settled in southern coastal cities, including New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Washington, and Baltimore. They organized brotherhoods and schools designed to perpetuate the separate colored caste and Creole culture to which they belonged in the West Indies colonies, but which was not recognized as a separate culture in Anglo-America. The gens de couleur were also noted for their efforts to teach blacks in the spirit of noblesse oblige. A good example of their work is Charleston’s Brown Fellowship Society, established by emigrants from the French West Indies in the 1790s. Many of the members of the Brown Fellowship Society were slaveowners themselves who emphasized racial divisions by admitting to membership only “colored” students of mixed blood. But the

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Society also helped two kinds of schools: it gave its support to Thomas Bonneau’s school for its own children but also established the Minor’s Moralist Society to maintain and educate free colored and black orphans. Education was a particular responsibility of the Catholic orders for black and colored women. The Oblate sisters, whose order was founded in Baltimore in 1829, and the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans, founded in 1842, taught schools for black children in Nashville, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The first school for mulatto children in New Orleans was administered by the Ursulines and then by the Carmelites. Ursulines also trained young black and Creole women to instruct black children. Sulpicians carried out the same function in Baltimore. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet opened a school for the education of Negro girls in St. Louis in 1845; two other schools were opened there by Catholic orders in the 1850s. “Colored” Catholic efforts to educate black and mulattos contributed to the fact that the three cities which offered most schools for blacks – Baltimore, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. – were also the cities with the highest number of West Indies Creole emigrants. Creoles would have preferred to remain separate from blacks, but since the white power structure refused to recognize a separate mulatto class, many of the gens de couleur became leaders of the black community with whom they were forced to associate. Ironically, also, Catholic orders and their schools had another effect on black education: Protestants began mission churches and schools for blacks in New Orleans, Baltimore, and Mobile in order to combat the effects of “Romanism.” African-Americans in the North expanded their educational opportunities in the antebellum years. It is difficult to measure black education, largely private, in the days before accreditation and certification, but numbers of black children attending schools, according to census figures, declined in slave states and increased markedly in northern states from 1850 to 1860. Little public education was available for African-Americans in the North. They were barred from public education in border cities, including Cincinnati, and in other northern cities their admission to public schools was limited and segregated. Still, the number of private schools, largely financed by blacks themselves, increased. Schools established in Quaker settlements and in colonies of former slaves throughout the Old Northwest educated increasing numbers. Sunday schools operated by black churches and schools and tutors supported by black relief societies maintained instruction in the rudiments of education. New York City’s public schools for black children were far from equal to those for white, but improved as a result of petitions and publicity from a committee of black people.

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Philadelphia counted fifty-six private black schools in 1860, only twelve of them conducted by whites. In addition, some public elementary education was available for black people in Philadelphia. Public support of black or integrated schools made some gains in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ohio. Nevertheless, hostility and indifference from whites prevented an all-out effort to educate black children and adults. Thousands of African-Americans left the United States for Canada in the antebellum decades, explaining that better educational opportunities for their children in Canada was a major factor attracting them. Increasingly important to southern black literacy in the two decades before the Civil War were northern black educators and political leaders. While their achievements and challenges can only be briefly touched upon in this book, northern black leaders as promoters of education and of protest held out opportunities and goals to slaves who had access to the printed word and inspired others to gain that access. Northern AfricanAmerican religious, political and educational leaders promoted the urgency and necessity of literacy for their people. Conventions of AfricanAmericans passed resolutions encouraging the pursuit of learning and literacy, and benevolent societies such as New York’s Phoenix Society ran schools and urged parents to send their children to learn. Frederick Douglass and Samuel Cornish were among the journalists who praised the benefits of education in their journals. As editor of Freedom’s Journal, Cornish deplored the low state of education for black people and recommended steps toward improvement, including a thorough grounding in fundamental skills. The tone of these black leaders was militant. The Anglo-African Magazine’s editor typically declared: Instruction is the great want of the colored race; it needs the light, ideas, facts, principles of action, for its development and progress. In this armor alone can it fight its battles, and secure its rights, and protect its interest amid the forces of civilization.

Another strong spokesman for an educated black people was Daniel Payne. With as sound educational background from his Charleston days and then as an A.M.E. preacher and bishop, he fought for an educated ministry and congregation – a fight which he characterized as “that struggle between darkness and light, between ignorance and knowledge, between baptized superstition and Christianity.” He led in the development of Sunday schools, a church newspaper, and in the founding of Wilberforce College. Since the A.M.E. church was a strong force in the

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border states, Payne’s influence for literacy was felt by black people in his home region as well as in the North. Northern black leaders recognized the potency of literacy in protest. When Henry Highland Garnet gave his famous “Address to the Slaves” at the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, in 1843, he told slaves that it was their Christian duty to revel. It was, according to Garnet, “sinful…to make voluntary submission” to oppression. Among the oppressions Garnet described was a prohibition on learning. Nearly three millions of your fellow-citizens are prohibited by law and public opinion (which in this country is stronger than law) from reading the Book of Life!

The way in which Garnet phrased this sentence implies that Garnet was addressing literate slaves. The Convention which Garnet addressed refused to publish his explosive speech, but Garnet had it printed anyway. According to his recent biographer, Garnet may have actually wanted and expected the slaves to have a copy of his speech. Therefore, he must have assumed that some would be able to read it. Garnet may have had reasons to believe his message would reach literate slaves. He had interviewed fugitive slaves and knew that those he spoke with were well acquainted with developments in nonslave areas. Former slaves who spoke with Federal Writers Project interviewers or wrote their own reminiscences related that news about significant events, such as the war, travelled fast. Vincent Harding, in There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, described how “the fugitive, exciting word from white political sources, telling of arguments and debates over the operation of the institution of slavery, continued to seep into the life of the southern black community, hinting, suggesting, revealing the basic tensions which lurked deep in the larger white society.” This word was often spread by literate slaves, as evidenced in the FWP narratives. In Georgia Minnie Davis’ mother stole newspapers during the war and kept the other slaves posted as to the war’s progress. Cora Gillam’s uncle “had a newspaper with the latest war news and gathered a crowd of fellow Mississippi slaves to read them when peace was coming.” J. B. Roudanez, a free mulatto Creole from New Orleans employed as an engineer and mechanic on sugar plantations, estimated that “generally upon every plantation there was at least one man who had somehow learned to read a little, and in secret learned to read to the others,” and he gave a specific example of how quickly news traveled. On the day after New Orleans learned a dramatic piece of news, a slave seventy-five miles upriver told Roudanez all about it. His master had given one of the slaves

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a newspaper for wiping machinery in the sugar house. The slave had kept the newspaper and had later secretly read it to the whole slave community. It contained an account of John Brown’s execution. Additional Readings: Conway, Moncure Daniel. Testimonies Concerning Slavery. London: Chapman & Hall, 1865. Mott, A. Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color; with a Selection of Pieces of Poetry. New York, 1826. Redpath, James. The Roving Editor, or Talks with Slaves in Southern States. New York, 1859. Smeden, Mrs. Susan (Dabney). Memorials of a Southern Planter. Baltimore, Maryland, 1887.

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Letter from Female Reader to the Editor of Freedom’s Journal, August 1827 In the August 1827 issue of Freedom’s Journal, which is the first known news periodical published by African Americans, included is the following letter from a female subscriber named Matilda. The writer insists that it is the duty of the exceptional or educated men and women in the African American community to promote an education ethos that values education as the means of uplifting colored individuals and the race. What other reasons are stated by Matilda for an education ethos? How does Matilda anticipate W. E. B. Du Bois’ concept of “the Talented Tenth” (see Du Bois elsewhere in this text)? In her editorial, Matilda contends that it is the women of the African American community who best might contribute to raising a "group consciousness" about literacy, dignity, freedom and 'uplift.' ” Explain Matilda’s argument. Generally, in the colonies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, acquisition of education was reserved largely for men, but what is Matilda suggesting should be the role, or the bounden duty, of black womanhood, especially middle-class black womanhood? Messrs. Editors Will you allow a female to offer a few remarks upon a subject that you must allow to be all important? I don’t know that in any of your papers, you have said sufficient upon the education of females. I hope you are not to be classed with those who think that our mathematical knowledge should be limited to “fathoming the dish-kettle,” and that we have acquired enough of history, if we know that our grandfather’s father lived and died. ‘Tis true the time has been, when to darn a stocking, and cook a pudding well, was considered the end and aim of a woman’s being.' But those were days when ignorance blinded men’s eyes. The diffusion of knowledge has destroyed those degrading opinions, and men of the present age, allow, that we have minds that are capable and deserving of culture. There are difficulties, and great difficulties in the way of our advancement; but that should only stir us to greater efforts. We possess not the advantages with those of our sex, whose skins are not colored like our own; but we can improve that little we have, and make our own talent produce two-fold. The influence that we have over the male sex demands that our minds should be instructed and improved with the principles of education and religion, in order that this influence should be properly directed. Ignorant ourselves, how can we be expected to form the minds of

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our youth, and conduct them in the paths of knowledge? How can we “teach the young idea to shoot” if we have [no knowledge] ourselves? I would address myself to all mothers, and say to them , that while it is necessary to possess a knowledge of cookery, and the various mysteries of pudding-making, something more is requisite. It is their bounden duty to store their daughters’ minds with useful learning. They should be made to devote their leisure time to reading books, whence they would derive valuable information, which could never be taken from them. I will no longer trespass on your time and patience. I merely throw out these hints, in order that some more able pen will take up the subject. Matilda Additional Readings: Franklin, V. P. “In Pursuit of Freedom: The Educational Activities of Black Social Organizations in Philadelphia, 1900-1930.” In Vincent P. Franklin and James D. Anderson, eds. New Perspective on Black Educational History. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978, 113. Porter, Dorothy."The Organized Educational Activities of Negro Literary Societies, 1828-1846. The Journal of Negro Education. 5.4 (Oct 1936): 555-76. Birney, Catherine H. The Grimke Sisters; Sara and Angelina Grimke, The First American Women Advocates of Abolition and Woman’s Rights. Boston: 1885.

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Letter to Samuel May, Jr., General Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, April 27, 1854 In her letter to Samuel May, the General Agent of the American AntiSlavery Society, writer Josephine Brown, a member of an upper middle-class family living in England, writes to critique the American education system and access to and attainment of an education by African Americans in the mid- 19th century. Examine what Brown regards as the literal short comings of the American education system at the time. How does Brown feel these shortcomings have affected the identity and dignity of African Americans? Please specify. Because of her economic status, Brown is able to escape some of the barriers which prohibit other African Americans from receiving a quality education in America in the mid-19th century. Explain. Explain also how Brown’s account of her educational experience under the British school system expands discussions of an “African American consciousness” in the mid-19th century? Does Brown specify any community and education goals that resemble on-going community and education goals found in America among most African Americans in the mid-19th century? My Dear Mr. May: I read very attentively the anti-slavery papers which come to my father, and often think I should like to be in my native land again. Yet the treatment I receive from the people here is so different from what I experienced in the United States, that I have great admiration for the English. While we resided in Buffalo, I did not go to school, owing to the fact that colored children were not permitted to be educated with the whites, and my father would not send me to the colored school, because it would have been giving sanction to the proscriptive prejudice. And even after coming into Massachusetts, where we were allowed to receive instruction in the same school with white children, we had to occupy a seat set apart for us, and therefore often suffered much annoyance from the other children, owing to prejudice. But here we have found it totally different. On our arrival in this country, we spent the first year in France, in a boarding-school, where there were some forty other young ladies, and never once heard our color alluded to in disrespectful terms. We afterward returned to London, and entered a school where more than two hundred young ladies were being educated, and here, too, we were always treated with the greatest kindness and respect. As we were trained in the last

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mentioned school for teachers, we were somewhat afraid that our color would be a barrier against our getting employment, but in this [we] were happily disappointed. My sister is mistress of a school at Berden, in Essex, about forty miles from London. I have a school here with more than one hundred pupils, and an assistant two years older than myself. My pupils are some of them sixteen years of age, while I am not yet fifteen. I need not say to you, that both my assistant and pupils are all white. Should I return to America, it is scarcely probable that I could get a school of white pupils, and this makes me wish to remain here, for I am fond of teaching. Believe me to remain, Yours, very respectfully, Josephine Brown Woolwich, England Additional Readings: Hallowell, A. D. James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters. Boston, MA, 1884.

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The Schoolmarms Excerpted From We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century Dorothy Sterling Define America’s “Schoolmarms” of the nineteenth century. What are their shared characteristics as teachers? Identify the African American women among the Schoolmarms who are anticipated by, for instance, Matilda who writes earlier to the editor of Freedom’s Journal on the role of womanhood in the African American community? (see Matilda’s letter elsewhere in this text). Do the Schoolmarms exceed or fall short of Matilda’s expectations? Define and explain community, spiritual, and education goals of African Americans in the 19th century as explained through the eyes of the Schoolmarms. How do the Schoolmarms verbalize the dignity of a people desperately seeking literacy? How do the Schoolmarms of color challenge the notion of an inferior race? During the Civil War, and for decades afterwards, northern women went South to teach the freed people. "Under the auspices of philanthropic societies,* they opened schools in church basements, slave pens, and army barracks. Teaching children by day and adults at night, organizing Sabbath schools and visiting the homes of their pupils, these women sought to “uplift” the former slaves and to indoctrinate them with the moral values of the North. . . ." Are there any education conflicts? The schoolmarms followed the Union armies, bringing primers and Bibles to liberate areas, and, at war’s end, to districts throughout the South. The first teacher to be supported by a northern society was Mary S. Peake, a black Virginian who started a school in Hampton, Virginia, in September 1861, a month after the town had been evacuated by Confederate forces. Born free and educated in a private school in the District of Columbia, Peake had taught slaves and free blacks before the war. [For example,] when Lewis Lockwood was sent to Hampton by the American Missionary Association, he found her already at work. He reported: I have just visited the school of Mrs. Peake (the colored teacher). The school numbers of forty-five children and others are expected. She offers to teach a school for adults in the afternoon. She has several classes that spell well in the book and out of it. She is also teaching writing and the elements of arithmetic with encouraging success. She intersperses the

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Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, catechismical exercises, singing. etc. She surely deserves compensation, though she began without any expectation feeling that she should be fully rewarded in having the privilege of doing good. Soon afterwards, Peake wrote to the Association. Fortress Monroe, Virginia, November 1861 Dear Brethren and Friends: With many thanks I acknowledge the donation received from you. After our church was burned, we had no place of worship, and we were in a most deplorable condition in respect to our spiritual welfare. But the efforts of brother Lockwood have brought us together again. Although we have lost many of our earthly comforts, we are better off than many of the poor soldiers, who are suffering from wounds and exposure to weather. Some of them take part in the Sunday School and assist us to teach the children, who improve very fast. I have been teaching about fifty small children. Some are beginning to read very well, and are very anxious to learn, also quite a number of adults. In regard to the church and school, we feel thankful; our condition is quite prosperous. We have had many interesting marriages performed, since brother Lockwood has been with us. Most respectfully, M. S. Peake [Peake] wrote again in January, 1862 to thank the AMA for donations of clothing and bedding and to report that her school was “still improving,” with fifty-three scholars in the day school and twenty at night. Ill with tuberculosis, she continued to teach from her bedside until her death a month later. “She was indeed a queen among her kind,” wrote Lockwood. “We never shall see her like again.” Mary S. Peake, who died at the age of thirty-nine, leaving a husband and child, was not typical of the black schoolmarms. As examination of the backgrounds of some thirty women who taught the freedpeople in the 1860s shows that all were northern born, middle class, single, and childless. Almost all were in their twenties, with an above-average education acquired at Oberlin, the Institute for Colored Youth, or at normal schools near their homes; almost all had taught locally before

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going South. A few familiar faces were in the group: Charlotte Forten was at work in South Carolina in 1862, and Emma V. Brown became the first teacher in Washington’s new public school system for black children. For the most part, however, these crusaders were youthful idealists who were leaving home for the first time to take part in the most significant movement of their day. “I am myself a colored woman, bound to that ignorant, degraded long enslaved race,” one teacher explained. “They are socially and politically ‘my people’, and I have an earnest and abiding conviction that the All-Father requires me to devote every power with which he has endowed me to the work of ameliorating their condition.” In earnest letters to officers of the American Missionary Association, these young teachers elaborated on their reasons for wishing to go South.** Rev. S. S. Jocelyn Newport, [Rhode Island,] June 13, 1863 Sir: I have a great desire to go and labor among the Freedmen of the South. I think it is our duty as a people to spend our lives in trying to elevate our own race. Who can feel for us if we do not feel for ourselves? And who can feel the sympathy that we can who are identified with them? I would have one upon my own responsibility but I am not able. I thought it would be safer for me to be employed by some Society. Then I shall not be troubled about my livelihood, for it cramps ones energies to have to think about the means of living. I suppose I must tell you something of myself. I teach the common English branches, viz. Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography and Grammar. Should there be an opportunity for me to be employed will you please to inform me what the Salary will be and all the particulars. I shall be ready to leave Newport as soon as I can settle my present business. I have a Select School but I believe I can do more good among the Freedmen. Please write me if there is any prospect and you will much oblige me. Yours most respectfully, E. Garrison Jackson P.S. I was born in Concord, Mass, and am a member of the Baptist Church in Joy St. Boston. E. G. J.

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Rev. George Whipple Cleveland, Ohio, January 19, 1864 Dear Sir: I am a colored woman, having a slight admixture of negro blood in my veins; and have been for several years a teacher in the public schools of Ohio. Since the providence of God has opened in the South, so vast a field for earnest and self-abnegating missionary labor, I have felt a strong conviction of duty, an irresistible desire to engage in teaching the freed people; to aid, to the extent of what ability God has given me, in bringing the poor outcast from the pale of humanity, into the family of man. Possessing no wealth and having nothing to give but my life to the work, I therefore make this application to you. Can I become a teacher under the auspices of the American Missionary Association? I should be very glad and happy if it might be so. No thought of suffering, and privation, nor even death, should deter me from making every effort possible, for the moral and intellectual elevation of these ignorant and degraded people. I know that the efforts of a single individual seem small and insignificant but to me this is of the most vital importance. Very respectfully Yours, Sara G. Stanley The AMA replied to each applicant with a cautionary circular. Teachers must not only have a “missionary spirit,” but they must also have good health, energy, culture and common sense. “This is not a hygienic association, to help invalids try a change of air, or travel at others’ expense,” its officers warned. “None should go who are influenced by either romantic or mercenary motives.” Few were likely to go for mercenary motives. The initial salary offered to women was ten dollars a month, plus board and travel expenses; fifteen dollars was the highest anyone could aspire to.*** Many of the white teachers they worked with had independent means; the black teachers needed their pay not only to support themselves but also to contribute to their families. . . . Most of the young women who went South were starry-eyed when they arrived at their posts. “I am prepared to give up everything even life for the good of the cause,” an Oberlin student wrote from Virginia. In frequent enthusiastic letters, the teachers reported on the progress of the freedpeople:

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When I first opened my school I found the children exceeding ignorant. Not having had the advantage of any teaching at all, there were only two out of thirty that knew the first letters of the Alphabet. But they are exceedingly anxious to learn. During the short time I have been teaching them they have all learned the alphabet and many of them are reading small pieces in the Freedmen's Primer. They attend punctually and never absent themselves except in case of sickness. During the time I have been here, I have visited several families, mostly the parents of my scholars. Their moral and religious character as far as perceptible is generally good. The Colored Ladies here have organized a sewing circle. The object of which is to provide clothing for the poor. The interest in the evening school is quite as great, if not greater than that which characterized it last year. I have a class of adults some of whom, three weeks ago, did not know a letter of the alphabet, but are now spelling. As much of my time as I could well afford has been spent in the hospital at Portsmouth, writing letters for the sick and wounded. Many of these men have acquired some knowledge of reading and writing while others who have hitherto been deprived of this privilege are striving to master the minor elements of education. . . . To enrich the lives of their pupils, the teachers celebrated holidays and marked the end of the school year with elaborate exhibitions. Martha L. Hoy described a program at her school in Prince Frederick, Maryland: The rear and sides of the building were festooned with Cedar. The windows decked with Holly, and between each window hung paintings of “Grant building his Log House,” “Colored Volunteers,” “Battle of 54th Mass Regt,” and the “African Prince.” In the centre of the house hung a large “Union Flag” with a portrait of our “Martyred President Lincoln” hung on it. The word Progress was formed and covered with Cedar on the wall above the Flag. On each side were the words PERSEVERE AND ADVANCE. A stage was erected for the occasion and the number of pupils present was 75. Our exercises commenced with Prayer by the Pastor, then followed Chants, Addresses, Recitations, Dialogues, Spelling and Definitions by 1st Class &c. We had .59 selections and the performances continued two and one half hours. The children did remarkably well. At the close of the Exhibition a table was laid, extending the length of the room laden with Fowls, viands, oysters & etc., together with Fruits and other delicacies of the season. We had also a table with Lemonade and Raspberry Syrup. We continued two nights. Our efforts were crowned

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with success. The proceeds amounting to seventy dollars and six cts. which will be used for school and church purposes. The schoolmarms made the best of barely tolerable working conditions. After traveling over “one of the worst roads that were ever made,” Ellen Garrison Jackson found that her school in Port Deposit, Maryland, had “nothing convenient about it, no desks on which the scholars can write and no desk for me to keep my books in and but one seat with a back. The want of seats and desks is a serious obstacle.” Sara G. Stanley drew a bleak picture of her school in St. Louis: The school to which I had been assigned was in the basement of one of the colored churches. When I first beheld it, I recoiled with a shiver that could not be repressed. On opening the door nothing was immediately perceptible, but as the eye gradually became accustomed to the darkness I was enabled to discern a long low room, furnished with ungainly movable seats, and containing perhaps one hundred and fifty children. It was bare and dreary, the smoked and blackened walls unrelieved by a single map, tablet or blackboard. Through the dusty window the dim light struggled for admission and the chill March wind found entrance through numberless broken panes. I looked about me with a feeling akin to despair. How can I ever counteract the influence of this room, which must rest like an incubus upon the minds & hearts of the children. I am glad to be able to report that the aspect of our room has somewhat improved. I have succeeded in procuring a blackboard which I have ornamented with bits of landscape, figures of animals, diagrams of the planets, etc. By marvelous good fortune, I have obtained a number of discarded, obsolete outline maps, upon which I have sketched, with crayon, the present geographic boundaries. Having no school apparatus and no facilities whatever for teaching, I find my inventive faculties called into frequent requisition, for example, illustrated the rotation of the earth on its axis with a ball borrowed of one of my pupils, poised between thumb and forefinger and whirled from left to right. The schoolmarms were not superwomen. The stress of teaching in an unfamiliar and often hostile environment and the heavy emotional investment in their pupils brought on headaches, neurasthenia, and mental breakdowns. Yet few dropped out of the work for long. Even when recuperating at home, they were eager for reassignment. The letter below is typical:

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Rev. Geo. Whipple Philadelphia, August 12, 1865 Dear Friend: I cannot say that I am enjoying my vacation as much as might be expected for my heart and wishes are constantly straying toward my brethren and sisters in the South. It seems to me to be wrong to be away from those dear ones so long & to be wasting time that might be used in working for them. I feel that I cannot do too much or work too constantly for the elevation of my race and for the banishment of those prejudices which have so long formed a barrier to our rise and progress in the world. Hoping that my appointment to my future field may be an early one, I am truly yours, S. L. Daffin In the Deep South after the war the egalitarian principles of the freedmen’s aid societies were severely tested. When hostile whites charged them with advocating “social equality,” some prudent officials bowed to southern custom. “For a time at least we must not think of carrying out the same habits here that we did North. We had better pursue that course which would excite the least prejudice and opposition to our whole work,” the Reverend Selig Wright told Blanche V. Harris, an Oberlin graduate, when she went to Mississippi in 1866. Harris accepted segregated housing in silence until protests from the black community reached George Whipple’s attention. Ms. Litts, mentioned in Harris’s letter, was the Reverend Palmer Litts, “father” of the AMA teachers in Natchez. Rev. George Whipple Natchez, Mississippi, March 10, 1866 Esteemed Friend: You wish me to give you facts. We were placed to board with a very nice colored lady; this we preferred, as we knew our influence would be greater, if we were to board with our own people. We remained at this place one month. Mr. Wright called on me one day and stated, that my board was too expensive, more than the society were willing to pay. That arrangements were being made for me to come to the Mission house, that I would be obliged to room with two of the domestics. And that I must not expect to eat at the first table. And might come in the sitting room sometimes. My room was to be my home.

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I consulted with some of the old citizens (colored) they did not think it would be right. I then rented a room, one quite small, open, poorly ventilated but the best I could do, and commenced teaching, hoping they would pay my rent and board. After the holiday I rented two rooms larger, but not large enough, but we are doing as well as could be expected. Mr. Litts and Mr. Wright seemed determined to have us go in the country or any place but Natchez. And the colored people seemed equally determined to have us remain. Mr. Litts has lost the confidence of the greater, and richer portion of the colored people here, by giving them to understand when he was building the new school house that the colored teachers were not to go in there. The colored people were anxious that the colored teachers should have one of the churches to teach in. Mr. Wright remarked although he had brought us down we could not compare with the white ladies. One of the Ministers Baptist, wished to know if we had lost our knowledge coming down here. Sometimes we get discouraged and think we had better resign, then we know that we must suffer many things. We wish to do right. Money is not the object nor change of place, but we know and feel that there is plenty of work to be done and feel willing to sacrifice much to see our race elevated. Respectfully, Blanche V. Harris Litts defended himself to Whipple by saying that the Harrises had been placed “in respectable colored families,” because his mission house was too small to accommodate everyone. Wright added, “I never proposed to those teachers to live with our servants. I said ‘We abhor the idea of treating you in that way but if we take [you] into the house with us and should not put you to eat at the second table we should be liable to be 'mobbed.’ ” Blanche Harris reluctantly returned to Natchez for a second year and then went to North Carolina to teach under the auspices of the Society of Friends. Married twice and the mother of a daughter who also graduated from Oberlin, she taught for more than a half-century in Tennessee, Ohio, and North Carolina. Ostracized by the white society around them, members of the mission “family” depended on one another and a small group of transplanted northerners for companionship. . . . Three remarkable women (i.e., Charlotte Forten, E. V. Brown, and Edmonia Highgate), perhaps the most talented of the schoolmarms, have

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left letters that shed further light on their crusade and on their own personalities. Charlotte Forten, the darling of the abolitionists, was the first of these to go South. Her employment secured by friends of the family, she arrived in South Carolina in October 1862, under the auspices of the Philadelphia Port Royal Relief Association (later the Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief Association). In a letter to William Lloyd Garrison, she gave her first impressions of Sea Island life: St. Helena’s Island, South Carolina November 20, 1862 My Dear Friend: St. Helena’s Island, on which I am is about six miles from the mainland of Beaufort. I must tell you that we were rowed hither from Beaufort by a crew of negro boatmen, and that they sang for us several of their own beautiful songs. There is a peculiar wildness and solemnity about them which cannot be described, and the people accompany the singing with a singular swaying motion of the body which seems to make it more effective. As far as I have been able to observe, the negroes have rejoice in their new-found freedom. It does me good to see how jubilant they are over the downfall of their “secesh” masters. I do not believe that there is a man, woman, or even a child that would submit to be made a slave again. They are a truly religious people. They speak to God with a loving familiarity. Another trait that I have noticed is their natural courtesy of manner. There is nothing cringing about it, but it seems inborn, and one might almost say elegant. It marks their behavior towards each other as well as to the white people. My school is about a mile from here, in the little Baptist church, which is in a grove of white oaks. These trees are beautiful— evergreen—and every branch heavily draped with long, bearded moss, which gives them a strange, mournful look. There are two ladies in the school besides myself—Miss T[owne] and Miss M[urray] **** both of whom are most enthusiastic teachers. At present, our school is small—many of the children being ill with whooping cough—but in general it averages eighty or ninety. It is a great happiness to teach them. I wish some of those persons at the North who say the race is hopelessly and naturally inferior, could see the readiness with which these children, so long oppressed and deprived of every privilege, learn and understand.

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I have some grown pupils—people on our own plantation—who take lessons in the evenings. It will amuse you to know that one of them,—our man-of-all-work—is named Cupid. (Venuses and Cupids are very common here.) He told me he was “feared” he was almost too old to learn, but I assured him that that was not the case, and now he is working diligently at the alphabet. One of my people—Harry—is a scholar to be proud of. He makes most wonderful improvement. I never saw anyone so determined to learn. I wish someone would write a little Christmas hymn for our children to sing. I want to have a kind of festival for them on Christmas, if we can. The children have just learned the John Brown song and next week they are going to learn the song of the “Negro Boatmen.” The little creatures love to sing. They sing with the greatest enthusiasm. I wish you could hear them. C. F.

——————————————*The American Missionary Association, which supported more than five thousand teachers in the South between 1861 and 1876, was the largest of the freedmen’s aid societies. Others included the Friends Associations of Philadelphia and New York, the Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief Association, New England Freedmen’s Aid Society, National Freedman’s Relief Association, Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the American Freedman’s Union Commission. ** Officials with whom the schoolmarms corresponded included the Reverends George Whipple, M. E. Strieby, and Simeon S. Jocelyn, secretaries; the Reverend E. P. Smith, general field agent; the Reverend Samuel Hunt, superintendent for education; and William E. Whiting, assistant treasurer. *** Black and white women received the same pay, but men were paid more. A male teacher's starting salary was $25 a month; superintendents and ministers might receive $1,000 a year. Although salaries rose after the war, the male-female differential remained. In November 1865 an AMA superintendent in South Carolina wrote of three of his black teachers: "Miss Weston and Miss Rollin are much above the average and deserve I think $30.00 and Mr. Weston, being a Male, will get, I suppose $60.00 at least." **** Laura Towne (1825-1901) left Philadelphia for St. Helena in April 1862. Founder of the Penn School, she served the black community of the Sea Islands as teacher, physician, and friend for almost forty years. Ellen Murray, a New Englander, worked alongside her. The Penn School still exists on St. Helena as a community center.

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Additional Readings: Jacoway, Elizabeth. Yankee Missionaries in the South, The Penn School Experiment. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. Lawson, Ellen and Marlene Merrill. “On the Cutting Edge: Antebellum Educated Black Women Missionaries and Teachers,” n.p. 1980. McPherson, James. M. “Detour or Mainstream? The Curriculum of Missionary Schools.” The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1975. Wisenfeld, Judith. “Who is Sufficient for These Things?” Sara G. Stanley and the American Missionary Association, 1864-1868.” American Theological Library Association, 1991.

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Boyhood Days from Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington Intimated by Booker T. Washington in his autobiography is the fact that Slavery in America ends the year he is born. Review Washington’s recall of how he acquires literacy. Examine the barriers to his attainment of an education. Are there other barriers experienced by African Americans in general seeking an education at the end of Slavery? Compare and contrast the positions of Heather Williams and Booker T. Washington on “social-economic” barriers to Black literacy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Compare and contrast the opportunities experienced by Douglass, Washington, and Josephine Brown to obtain literacy. Do the experiences of the three suggest that there remains a shared "consciousness" and a continuity of expected outcomes regarding "Black literacy" in the African American community over several centuries? Or, is there an inference of a "shift of shared consciousness" regarding "Black literacy" in the Black community over several centuries? How do Matilda in her letter to the editor of the Freedom’s Journal (see elsewhere in the text) and Booker T. Washington in his autobiography introduce “gender identity" into national conversations about access to and attainment of education by African Americans? What conclusions about "gender identity" do both Matilda and Booker T. Washington want audiences to consider? After the coming of freedom there were two points upon which practically all the people on our place were agreed, and I find that this was generally true throughout the South: that they must change their names, and that they must leave the old plantation for at least a few days or weeks in order that they might really feel sure that they were free…. As I have stated, most of the coloured people left the old plantation for a short while at least, so as to be sure, it seemed, that they could leave and try their freedom on to see how it felt. After they had remained away for a time, many of the older slaves, especially returned to their old homes and made some kind of contract with their former owners for which they remained on the estate. My mother’s husband, who was the stepfather of my brother John and myself, did not belong to the same owners as did my mother. In fact, he seldom came to our plantation. I remember seeing him here perhaps once a

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year, that being about Christmas time. In some way, during the way, by running away and following the Federal soldiers, it seems, he found his way into the new state of West Virginia. As soon as freedom was declared, he sent for my mother to come to the Kanawha Valley, in West Virginia. At that time a journey from Virginia over the mountains to West Virginia was rather a tedious and in some cases a painful undertaking. What little clothing and few household goods we had were placed in a cart, but the children walked the greater portion of the distance, which was several hundred miles. Finally we reached our destination—a little town called Malden, which is about five miles from Charleston, the present capital of the state. At that time salt-mining was the greatest industry in that part of West Virginia, and the little town of Malden was right in the middle of the saltfurnaces. My stepfather had already secured a job at a salt-furnace, and he had also secured a little cabin for us to live in…. All who lived in the little town were in one way or another connected with the salt business. Though I was a mere child, my stepfather put me and my brother at work in one of the furnaces. Often I began work as early as four o’clock in the morning. The first thing I ever learned in the way of book knowledge was while working in this salt-furnace. Each salt-packer had his barrels marked with a certain number. The number allotted to my stepfather was “18.” At the close of the day’s work the boss of the packers would come around and put “18” on each of our barrels, and I soon learned to recognize that figure wherever I saw it, and after a while got to the point where I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any other figures or letters. From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read. I determined, when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers. Soon after we got settled in some manner in our new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book for me. How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she procured an old copy of Webster’s “blue-back” spelling-book, which contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as “ab,” “ba,” “ca,” “da.” I began at once to devour this book, and I think that it was the first one I ever had in my hands. I had learned from somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it—all of course without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me. At that time there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could read, and I was too timid to approach any of the white people. In some way, within a few weeks, I mastered the greater

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portion of the alphabet. In all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my ambition, and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she could. Though she was totally ignorant, so far as mere book knowledge was concerned, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of good, hard, common sense which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother. In the midst of my struggles and longing for an education, a young coloured boy who had learned to read in the state of Ohio came to Malden. As soon as the coloured people found out that he could read, a newspaper was secured, and at the close of nearly every day’s work this young man would be surrounded by a group of men and women who were anxious to hear him read the news contained in the papers. How I used to envy this man! He seemed to me to be the one young man in all the world who ought to be satisfied with his attainments. About this time the question of having some kind of a school opened for the coloured children in the village began to be discussed by members of the race. As it would be the first school for Negro children that had ever been opened in that part of Virginia, it was, of course, to be a great event, and the discussion excited the widest interest. The most perplexing question was where to find a teacher. The young man from Ohio who had learned to read the papers was considered, but his age was against him. In the midst of the discussion about a teacher, another young coloured man from Ohio, who had been a soldier, in some way found his way into town. It was soon learned that he possessed considerable education, and he was engaged by the coloured people to teach their first school. As yet no free schools had been started for coloured people in that section, hence each family agreed to pay a certain amount per month, with the understanding that the teacher was to “board ’round”—that is, spend a day with each family. This was not bad for the teacher, for each family tried to provide the very best on the day the teacher was to be its guest. I recall that I looked forward with an anxious appetite to the “teacher’s day” at our little cabin. This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever occurred in connection with the development of any race. Few people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education. As I have stated, it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn. As fast as any kind of teachers could be secured, not only were day-schools filled, but night-schools as

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well. The great ambition of the older people was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view, men and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old would often be found in the night-school. Sunday-schools were formed soon after freedom, but the principal book studied in the Sunday-school was the spelling-book. Day-school, nightschool, Sunday-school, were always crowded, and often many had to be turned away for want of room. The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley, however brought to me one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced. I had been working in a salt-furnace for several months, and my stepfather had discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work. This decision seemed to cloud my very ambition. The disappointment was made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was where I could see the happy children passing to and from school, mornings and afternoons. Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn something, anyway. I applied myself with greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the “blue-back” speller. My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to learn. After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day’s work was done. These night lessons were so welcomed that I think I learned more at night than the other children did during the day. My own experiences in the night-school gave me faith in the night-school idea, with which, in after years, I had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee. But my boyish heart was still set upon going to the day school, and I let no opportunity slip to push my case. Finally I won, and was permitted to go to the school in the day for a few months, with the understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine o’clock, and return immediately after school closed in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work. The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to work till nine o’clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself in a difficulty. School would always be begun before I reached it, and sometimes my class had recited. To get around this difficulty I yielded to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn me; but since it is a fact, I might as well state it. I have great faith in the power and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything is permanently gained by holding back a fact. There was a large clock in a little office in the furnace. This clock, of course, all the hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending the day’s work. I got the idea

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that the way for me to reach school on time was to move the clock hands from half-past eight up to the nine o’clock mark. This I found myself doing morning after morning, till the furnace “boss” discovered that something was wrong, and locked the clock in a case. I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to reach the schoolhouse in time. When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also found myself confronted with two other difficulties. In the first place, I found that all of the other children wore hats or caps on their heads, and I had neither hat nor cap. In fact, I do not remember that up to the time of going to school I had never worn any kind of covering upon my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else had even thought anything about the need of covering for my head. But, of course, when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to feel quite uncomfortable. As usual, I put the case before my mother, and she explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a “store hat,” which was a rather new institution at that time among the members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty. She accordingly got two pieces of “homespun” (jeans) and sewed them together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap. The lesson that my mother taught me in this has always remained with me, and I have tried as best I could to teach it to others. I have always felt proud, whenever I think of the incident, that my mother had strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not—of trying to impress my schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a “store hat” when she was not. I have always felt proud that she refused to go into debt for that which she did not have the money to pay for. Since that time I have owned many kinds of caps and hats, but never one of which I have felt so proud as of the cap made of the two pieces of cloth sewed together by my mother. I have noted the fact, but without satisfaction, I need not add, that several of the boys who began their careers with “store hats” and who were my schoolmates and used to join in the sport that was made of me because I had only a “homespun” cap, have ended their careers in the penitentiary, while others are not able now to buy any kind of hat. My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather a name. From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply “Booker.” Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it was needful or appropriate to have an additional name. When I heard the school-roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance of

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having three. I was in deep perplexity, because I knew that the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only one. By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him “Booker Washington,” as if I had been called by that name all my life; and by that name I have since been known. Later in life I found that my mother had given me the name of “Booker Taliaferro” soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear, and for a long while was forgotten, but as soon as I found out about it I revived it, and made my full name “Booker Taliaferro Washington.” I think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have….. The world should not pass judgment upon the Negro, and especially the Negro youth, too quickly or too harshly. The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is. When a white boy undertakes a task, it is taken for granted that he will succeed. On the other hand, people are usually surprised if the Negro boy does not fail. In a word, the Negro youth starts out with the presumption against him. The influence of ancestry, however, is important in helping forward any individual or race, if too much reliance is not placed upon it. Those who constantly direct attention to the Negro youth’s moral weaknesses, and compare his advancement with that of white youths, do not consider the influence of the memories which cling about the old family homesteads. I have no idea, as I have stated elsewhere, who my grandmother was. I have, or have had, uncles and aunts and cousins, but I have no knowledge as to where most of them are. My case will illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part of our country. The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations. The fact that the individual has behind and surrounding him proud family history and connection serves as a stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success. The time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was short, and my attendance was irregular. It was not long before I had to stop attending day-school altogether, and devote all of my time again to work. I resorted to the night-school again. In fact, the greater part of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered through the night-school after my day’s work was done. I had difficulty often in securing a satisfactory

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teacher. Sometimes, after I had secured someone to teach me at night, I would find, much to my disappointment, that the teacher knew but little more than I did. Often I would have to walk several miles at night in order to recite my night-school lessons. There was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me, and that was a determination to secure an education at any cost. Soon after we moved to West Virginia, my mother adopted into our family, notwithstanding our poverty, an orphan boy, to whom afterward we gave the name of James B. Washington. He has ever since remained a member of the family. After I had worked in the salt-furnace for some time, work was secured for me in a coal-mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of securing fuel for the salt-furnace. Work in the coal-mine I always dreaded. One reason for this was that anyone who worked in a coal-mine was always unclean, at least while at work, and it was a very hard job to get one’s skin clean after the day’s work was over. Then it was fully a mile from the opening of the coal-mine to the fact of the coal, and all, of course, was in the blackest darkness. I do not believe that one ever experiences anywhere else such darkness as he does in a coal-mine. The mine was divided into a large number of different “rooms” or departments, and, as I never was able to learn the location of all these “rooms,” I many times found myself lost in the mine. To add to the horror of being lost, sometimes my light would go out, and then, if I did not happen to have a match, I would wander about in the darkness until by chance I found someone to give me a light. The work was not only hard, but it was dangerous. There was always the danger of being blown to pieces by a premature explosion of powder, or of being crushed by falling slate. Accidents from one or the other of these causes were frequently occurring, and this kept me in constant fear. Many children of the tenderest years were compelled then, as is now true I fear, in most coal-mining districts, to spend a large part of their lives in these coal-mines, with little opportunity to get an education; and what is worse, I have often noted that, as a rule, young boys who began life in a coal-mine are often physically and mentally dwarfed. They soon lose ambition to do anything else than to continue as a coal-miner. In those days, and later as a young man, I used to try to picture in my imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities. I used to envy the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a Congressman, Governor, Bishop, or President by reason of the accident of

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his birth or race. Used to picture the way that I would act under such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising until I reached the highest round of success. In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed (editors’ emphasis). Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reach the conclusion that often the Negro boy’s birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his task even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race. From any point of view, I had rather be what I am, a member of the Negro race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of any other race. I have always been made sad when I have heard members of any race claiming rights and privileges, or certain badges of distinctions, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or attainments. I have been made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth, and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race will not finally hold an individual back if he possesses intrinsic, individual merit. Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is in the long run, recognized and rewarded (editors’ emphasis). This I have said here, not to call attention to myself as an individual, but to the race to which I am proud to belong. Additional Readings: Donald Spivey. Schooling for the New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1866-1915. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. McPherson, James. “White Liberals and Black Power in Negro Education, 1865-1915.” American Historical Review 75 (June 1970): 1357-1386. Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915:Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963.

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Washington, Booker T. Character Building: Being Addresses Delivered on Sunday Evenings to the Students of Tuskegee Institute. New York: Doubleday, 1902.

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Black Colleges From American Higher Education, A History Christopher J. Lucas Black Colleges emerge in the African American communities largely before public high schools for African Americans are constructed by the states. The first institutions of higher learning are established in the North. Why do the first Black colleges come into existence mainly in the North? Identify the “first” Black institutions of higher education. Examine how Lucas, who is not African American, enters discussions with Heather Williams about African American literacy within the context of the Age of Enlightenment. Compare and contrast their positions and their conclusions. Examine how Lucas enters discussions with Dorothy Sterlings about the significant role of the Freedmen’s Bureau in providing education for African Americans. What are their conclusions? Identify any other significant facts about access to and attainment of education by African Americans as found in Lucas’ history of Black Colleges and the African American experience. Women’s struggle for access to higher education roughly coincided in time with the first stirrings of a movement to expand educational opportunity among blacks. It is recorded that a certain Edward Jones and John Russwurm were the first two African Americans to earn bachelor’s degrees from white institutions, each having graduated within weeks of one another from Amherst and Bowdoin, respectively in 1826. People of color attending college were nevertheless a rarity in the antebellum period, as indicated by the fact that no more than twenty-seven others were listed in the roster of all black graduates prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. The first black colleges to come into existence were founded in the North. An Institute for Colored Youth was first created by Quakers in Philadelphia in 1842, ancestor to the institution later called Cheyney State College. Avery College in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania chartered in 1849, was also among the first; followed by the Miner Academy, begun in Washington, D.C., in 1851; and then by Lincoln University (originally the Ashmun Institute), founded by Presbyterians in Pennsylvania in 1854. Wilberforce was established a year or so later by Ohio Methodists who in 1862 transferred the institution’s control over to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Later on, joining the ranks of northern black colleges was Central State University in Ohio, chartered in 1887 as the “Combined

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Normal and Industrial Department” of Wilberforce. It subsequently seceded in effect from its parent institution and became a four-year school in its own right. Of all the northern black colleges established in the nineteenth century, only four—Lincoln, Wilberforce, Cheyney, and Central State—survived into the twentieth century. In the South, in the years following General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, popular opposition to the notion that blacks should be educated at all, much less be afforded an opportunity to attend college, died hard. Prevailing opinion held that blacks were inherently inferior to whites, that the obvious differences favoring whites over blacks were innate and unalterable, and hence no good purpose was served by attempting to pretend otherwise. Perhaps not untypical in its expression of such widely held views was a diatribe launched by a Virginian by the name of Bebbet Puryear who, writing in The Southern Planter and Farmer under the pseudonym “Civis” in 1877, denounced proposals for any public support of black education whatsoever. Assailing what he characterized as the “hideous doctrine of negro equality,” the author explained, “I oppose [education for blacks] because its policy is cruelty in the extreme to the negro himself. It instills in his mind that he is competent to share in the higher walks of life, prompts him to despise those menial pursuits to which his race has been doomed, and invites him to enter into competition with the white man for those tempting prizes that can be won only by a quicker and profounder sagacity, by a greater energy and self-denial, and a higher order of administrative talent than the negro has ever developed.” So far as many unreconstructed southerners were concerned, the prospect that childlike, indolent former slaves reared to be dependent and subservient could be educated as the social equals of whites was not simply wrongheaded and foredoomed to failure—it was ludicrous. Intransigent opposition gradually abated in the postbellum period, thanks in part to pressure from civil-rights reformers, though strong reservations (in the North no less than in the South) still remained as to the character and extent of the education most appropriate for blacks. In time, even as barriers of caste were raised and southern white rule was restored, the idea that blacks might be educated, even at nominal public expense, began to receive grudging acquiescence. Southerners on the whole were willing to accede to demands that educational opportunity be extended to blacks, but only so long as it was not viewed as posing a frontal challenge to white supremacy or otherwise encouraging the black to abandon his preordained “place” in the social order. Throughout the debate, it might be observed, white champions of the rights of African Americans, northern and southern alike, often betrayed a

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certain paternal condescension in their pronouncements about what blacks wanted or needed, but no one could deny them their sincerity or highmindedness of purpose. Under Reconstruction and for several decades thereafter, black higher education in the South developed chiefly as the product of work undertaken by northern white benevolent societies, denominational missionary bodies, and private black charitable organizations. Later, corporate philanthropic foundations and wealthy individuals lent support to the establishment and spread of black private colleges. The federal government gave scant aid until late in the century; and support from southern state governments for black normal schools and colleges was similarly limited. The Freedman’s Bureau (1862-1872), acting on behalf of the War Department, was the first to take up the work of founding black schools. To its efforts were added those of civic and religious groups who cooperated with the Bureau and then developed special ventures of their own. Among the earliest was the Boston Educational Commission, later known as the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society. In the same year of its founding, 1862, the National Freedmen’s Relief Commission of Philadelphia and New York was organized. The two groups subsequently formed the United States Commission for Relief of National Freedmen, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. Three years later that consolidated body was replaced by the American Freedman’s Aid Union, which, after two more name changes, ceased operations in 1869. Other agencies engaged in setting up schools included the African Civilization Society and the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of Negroes (a similar organization was established in Delaware). Church bodies especially active in creating and supporting educational institutions for blacks included the American Missionary Association, the American Baptist Home Mission Society, the Friends Association for Aid to Freedmen, the Board of Freedmen’s Missions of the United Presbyterian Church, and the Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Many former abolitionists assumed leadership roles in the various civic and religious organizations at work establishing schools and colleges, including Henry Ward Beecher, Salmon P. Chase, and Richard S. Rust. Some were prominent business or civic leaders, such as Mathias W. Baldwin, locomotive industrialist; Edward Atkinson, textile manufacturer; and William Claflin, former Governor of Massachusetts. Philanthropic agencies financing black schools through special trusts included the Peabody and Slater Funds, the Jeanes Fund, the Carnegie Fund, and the Rosenwald Fund.

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Supporters of black schools and colleges shared in common an ardent faith in the power of newly emancipated blacks to move into the mainstream of American society if they were afforded opportunities to do so. Black Americans, they argued, should be free to do and become what they chose, limited only by the strength of their own endeavors. They were perfectly capable of transcending the evil legacy of the past, symbolized by the “peculiar” institution of slavery, and in time, with proper tutelage, it was believed as a matter of deep conviction that they would overcome all remaining barriers to full equality posed by postbellum discrimination and bias. Needed now were colleges where a new generation might be nurtured and inspired to uplift the black masses to their rightful place in the world. As the Freedmen’s Aid Society was to express it somewhat later, looking back on its efforts, “This Society . . . has demonstrated to the South that the freedmen possess good intellectual abilities and are capable of becoming good scholars. Recognizing the brotherhood of mankind and knowing that intellect does not depend upon the color of the skin nor the curl of the hair, we [have] never doubted the Negro’s ability to acquire knowledge and distinguish himself by scholarly attainments.” In Alabama, the American Missionary Society sponsored and supported the establishment of what became Talladega College in 1867; Fisk (1866) in Nashville; Tougaloo (1869) in Mississippi; and Straight (later Dillard University). In 1872 a school in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, originally known as the “Branch Normal,” became by a legislative act of 1872 the Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College. In Augusta, Georgia, the Augusta Institute was organized in 1867; it later became Morehouse College in Atlanta. The American Baptist Home Mission Society aided in the founding in 1865 of Virginia Union University, Shaw University in North Carolina (1865), Benedict College (1871), and likewise helped found Bishop and Morehouse. In Mississippi the state legislature created Alcorn College in 1871. The Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church was instrumental in the founding of Shaw University in 1867; Bennett College, Clark University, Claflin College, Meharry Medical College, Morgan College, Philander Smith, Rust, and Wiley; while the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen set up BarberScotia College in North Carolina, and at Charlotte in 1867, Biddle University (later Johnson C. Smith). In Maryland, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church established the school later named Morgan State College. Meanwhile, the Congregationalist American Missionary Association, in cooperation with the Freedman’s Bureau, played an important role in 1868 in the creation of Howard University and the Hampton Institute.

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Independent boards of northern missionaries cooperated in the continued support of these two institutions, as well as lending aid to Leland University and Atlanta University. The African Methodist Episcopal Church maintained Allen University, Morris Brown College, and Wilberforce. Other African Methodist Episcopal institutions included Paul Quinn College, Edward Waters, Kittrell, and Shorter College. Still other black schools receiving northern missionary aid came to include Livingstone College, Lane, Paine, Miles Memorial, Arkansas Baptist, Selma University, and the Virginia College and Seminary. All told, possibly as many as two-hundred private and denominational colleges for African Americans were begun throughout the seventies and eighties (1). Unhappily, the overwhelming majority were actually little more than secondary schools, offering virtually nothing in the way of defensible college-level instruction. Most died out almost immediately for lack of endowments and support. Several, however, gradually developed normal departments for teachers, and some added full-fledged collegiate programs later on. It has been estimated that less than half of the forty or so private black colleges and seventeen public institutions founded in the immediate postwar era were still in existence by the year 1900. The original intent of most of the founders of black colleges was to provide for their clientele an education indistinguishable from that commonly pursued by whites. In the 1860s and 1870s, that presumption meant liberal learning: Latin, Greek, and mathematics, supplemented by science, philosophy, history, astronomy, English composition and literature, and other curricular staples of the New England liberal-arts college. Black leaders concurred that tomorrow’s African American clergymen, lawyers, physicians, statesmen and businessmen, no less than their white peers, needed to acquire learning in the academic traditions of the past; and they stoutly resisted suggestions that rudimentary industrial and agricultural training was a more realistic alternative. If black leaders were to be sent forth to regenerate their own people, it was avowed they required the best and “highest” education possible. White supremacists poked fun at black pretensions and lost no opportunity to invoke images of black sharecroppers dragging pianos into their shacks, of field hands discoursing in Latin, and house servants competing for jobs with unemployed black college graduates. But as President James G. Merrill of Fisk retorted in 1901, when the day arrived that white students who aspired to become teachers, professors, ministers, and doctors “should learn to hoe and plow and lay bricks rather than go to literary and classical schools,” then, he observed, “it will be the right policy to shut off all our literary and classical schools for negroes in the South.”

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Underlying reformers’ bold rhetoric lay a harsher reality. However vociferously white missionaries and even black leaders themselves defended the wisdom of providing classical learning for a talented black elite, circumstances forced them to admit their efforts were falling woefully short. Lacking a supportive infrastructure of public elementary and secondary schools for blacks throughout the South, African American collegiate enrollments remained minuscule (editors’ emphasis). In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, candor would have compelled even the most vigorous supporters of black higher education to acknowledge how few black institutions, chronically underfunded and impoverished, were true “colleges’ in anything but name and aspiration. Most—the overwhelming majority in fact—offered little above secondary-level training, and some were at best engaged in teaching the rudiments of literacy at the elementary level. Only Howard University and Fisk, it was later noted, offered anything remotely approaching the collegiate-level liberal –arts training most black institutions promised but could not deliver. Tuskegee trustee William H. Baldwin, Jr., in 1899 gave voice to the disappointment surrounding missionary colleges. “We began at the wrong end,” he alleged. “Instead of educating the negro in the lines which were open to him, he was educated out of his natural environment and the opportunities which lay immediately about him” Meanwhile, throughout the 1880s, the tendency among industrial philanthropists was to emphasize practical job training over classical learning for blacks. Attracted to an industrial and agricultural orientation or focus, trustees for the Peabody and Slater Funds, for example, were more inclined to lend support to the likes of Hampton Institute and Tuskegee, where utilitarian training was favored, than to liberal-arts colleges. Former Civil War general Samuel C. Armstrong, who headed the Hampton Institute, was persuaded that black youths should “go out and teach and lead their people, first by example, by getting land and homes; to give them not a dollar they could earn for themselves; to teach respect for labor; to replace stupid drudgery with skilled hands; and to these ends to build up an industrial system, for the sake not only of self support and intelligent labor, but also for the sake of character.” Black educator Booker T. Washington, who founded Tuskegee in 1881, essentially agreed with Armstrong. Keenly aware of white efforts to keep blacks politically inarticulate and as disenfranchised as they had been in the antebellum period but equally cognizant of black aspirations to achieve full and complete social equality, Washington offered trade training as a compromise.

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In a memorable speech delivered at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895, Washington professed to sanction racial sub-ordinational Exposition in 1895, Washington professed to sanction racial subordination, terming questions of social equality “extremist folly.” If blacks were ever to overcome problems of poverty and ignorance, he concluded, they must begin by supporting utilitarian education for business trades. His advice to black youths everywhere was to educate themselves through “the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift, and economy, [and] by way of the industrial school and college.” Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” mollified critics’ fears over black higher education of more traditional type. But it positively enraged others who opposed Washington’s stand as a craven retreat from the principle of education for blacks as equals and as free men in a democracy. Insisting that blacks were entitled to the same rights and privileges as white Americans, New England black educator W. E. B. Du Bois of Atlanta University, for one, denounced Washington’s stand as an appeasement to racial prejudice and established doctrines of social inequality. Between 1870 and 1890 nine federal land-grant colleges were established in the South; that total was to increase to sixteen by 1915. Mississippi was the first southern state to allocate federal land-grant monies to a black institution. Virginia became the second the year following. Passage of the second Morrill Act in 1890 gave renewed impetus to the founding of black land-grant colleges. In its original form the legislation had been designed to prevent the expenditure of land-grant funds in any state where “a distinction of race or color” was made. In its final form, the second Morrill Act served as a compromise to a bill that would have required that blacks be admitted to colleges supported under the original 1862 appropriation. The second Act, in its practical effect, offered an alternative to the much-dreaded prospect of racial integration in higher education. It now stipulated only that in those states where separate colleges were maintained, programs were to be of “like character” and funds distributed on a “just and equitable” basis. Thus, monies were now made available on condition that separate land-grant colleges for blacks be established and that funds be divided proportionately among these new institutions and those already established, which, with the exception of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical in Mississippi, were restricted to whites. Several states moved quickly to designate existing black schools as recipients of land-grants funds. They included Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. New black schools were also created: Georgia Industrial College, the

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Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, and West Virginia State College among them. By 1900 state-supported black colleges had been founded in all of the southern and border states. Unfortunately, a federal governmental survey at the turn of the century revealed that most black colleges funded with land-grant monies were devoted primarily to general academic purposes and to teacher preparation. Most did not take agricultural and mechanic arts as the “leading object” required under the Morrill Act of 1862. It was further reported that black colleges not infrequently were offering instruction on a “grade as low as the 4th or 5th of the public schools.” In 1896 the U. S. Supreme Court handed down its historic decision in Plessy v. Ferguson affirming the constitutionality of the principle of “separate but equal.” For blacks, separation, not equality, was the reality so far as institutions of higher learning were concerned. With race relations having hardened significantly throughout the disenfranchisement campaigns of the 1890s in the South, no prospects for black entry into southern white colleges existed. By the same token, black institutions could expect to receive no more than the legally minimal level of support required under law for black colleges. Reflecting on the situation as he saw it shortly after the turn of the century, W. E. B. Du Bois termed it “a day of cowardice and vacillation; of double-faced dallying with Truth and Right.” The need to train leaders for a struggling people, he felt, was as great as ever, but that need was still unmet. His summation, writing in The Negro Problem (1903), assumed the shape of a challenge: “Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down.” In the opening decade of the twentieth century, however, and for many decades thereafter, there were few signs that America’s leadership was prepared to heed the message or to respond to Du Bois’s challenge. Additional readings: Henderson, Janet and John Hart. “The Development and Spacial Patterns of Black Colleges. Southeastern Geography. 11.9 November 1971):1357-1386. Holmes, Dwight O. W. Evolution of the Negro College. New York: Teachers College: Columbia University, 1934. Sekora, John. “The Emergence of Negro Higher Education in America: A Review.” Race 10 (July 1968): 79-87

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Wilson, Ruth D. “Negro Colleges of Liberal Arts.” American Scholar 19 (Autumn 1950): 462-463.

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Chapter VIII: I Go South from The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois W. E. B. Du Bois In his narrative, Du Bois suggests that at the end of the 19th century, African Americans are no longer having to “steal an education” in “secret places.” Please explain. By the end of the 19th century in the North and in the South, many African Americans are completing secondary education, and some are “going to college.” Please explain. By the end of the 19th century, some African Americans are also beginning to express a preference for the education of African Americans in the North. Revisit Washington, Lucas and Du Bois and determine if such an objection to the education of Blacks in the South is the beginning of a shift in group consciousness or education ethos? Despite community objection, Du Bois decides to attend college in the South. Examine and discuss DuBois’ final statement on his decision to attend Fisk University which is in Nashville, Tennessee: “I came to a region where the world was split into white and black halves and where the darker half was held back by race prejudice and legal bonds”? In the Summer of 1884, after my graduation from high school, there loomed the problem as to where I was to go to college. The fact that I was going had been settled in my own mind from the time that my school principal, Frank Hosmer, had recommended my high school course. Hosmer was a graduate of Amherst and later in life he became president of Oahu College, Hawaii. He suggested, quite as a matter of course, that I ought to take the college preparatory course which involved algebra, geometry, Latin and Greek. If Hosmer had been another sort of man, with definite ideas as to a Negro’s “place,” and had recommended agriculture or domestic economy, I would doubtless have followed his advice, had such “courses” been available. I did not then realize that Hosmer was quietly opening college doors to me, for in those days they were barred with ancient tongues. This meant a considerable expenditure for books which were not free in those days, and were more costly than my own folks could afford; but Mrs. Russell, the wife of one of the mill owners, or rather I ought to describe her as the mother of one of my playmates, after some hesitation offered to furnish all the necessary books. I accepted the offer as something normal and right; only after many years did I realize how critical this gift was for my career. I am not yet sure how she came to do it;

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perhaps my wise principal suggested it. Comparatively few of my white classmates planned or cared to plan for college—perhaps two or three in my class of 13. I became therefore a high school student preparing for college and thus occupied an unusual position among whites in the town. I collected catalogues of colleges and over the claims of Williams and Amherst, nearest my home, or of Yale not much further, I blithely picked Harvard, because it was oldest and largest and most widely known. But a question arose in my case, a young and ambitious colored man. What were the possibilities of employment or of any career after such training? I imagine this matter was discussed considerably among my friends, white and black. However, in my mind there was no doubt but that I was going to college. The whole matter was subtly taken out of my hands and a sort of guardianship of family and white friends was quietly established. I was advised that after all I was rather young to go directly to college; and also our high school was below the standard of Harvard entrance requirements. It might then be wise for me to work and study a year and then enter college in the Fall of ’85. There followed an unexpected change when in the Fall of 1884 my mother died. I felt a certain gladness to see her at peace at last, for she had worried all her life. Of my own loss I had then little realization. That came only in after years. Now it was the choking gladness and solemn feel of wings! At last, I was going beyond the hills and into the world that beckoned steadily. There followed the half-guilty feeling that now I could begin life without forsaking my mother. I had realized all along that even college would not have induced me to leave my mother in want. I somehow argued that the family would support mother in my absence, yet I must have known this was impossible; that what she would always need was for me to be near. Now I was free and unencumbered and at the same time more alone than I had ever dreamed of being. This very grief was a challenge. Now especially I must succeed as my mother so desperately wanted me to. I was, however, an orphan, without a cent of property, and with no relative who could for a moment think of undertaking the burden of my further education. My grandfather was growing old, and had little. But the family at home could and did help out; and the town in its quiet and unemotional way was satisfied with my record and silently began to plan. There were three white men in Great Barrington who seemed to have clear ideas as to my future. The first was the high school principal, whom I have mentioned. The second was Edward Van Lennep, principal of the only local private school, and very active in the Congregational church,

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where he was superintendent of the Sunday School, which I attended. Whether or not be consulted with Mr. Hosmer, I do not know, but he probably did. At any rate he was satisfied that I ought to go to college and that the fact that my skin was colored was of no importance. When, then, a suggestion was made which involved the raising of a scholarship for me, Mr. Lennep and his pastor, Mr. Scudder, were eager to cooperate. The third man was the Rev. C. C. Painter, whose son Charles was a schoolmate of mine during the high school course. Mr. Painter was a Congregational minister and for a time served in the Federal Indian Bureau. There and elsewhere he saw the problem of the reconstructed South, and conceived the idea that this was the place for me to be educated and that in the South lay my future field of work. Meantime my family contributed an unexpected piece of good fortune. There had been a great-uncle of mine, Tom Burghardt, son of Jack, whose tombstone I had often seen in the town graveyard. My family used to say in undertones that the unpaid wage of Tom Burghardt helped to build the Pacific Railroad. Nearly all his life Tom Burghardt had been a servant in the Kellog family, only the family usually forgot to pay him any wage. Finally when he died they did give him a handsome burial and a white tombstone. Then Mark Hopkins, a son or relative of the great Mark, appeared on the scene and married a daughter of the Kellogs. He became one of the Huntington-Stanford-Crocker Pacific Associates who built, manipulated and cornered the Pacific railroads and with the help of the Kellog nest-egg, Hopkins made 19 million dollars in the West by methods not to be too strictly inquired into…. So the Hopkins millions passed strangely into foreign hands, and after the death of Mrs. Hopkins and Searles himself, went to his nephew, an utter stranger to the town and its people. This posed for me my first problem of inheritance. Meantime the fabrication and growth of this marvelous palace, beautiful beyond anything that Great Barrington had seen, went slowly and majestically on, and always I could sit and watch it grow. Eventually its grounds occupied my old school site; the school buildings were torn down and new grounds were found across the river. Here I worked through the Summer of 1885. I boarded with my Aunt Minerva at a nominal charge. I bought a new wardrobe, visited my cousins now and then in the county, and then in September came the plan which Mr. Painter had evolved for a scholarship. He induced my mother’s Congregational church and three other churches which he had once pastored in Connecticut, each to furnish me $25 a year for the length of my college course. This would be enough to support me at Fisk

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University, a college for Negroes in Nashville, Tennessee, which was said to do excellent work. Disappointed though I was at not being able to go immediately to Harvard, I regarded this merely as a temporary change of plan; I would of course go to Harvard in the end. But here and now was adventure. I was going into the South; the South of slavery, rebellion and black folk; above all, I was going to meet colored people of my own age and education, of my own ambitions. My family and colored friends rather resented the idea. Their Northern free Negro prejudice naturally revolted at the idea of sending me to the former land of slavery, either for education or for living. I am rather proud of myself that I did not agree with them. Whether or not I should always live and work in the South, I did not then stop to decide; that I would give up the idea of graduating from Harvard, did not occur to me. But I wanted to go to Fisk, not simply because it was at least a beginning of my dream of college, but also, I suspect, because I was beginning to feel lonesome in New England. Unconsciously, I realized that as I grew older, and especially now that I had finished the public school, the close cordial intermingling with my white fellows would grow more restricted. There would be meetings, parties, clubs, to which I would not be invited. Especially in the case of strangers, visitors, newcomers to the town would my presence and friendship become a matter of explanation or even embarrassment to my schoolmates. I became aware, once a chance to go to a group of young people of my own race was opened up for me, of the spiritual isolation in which I was living. I heard too in these days for the first time the Negro folk songs. A Hampton Quartet had sung them in the Congregational church. I was thrilled and moved to tears and seemed to recognize something inherently and deeply my own. I was glad to go to Fisk. On the other hand, my people had clung to a more unromantic view of the situation. They said frankly that it was a shame to send me South. I was Northern born and bred and instead of preparing me for work and giving me an opportunity right there in my own town and state, they were bundling me off to the South. This was undoubtedly true. The educated young white folk of Great Barrington became clerks in stores, bookkeepers and teachers, and a few went into professions. Others went to the cities or the West where they were welcome. Great Barrington was not able to conceive of me in such local positions. It was not so much that they were opposed to it, but it did not occur to them as a possibility. On the other hand, there was the call of the black South; teachers were needed. The crusade of the New England schoolmarm had done a fine

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work. The freed slaves, if properly led, had a great future. Temporarily they were deprived of their full voting privileges, but this was but a passing setback. Black folk were bound in time to play a large role in the South. They needed trained leadership. I was sent to help furnish it. Meantime I was learning something of industry. I began to see the workers as human beings and to know how hard a task stonecutting by hand was; I began to realize what discharge from a job meant when there was no union and no funds for supporting the unemployed; but all this was vague in my mind. I went into Tennessee at the age of 17 to enter Fisk University. I collected all my personal property which I could take with me: my books; my grandfather’s wrought iron tongs and shovel; I kept a few pieces of the blue china which all my life had graced the Thanksgiving and Christmas table. I longed for the great brass kettle in which Grandmother Burghardt had washed and made soap, but I was dissuaded. Nor could I carry the family Bible which went to cousin Ines. Mrs. Cass remitted the rent due so as to cover my railway fare. I left no other debts. Then came the fascinating railroad ride to New York; the ferry ride up the Hudson past the great city, and transfer to Grand Central. Next day as I was riding through Kentucky, a brown boy from Bowling Green sat down beside me. He was Otho Porter and was also going to Fisk University. I liked his frank face and very neat appearance and when he proposed that we be roommates I eagerly consented. Roommates we were for all my college course. He became the leading colored physician in Kentucky, whom I often visited in after years. Ah! the wonder of that journey, with its faint spice of adventure, as I entered the land of slaves. I was thrilled to be for the first time among so many people of my own color or rather of such various and such extraordinary colors, which I had only glimpsed before, but who it seemed were bound to me by new and exciting and eternal ties. Never before had I seen young men so selfassured and who gave themselves such airs, and colored men at that; and above all for the first time I saw beautiful girls. At my home among my white schoolmates there were a few pretty girls; but either they were not entrancing or because I had known them all my life, I did not notice them; but at Fisk the never-to-be-forgotten marvel of that first supper came with me opposite two of the most beautiful beings God ever revealed to the eyes of 17. I promptly lost my appetite, but I was deliriously happy! Of one of these girls I have often said, no human being could possibly have been as beautiful as she seemed to my young eyes in that far-off September night of 1885. She was the great-aunt of Lena Horne and fair as Lena Horne is, Lena Calhoun was far more beautiful.

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So I came to a region where the world was split into white and black halves, and where the darker half was held back by race prejudice and legal bonds, as well as by deep ignorance and dire poverty. But facing this was not a lost group, but at Fisk a microcosm of a world and a civilization in potentiality. Into this world I leapt with enthusiasm. A new loyalty and allegiance replaced by Americanism: henceforward I was a Negro.

Additional Readings: Anderson, James D. “Training the Apostles of Liberal Culture: Black Higher Education, 1900-1935.” The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988, 238. DuBois, W. E. B. The College-Bred Negro. Atlanta, GA, 1900. DuBois, W. E. B., and Dill, A. G. The College-Bred Negro American. Atlanta, GA. 1916.

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Chapter IX: Harvard in the Last Decades of the 19th Century from The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois W. E. B. Du Bois Fulfilling a long-time dream, in the last decade of the 19th century, Du Bois enrolls at Harvard University. Examine and discuss Du Bois’ explanations for attending Harvard: “I blithely picked Harvard because it was oldest and largest and most widely known.” Once Du Bois becomes a student at Harvard, he provides the following critique of his experience: (1) “I was in Harvard, but not of it, and realized all the irony of my singing “Fair Harvard.” (2) “ I asked nothing of Harvard but the tutelage of teachers and the freedom of the laboratory and library. I was quite voluntarily and willingly outside its social life.” How does Du Bois enter discussions with Josephine Brown about racial prejudices existing on northern white campuses and where both are left to feel “outside of [the] social life.” Do their experiences differ? Compare and contrast the experiences of DuBois and Charlayne Hunter-Gault while striving for an education in environments that leave them feeling "outside." Explain how both return discussions to cultural strategies and practices in Black America such as perseverance, resilience, struggle, and survival. Harvard University in 1888 was a great institution of learning. It was 236 years old and on its governing board were Alexander Agassiz, Phillip Brooks, Henry Cabot Lodge and Charles Francis Adams; and a John Quincy Adams, but not the ex-President. Charles William Eliot, a gentleman by training and a scholar by broad study and travel, was president. Among its teachers emeriti were Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell. Among the active teachers were Francis Child, Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Dunbar, Justin Winsor, and John Trowbridge; William Goodwin, Frank Taussig, Nathaniel Shaler, George Palmer, William James, Francis Peabody, Josiah Royce, Barrett Wendell, Edward Channing, and Albert Bushnell Hart. A young instructor who arrived in 1890 was George Santayana. Seldom, if ever, has any American university had such a galaxy of great men and fine teachers as Harvard in the decade between 1885 and 1895. To make my own attitude toward the Harvard of that day clear, it must be remembered that I went to Harvard as a Negro, not simply by birth, but recognizing myself as a member of a segregated caste whose situation I

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accepted but was determined to work from within that caste to find my way out. About the Harvard of which most white students conceived I knew little. Of fraternities I had not even heard of Phi Beta Kappa, and of such important social organizations as the Hasty Pudding Club. I knew nothing. I was in Harvard for education and not for high marks, except as marks would insure my staying. I did not pick out “snap” courses. I was there to enlarge my grasp of the meaning of the universe. We had for instance no chemical laboratory at Fisk. Our mathematical courses were limited; above all I wanted to study philosophy! I wanted to get hold of the basis of knowledge, and explore foundations and beginnings. I chose, therefore, Palmer’s course in ethics, but he being on Sabbatical for the year, William James replaced him, and I became a devoted follower of James at the time he was developing his pragmatic philosophy. Fortunately, I did not fall into the mistake of regarding Harvard as the beginning rather than the continuing of my college training. I did not find better teachers at Harvard, but teachers better known, who had had wider facilities for gaining knowledge and had a broader atmosphere for approaching truth. I hoped to pursue philosophy as my life career, with teaching for support. With this program I studied at Harvard from the Fall of 1888 to 1890, as undergraduate. I took a varied course in chemistry, geology, social science and philosophy. My salvation here was the type of teacher I met rather than the content of the courses. William James guided me out of the sterilities of scholastic philosophy to realist pragmatism; from Peabody’s social reform with a religious tinge, I turned to Albert Bushnell Hart to study history with documentary research; and from Taussig with his reactionary British economics of the Ricardo school, I approached what was later to become sociology. Meantime Karl Marx was mentioned but only incidentally and as one whose doubtful theories had long since been refuted. Socialism as dream of philanthropy or as will-o-wisp of hotheads was dismissed as unimportant. When I arrived at Harvard, the question of board and lodging was of first importance. Naturally, I could not afford a room in the college yard in the old and venerable buildings which housed most of the well-to-do students under the magnificent elms. Neither did I think of looking for lodgings among white families, where numbers of the ordinary students lived. I tried to find a colored home, and finally at 20 Flagg Street, I came upon the neat home of a colored woman from Nova Scotia, a descendant of those black Jamaican Maroons whom Britain deported after solemnly promising them peace if they would surrender. For a very reasonable sum,

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I rented the second story front room and for four years this was my home. I wrote of this abode at the time: “My room is, for a college man’s abode, very ordinary indeed. It is quite pleasantly situated—second floor, front, with a bay window and one other window. The door is on the southwest corner. As you enter you will perceive the bed in the opposite corner, small and decorated with floral designs calculated to puzzle a botanist. It is a good comfortable bed, however, and my landlady keeps it neat. On the left hand is a bureau with a mirror of doubtful accuracy. In front of the bay window is a stand with three shelves of books, and on the left of the bureau is an improvised bookcase made of unpainted boards and uprights, containing most of my library of which I am growing quite proud. Over the heat register, near the door, is a mantle with a plaster of Paris pug-dog and a calendar, and the usual array of odds and ends. A sofa, commode, trunk, table and chairs complete the floor furniture. On the wall are a few quite ordinary pictures. In this commonplace den I am quite content.” Later I became a boarder at Memorial Hall, which was the great dining hall of the University, and after that a member of the Foxcraft Club, where many students of moderate means boarded. Following the attitudes which I had adopted in the South, I sought no friendships among my white fellow students, nor even acquaintanceships. Of course, I wanted friends, but I could not seek them. My class was large, with some 300 students. I doubt if I knew a dozen of them. I did not seek them, and naturally they did not seek me. I made no attempt to contribute to the college periodicals, since the editors were not interested in my major interests. Only one organization did I try to enter, and I ought to have known better than to make this attempt. But I did have a good singing voice and loved music, so I entered the competition for the Glee Club. I ought to have known that Harvard could not afford to have a Negro on its Glee Club traveling about the country. Quite naturally I was rejected. I was happy at Harvard, but for unusual reasons. One of these circumstances was my acceptance of racial segregation. Had I gone from Great Barrington high school directly to Harvard, I would have sought companionship with my white fellows and been disappointed and embittered by a discovery of social limitations to which I had not been used. But I came by way of Fisk and the South and there I had accepted color caste and embraced eagerly the companionship of those of my own color. This was of course, no final solution. Eventually with them and in mass assault, led by culture, we Negroes were going to break down the boundaries of race; but at present we were banded together in a great crusade and happily so. Indeed, I suspect that the prospect of ultimate full human intercourse without reservations and annoying distinctions, made

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me all too willing to consort now with my own and to disdain and forget as far as was possible that outer, whiter world. In general, I asked nothing of Harvard but the tutelage of teachers and the freedom of the laboratory and library. I was quite voluntarily and willingly outside its social life. I sought only such contacts with white teachers as lay directly in the line of my work. I joined certain clubs like the Philosophical Club; I was a member of the Foxcraft dining club because it was cheap. James and one or two other teachers had me at their homes at meal and reception. I found friends, and most interesting and inspiring friends, among the colored folk of Boston and surrounding places. Naturally social intercourse with whites could not be entirely forgotten, so that now and then I joined its currents and rose of fell with them. I escorted colored girls to various gatherings, and as pretty ones as I could find to the vesper exercises, and later to the class day and commencement social functions. Naturally we attracted attention and the Crimson noted my girl friends; on the other part came sometimes the shadow of insult, as when at one reception a white woman seemed determined to mistake me for a waiter. In general, I was encased in a completely colored world, self-sufficient and provincial, and ignoring just as far as possible the white world which conditioned it. This was self-protective coloration, with perhaps an inferiority complex, but with belief in the ability and future of black folk. My friends and companions were taken mainly from the colored students of Harvard and neighboring institutions, and the colored folk of Boston and surrounded towns. With them I led a happy and inspiring life. There were among them many educated and well-to-do folk; many young people studying or planning to study; many charming young women. We met and ate, danced and argued and planned a new world. Towards whites I was not arrogant; I was simply not, obsequious, and to a white Harvard student of my day, a Negro student who did not seek recognition was trying to be more than a Negro. The same Harvard man had much the same attitude toward Jews and Irishmen. I was, however, exceptional among Negroes in my ideas on voluntary race segregation; they for the most part saw salvation only in integration at the earliest moment and on almost any terms in white culture; I was firm, in my criticism of white folk and in my dream of a Negro self-sufficient culture even in America. This cutting off of myself from my white fellows, or being cut off, did not mean unhappiness or resentment. I was in my early manhood, unusually full of high spirits and humor. I thoroughly enjoyed life. I was conscious of understanding and power, and conceited enough still to

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imagine, as in high school, that they who did not know me were the losers, not I. On the other hand, I do not think that my white classmates found me personally objectionable. I was clean, not well-dressed but decently clothed. Manners I regarded as more or less superfluous, and deliberately cultivated a certain brusquerie. Personal adornment I regarded as pleasant but not important. I was in Harvard, but not of it, and realized all the irony of my singing “Fair Harvard.” I sang it because I liked the music, and not from any pride in the Pilgrims. Additional Readings: Hargrove, Edythe. “How I Feel as a Negro at a White College.” Journal of Negro Education 11 (October 1942): 484. Muir, Donald E. “The First Years of Desegregation: Patterns of Acceptance of Black Students on a Deep South Campus.” Social Forces 49 (March 1971): 371-378

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Schaal From Joycelyn Elders, M.D., From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America Dr. Joycelyn Elders and David Chanoff In the autobiographical narrative that follows, Elders is representative of African American students from rural areas in the early twentieth century: 1) School went only part-time (for them) since all students worked regularly on the farms; 2) Few students in the rural areas graduated. Too, they were generally older for their grades; 3) Teachers taught a roomful of students who might have ranged in ages from five to thirteen; 4) There were no desks in the one-room classroom, just benches; and 5) Students did not have workbooks. The teacher wrote lessons on the board and students would copy them on the paper. Critique Elders’ testimony as representative of the rural African American experience. What are your findings? Elders infers that there is a “great divide” in education between the races in the South, North and rural areas: “I’m pretty certain the white schools had desks [workbooks, a school building with many rooms] at that time, given the way things were.” Are there other specific examples of a” great divide” in the educational experiences of black and white children in Elders’ narrative? How synonymous are Elders’ references to the “great divides” of the twentieth century in African American education to the "great divides" of the 19th century in African American education? In spite of barriers, Elders contends that there are role models in the Black community who centered education: “Somehow Mama held tight to the conviction that if we ever wanted to “be something” we had better get educated.” Identify other voices in the Elders' community who hold similar convictions towards education. Does evidence exist of a shared African American consciousness in rural Black America —witnessed in conduct, character, and conversation? Locate and discuss evidence in Elders' narrative of continued strivings by Black America for its humanity via community, spiritual and education goals? Whenever my mother’s reading lessons got too confusing for me, I used to run and hide behind the privy. “Now you tell me,” Mama would say, “what happens when you put that e after the word? What’s that make

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it?” This is one of my first clear memories. I could read the word fine. I just had. It was “c-a-p, cap.” But my four-year-old brain was having a hard time getting itself around the final e idea. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the switch in Mama’s hand beginning to bounce a little. She’d tan the back of my legs with that if my progress slacked off too much. Mama’s switching wasn’t meant to hurt, but it stung enough so I wanted to avoid it. “I got to go, Mama. I got to go bad. I’ll be right back.” And I’d race out to the privy and stand behind it, not wanting to duck inside, because of the worms, but not wanting to go back to the house either. I’d wait it out as long as I could, hoping that she’d start doing something else and forget about the lesson. But she never would. “You got to learn your letters, honey, and your numbers. You’ve got to get a good start.” “You’ve got to get a good start!” I think she said that as often as she said prayers. Mama was a small, wiry woman, always smiling, always with a good word for everyone and a heart full of love. A wonderful, giving-of-herself kind of person. She never looked at the negative side of things, either then or until she passed last year at age eighty-three. She was always a sunny optimist, even when there was precious little to be optimistic about. Even when things were horrible, she always thought that she was just the luckiest woman in the world. “I’m so grateful all my children are healthy and nothing’s wrong with them,” she’d say, “I just feel rich.” Mama’s name was Haller. She was born Reed, which became Jones when she and Daddy, Curtis Jones, got married secretly. She was eighteen, and he was nineteen, so they weren’t children. But the families hadn’t been told, much less asked. So it wasn’t smooth. Mama was on the girls’ basketball team at school, and the story goes that she came home on the bus in her basketball uniform. But instead of going inside to do her afterschool chores she ran off in her shorts to meet Daddy and get to the preacher. Those who remember say that Haller’s daddy, my grandpa Charlie Reed, was so mad he went looking for his new son-in-law with a shotgun. He calmed down later, though I always had a sense that Daddy’s family might have been happier with the match than Mama’s was. In those days school went only part-time since all the students worked regularly on the farm. As a result, extremely few of them graduated, and all of them were older for their grade level than is common nowadays. Mama finished the eighth grade herself, which was pretty good for a black woman growing up in the southwestern corner of Arkansas in the first part of the century. And she had a tremendous determination that all her children were going to be educated. She didn’t ease off any on the seven

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that came after me. But as her first I experienced that determination as its fiercest. It wasn’t that Mama had any particular aspirations for us, like becoming a doctor or lawyer or professor. Professions like that were outside our world. Going to college wasn’t something that ever occurred to any of us. The only thing we ever saw people doing was work; I’m talking hard physical labor. The only time we ever saw anybody in a suit was in church. Everybody we knew was in overalls driving mules. But somehow Mama held tight to the conviction that if we ever wanted to “be something,” we had better get educated. “Being something” might have been on Mama’s tongue a lot, but it wasn’t something I ever particularly thought about. I did sometimes fantasize about becoming a store clerk. To be a clerk in a ten-cent store or a grocery store would have been a real improvement, particularly when the temperature in the fields got up around a hundred and the mosquitoes were swarming and the humidity made the air so thick you could all but see it. Days like that, being a clerk in some kind of cool, dim store seemed like it might be a good way to spend your life. Clerks didn’t plow fields or weed furrows. They didn’t chop cotton or strip cane or bale hay from sunup to sundown. The only problem was that no store clerk I had ever seen was black. Around Schaal, indoor work was white. Except for maids. Maids worked inside, but maid work didn’t exactly seem like “being something.” By the time I was five I was well prepared for school. By then I was already a good reader, which allowed Mama to go to work on my sister Katie, who was two years younger than I. I had long outgrown the primer Mama used for lessons and had taken to reading the Bible, which was the other book in the house. My brother Chester, who’s a Methodist minister now, tells everyone that the reason he went into the church is that the Bible was the only book we had around for him to read. It was my only book too, and though I didn’t become a minister, more than once I’ve had people accuse me of preaching. I also pored over the weekly Grit, a farmers’ newspaper out of Kansas that Daddy subscribed to. When I finally started first grade at Bright Star school, I was astonished to find I could always get some kind of book there, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Not only that, but I could take it home and read at night after everything that had to get done had gotten done. I’d prop a blanket on the floor like a tent, put a coal-oil lamp under it, and curl up with Hansel and Gretel. . . . Just in front of our house was a little creek branch. When I started school at Bright Star, I’d wait for the kids from the four or five houses below us to come by, maybe six of us all together. The branch crossed the road, and Daddy used to lay down planks over it. But every time it rained

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the branch would pool and the planks would wash away. So we’d wade it or jump. Either way everybody’s shoes would get sopped, and we’d walk to school with wet feet. I always walked with Clara Dean Davis, who was my best friend and in the same grade as I was. We’d take the muddy trail a couple of miles through the woods until we reached the main road, talking all the way. Usually it was about dolls or what we were doing in school or the houses we’d have when we grew up. Nice, big houses. By that we meant bigger than the unpainted three-room shacks we both lived in. By nice we thought about windows that weren’t broken and covered with cardboard or a roof that didn’t leak in a dozen places. We didn’t dream of electricity. We didn’t know about it, so we didn’t miss it. Nobody had electricity, or indoor plumbing either. Neither of us had seen a real bathtub. Bright Star was really just a wide place in the road. There was a store and a pasture across the road that the men kept cleared so they could play baseball on Saturday afternoons. Then there was Bright Star elementary, where we went. Bright Star elementary was painted white. It had two rooms and a kind of recessed alcove where the front door was that we could stand under if it rained during lunch or recess. In the middle of the room was a potbellied stove. All the kids sat on long wooden benches. There were no desks, just benches. I’m pretty certain the white schools had desks at that time, given the way things were. But we worked on our laps on big sheets of paper we’d tear off a tablet. Our teacher, Miss Ulistine Brown, taught a roomful of kids who might have ranged in age from five to thirteen. Since we didn’t have workbooks, she’d write out our lessons on the board and we’d copy them on to our paper. She would have one group doing numbers, another writing, and a third doing something else—all at the same time. Thinking back on it, I know that classroom must have been a noisy place, but I don’t remember any of us noticing. When you lived in a house where there might be four or eight or ten children, there wasn’t all that much difference. Shortly after I got home from school each day, we’d eat supper. Daddy would come in from working, and we’d all sit down around the long kitchen table. Everybody always ate together, no matter what. Later on, when I had my own family, that was still important to me. But back then it was survival…. Additional Readings: Ashmore, Harry S. “The Deep-Running Currents of Change.” The Negro and The Schools. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1954.

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Let Down Your Bucket From Joycelyn Elders, M.D., From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States of America Dr. Joycelyn Elders and David Chanoff In her autobiographical narrative Jocelyn Elders’ testimony is representative of African American children who left rural areas with their parents during and between the World Wars in the early 20th century for residency in major urban cities. The families sought better economical and educational opportunities. Like other parents, Elders’ parents found plenty of work at shipyards and factories which supported the wars. Like other children, Elders enrolled in urban schools which were integrated and outcome-based, but as she also confesses, the schools were becoming over-crowded. Outline Elders conclusions about the promises of a better education in urban schools for students of color in the early 20th century. Outline also her disappointments in what she found. Examine and interpret the following phrases cited by Jocelyn Elders as lessons she learned, after she and her family had worked and saved in California and then returned to rural Arkansas to reside: 1) "Bound for the promised land didn’t mean some abstract place in heaven”; 2)“It’s not where I’m coming from; it’s where I’m going to”; 3)“Let down your bucket where you are”; and 4)Don’t fight the system; just go out there and get an education. Prove you are better.” How is Elders echoing familiar spiritual and education goals ? Do this goals differ much among African Americans of the 1940s and 1950s? Underscored in Elders’ narrative are the nuances of the African American church and family, both of which promoted unified and constructive outlooks when in segregated settings: “Between what your family was saying and what the preacher was telling you, your spiritual and psychological foundation was pretty well set.” How are Elders' references to spiritual and familial goals traceable to the spiritual and familial goals of the slave communities? Compare Elders’ personifications of parents and ministers with Marian Wright Edelman’s personifications of both (See Edelman elsewhere in this text). What are the implications of familial, spiritual, and education goals among African Americans seeking opportunity and upward mobility during the 1940s and 1950s?

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Uncle Slim drove us over to Texarkana in his truck so we could catch the train—Mama, Chester, and me. We got there around nightfall, so I didn’t see a lot of it. But from what I did see, Texarkana was huge, with more people and traffic and buildings than I had ever thought about. Actually the population then might have been about fifteen thousand. That made it six or seven times the size of Nashville, which was pretty much my idea of a city. From Texarkana the train rolled through Little Rock, then headed up to St. Louis and Chicago, where we changed to the Zephyr for California. Every time we stopped more passengers piled on, many of them soldiers and sailors. In the South the cars were segregated, but once we got into the North, blacks and whites rode together. Sometimes we didn’t have seats, but most often we did. I held Chester on my lap and stared out the window at the farmland. Most of it seemed familiar, just bigger, except when we got into wheat country, I took notice of that. We didn’t grow wheat ourselves, and I was impressed to see all that land overflowing with something I hadn’t ever seen before. The Rockies amazed me. Snow was on the peaks, and beautiful clear rivers ran alongside the tracks, different from muddy Mine Creek back home. Crossing the mountains almost made me forget how hungry I was. The food we had packed was gone after a day or so, and we didn’t have money to buy much. So I was disappointed in my desire to see what eating in the dining car might be like. Denver, Salt Lake City, and Grand Junction passed by; then Reno, with a big arched sign that said THE GREATEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD. In Oakland we got off at the depot and took a boat across the bay to Richmond. It was a little frightening being on such an expanse of water. But I was already adjusting to the idea of things being so different from what I was used to. Daddy had gotten rooms for us in a big house not far outside downtown Richmond. The owners were the Reids, a man and his wife and three children, who lived in what would have been the living room and two bedrooms. The rest of the rooms they rented out, mainly to us and other members of our family. My Uncle Buh and Aunt Annie had one, and Uncle Bone—Boreen—had another. Mama and Daddy lived in a third with Chester, and I slept in with the Reids’ two daughters. It was kind of like a big mixed-up family with everybody congregating in the kitchen to make food and eat and talk. Not that there was much time to sit around. All the adults in that house were working, some of them day shifts, some night shifts, and everybody overtime. The shipyards and factories were going around the clock. I wasn’t necessarily expecting Uncle Buh and Aunt Annie and Uncle Bone to be there, but it wasn’t any great surprise

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that they were. California was drawing people off the farms in droves, lots of them “Arkies,” like I soon found out I was. Daddy worked at the Richmond shipyards, which was where Mama went to work too, as a welder. I had never heard of Rosie the Riveter, but that’s who Mama was. They took her off the farm and trained her to be a good welder. She told me last year that she could still do spot welds if it was necessary, but seams would probably be too much for her. At some point Mama quit the shipyards and was hired on at one of the canneries. Our timing worked out better that way. At the cannery she was on night shift, which meant she got home at seven in the morning, just in time to take Chester before I had to leave for school. School in Richmond was so crowded with kids whose parents had migrated in for jobs that it had two shifts. I went first shift, seven-thirty to twelve-thirty. I had never in my life seen a school this size. It had four stories and just seemed immense. Even Nashville didn’t have any fourstory buildings. Most of the kids in this school were white with some Mexicans and a few blacks. Richmond had attracted many blacks from the South, but the neighborhood where we lived was mostly white, and so was the school. This was my first time going to school with white kids, but for some reason that didn’t make too much of an impression on me. There was plenty of teasing and gibing, but most of it was aimed at all the Okie, Arkie, and Tex newcomers. “The Okie told the Arkie and the Arkie told the Tex/Let’s go to California and break our necks.” That kind of thing went around quite a bit, and I learned that being from Arkansas wasn’t necessarily something you were proud of. What did impress me was, first, how hectic everything was, and second, how many students there were. I didn’t think about it then, but the Richmond school administrators must have been doing everything they could think of to keep from drowning. The double sessions were one measure they took. Another was the placement test they gave everyone. So many of the kids were coming from rural school districts with hugely varying standards that the officials couldn’t just put students in what would be their normal grade level. Some of the teenagers from schools in the Deep South could hardly read. I’m sure that most of the kids didn’t even have any school records with them. I know I didn’t. You just said, “Well, at home I was in the seventh grade,” or tenth grade, or whatever it was that you were in. To cope with this, the Richmond school officials made up a test to determine what grades the new students should go into. It probably wasn’t very sophisticated, just something to give them a handle on the chaos.

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When I took it, I was placed in eighth grade, two grades above where I should have been. That was fine with me, though I didn’t take it as anything especially to brag about. I knew that I was being graded against kids from very backward places. I might have been from a backward place myself, but my teachers at home had never let me coast. If I did things easily, they’d be sure to give me something harder. The result of that was that when I got to Richmond, they skipped me up twice. The first thing I noticed about my classes was that I could compete with the white kids. The second was that what made school in Richmond different wasn’t just that most of the kids were white or that there were lots more of them than I was used to. It was that many of these kids had aspirations. Some of them were sure they were going to go to college. In fact, I was in all college preparatory courses, where most of them thought that. That made an impression. For the first time it occurred to me that there might really be something in life other than being a field hand or a maid. I liked chemistry; I liked being in the laboratory. Maybe I could become something like a laboratory technician. I didn’t think much more about it than that, but the idea stuck in the back of my mind. Of all my classes, the only one that didn’t go well was the a cappella choir. I thought it would be really nice to sing, but when I auditioned, the director said “I really don’t think you need to be in this class, Miss Jones. You’ve got the only absolute monotone I have ever heard.” We stayed in Richmond for two years. Eventually we moved out of the Reids’ rooming house into our own apartment, and Daddy and Mama sent for the rest of the children to join us. But it wasn’t too many months after that that Daddy decided it was time to go home. It must have been right about the end of the war. The factories were still booming, and everyone was still employed. By now, though, we had had money coming in steady for some time. Mama and Daddy had saved what for them must have been a nice sum. So now Daddy wanted to get back to farming. He could buy new equipment, maybe even a tractor, and really make some money. He was a farmer at heart, and a farmer always feels that next year is the year he’s going to make a million dollars…. When we got back, I started tenth grade at the Howard County Training School in Tollette, the next town over. Tollette had been founded right after the Civil War by a group of newly freed slave families. It was still almost all black, and the Howard County Training School was a regional school for black students from as far away as Fulton and Saratoga. They were brought in from all over, and in the morning you could see fourteen or fifteen buses unloading hundreds of students in back of the school’s main building.

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When you think of school buses, what probably comes to mind are the traditional orange-yellow boxy affairs. Ours weren’t like that. The buses that brought students into the Howard County Training Schools were a strange collection of homemade vehicles, many of them flatbed trucks whose owners had built some kind of structure on them that people could sit-in. These weren’t the kinds of buses that would pass any safety inspection today, or most likely back then either…. School itself tended to be lots better than those bus rides. Chemistry was good; I still liked that. And math. English too, especially oratory and poetry. I didn’t try out for choir; I had learned my lesson about that in Richmond. But I did have a voice that seemed to project naturally, even if I couldn’t sing. People never seemed to have any trouble hearing what I had to say. So I memorized poems for the oratory contests. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s dialect poetry and Langston Hughes, the great black poet from Joplin, Missouri, and Harlem, New York. I won first prize reciting Rudyard Kipling’s “If.” I didn’t know it then, but apparently “If” was a favorite at Negro schools. Maya Angelou, who is my contemporary and grew up in Stamps, Arkansas, about fifty miles southeast of Schaal, also talks about having learned it by heart. When I got to college, I found out that a lot of people knew the poem. Part of it, at least, might have been written specifically for American blacks of my generation: If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give away to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.

That was pretty fair advice. Not much different from what we were getting from our teachers and parents, even if they didn’t say it in verse or quite so directly. Though I hated to, I tended to miss a lot of school. In the spring of the year Katie and I and the rest stayed out to help put in the crops. In the fall the corn and cotton needed to be picked. Chester says he never did find out what started the Civil War, and he knew the outcome only from hearsay. He was always coming into school after it started and leaving before it ended. He joked about it now. Then we were embarrassed. The teachers would ask me why I stayed out of school so much, and I’d tell them I just didn’t feel like coming. Some of them really fussed at me about it. I thought they

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might have noticed that I did come whenever it rained. Actually they probably knew all about why I wasn’t attending and just wanted to get a discussion going. But that wasn’t something I was going to discuss. I was too ashamed. Regardless of what might have been happening in the fields, I always showed up at school for tests. I had my books, and I studied them at home, the same way I had always done my night reading, on the floor with a lamp and the covers over my head. And pretty nearly always I did the best in the class. The fact was I liked learning too much to be put off. I didn’t just like it; I loved it. A good part of that feeling came from my family. I had heard preaching on this subject from all sides from the time I could remember. I don’t think it’s any accident that my mother is there in my first memory teaching me to read. Grandma Minnie was another one who was constantly at me. “You’ve got to get an education”: That was her refrain, like a drumbeat. “You want to pick cotton and live in all these mosquitoes the rest of your life?” There was going to be a better day if she had anything to do with it. Some kind of better day even if she might not have been exactly sure what that day was going to look like. As little as he said, even my father had a high regard for education. In his own way he was remarkable. Curtis Jones got through the eighth grade even though he was the oldest of seventeen children living on the edge of subsistence. He was a prime example of the dilemma our grandparents faced, and our parents. They were always saying, “Well, I couldn’t go to school. But you better go there and do the best you can.” Yet in order to survive, they had to keep you out of school working in the fields. It was a two-edged sword. In their hearts they were driven to see you educated. But reality often had its own ideas. This wasn’t just us. It was all the people around us. One reason for this general reverence for learning was that none of the families in Schaal and Tollette and Bright Star was very far removed from slavery. Their greatgrandparents, or grandparents, sometimes even their parents had been born at a time when they weren’t allowed to go to school. They weren’t permitted to know how to read. They—we—were the immediate descendants of people who had huddled up in undercover schools in churches or hidden out with a teacher in the woods so they could learn their letters. So when my father came along, he was going to get as much schooling as he possibly could, even though he was a full-time field hand from the time he could lift something or carry something else. What our parents gave us, the church reinforced. I sometimes woke up in the mornings to Mama singing “I’m so glad that troubles don’t last

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always.” That wasn’t too different from what Reverend Walton was preaching to us twice a month at Tabernacle Methodist and his colleague over at Bright Star Baptist the other two Sundays. Reverend Walton’s favorite theme was the eagle stirring her nest. If we could see it right, what might seem trouble and hardship to us was in reality the hand of God preparing us for that better day. Reverend Walton’s sermons tended to be right out of the Old Testament. Daniel in the lion’s den, King David, Joshua at the walls of Jericho—they all had their trials and tribulations, their desperation and their downfalling. But God had his eye on them, like he had his eye on the sparrow. Like he had his eye on us. I knew those lessons. From the time I was ten I was secretary of our Sunday School. So I knew them. But you didn’t have to go to Sunday school to get the meaning of Joseph’s life, cast by his brothers down into a pit and sold off into slavery. Or to feel it personally when the preacher stood up there in the pulpit and told us how God told Moses to tell Pharaoh to let his people go. Those Sundays in church weren’t separate from your everyday life. They were about your everyday life, and what it meant, and where it was going. Bound for the promised land didn’t mean some abstract place in heaven. It might have meant that too, but it also meant bound for some better life than we had now. No matter what might be happening to you, what they told you in those little churches was that you were somebody. You were God’s child. “There were times”—this is Chester telling me what it felt like to him—“there were times when I went to church feeling so down after a week of hard labor that I was saying, ‘Oh, Lord, why did you put me in this family down on this farm?’ And then the preacher would say, ‘God will make a way out of no way.’ And all of a sudden you say, hey, it’s not where I’m coming from, it’s where I’m going to.” That’s what I felt like too, to the word. Between what your family was saying and what the preacher was telling you, your spiritual and psychological foundation was pretty well set. There was a plan for you with a capital P, and that plan was to get ahead, to do better than your grandparents and parents. This was a subject my teachers hit harder than Mama and Grandma Minnie put together. You never once heard them say, “This is a good place right where you’re at. This is where you want to be.” It was always: “You better study. You better get this, you hear? You want to learn this? Or you want to stay down here choppin’ cotton and chasin’ rabbits?” Those teachers of ours may not have had as much math or science as some others, but they instilled in us the value of being a decent human

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being and the value of education. They also taught us all the way along how to make it in the white world outside Howard County. “You aren’t going to make it if you’re only just as good as whites,” they said. “You’ve got to be better than whites.” Negro history was part of that same lesson. Everybody in school studied that. We talked about George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. We read Carter Woodson, the father of Negro history, who said that if you control a man’s mind, you control his actions, that we were programmed to think about ourselves the way the white world told us, but now it was time to control our own minds for ourselves. Frederick Douglass was there, and Charles Richard Drew, the great black surgeon, and of course Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. Our teachers taught us that black people were people of great courage and accomplishment, that they could raise themselves up. In a dozen ways they were giving us their version of what worked. “Don’t fight the system,” they were saying. “Just go out there and get an education. Prove you are better.” Those were great lessons. But I wonder if our teachers weren’t fighting back tears of frustration even while they were teaching them. I remember so clearly the white district supervisor saying to Miss Dodson, our home economics teacher, “Now you be sure and train your girls to be good maids.” She said that every time she came around, loud enough so that we heard it too. We might have been learning pride in our race and the virtues of working to realize a better day. But all the while we were studying home economics half a day every day for five years, seventh grade through twelfth. I laugh. I tell people, “I’m the best maid I know.” And I am . I don’t know of anybody who understands how to clean a house like I do, not that I want to do it. Or prepare a meal. We had to be well trained so that when we would come to your home, we would know how to clean it, know where things ought to be, know how to set your table, know how to do it right. We couldn’t do it in our own houses, but we sure did know how it was done. I might have been trained for maid work, but I don’t know that I ever actually thought I would be doing it. The fact was that I didn’t have the slightest notion what I would do. That lab technician idea was still hovering around somewhere, though how I might ever become one wasn’t very clear. What I did know was that I had no interest in being like any of the women I knew. None of them struck me as someone I wanted to emulate. Looking at my mother and grandmother, I certainly didn’t want to be like them. Later on I was able to see their lives as farm women and mothers for the successes they were. There’s no question that all the

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children in our family were secure and all of us felt loved. But at the time I took those things for granted. Anybody who wanted to could have children, so that didn’t seem like all that much of an accomplishment. I was an adult before I realized how wonderful it was to have seven sisters and brothers. Back then I would have liked to have had none. I didn’t have any I particularly wanted to get rid of, but neither did I see it as a great honor to have a big family. If I had to characterize the women I grew up around, I would say that most of them were submissive. They tried to please their husbands. They worked very hard and got very little. And they were always striving with all their might to take care of their children. I must have heard my mother say a thousand times, ‘Lord, just let me live to raise my last child That’s all I ask.”…. Though I didn’t think Mama and Grandma and the rest got the respect they deserved, I personally didn’t feel put upon in some way because I was a girl. I never heard anybody say that being a girl, I couldn’t do as well as boys. I also wasn’t bothered by being younger than my classmates. It wasn’t something I particularly noticed, and I think they probably didn’t either. I had taken care of a lot of children by then and run a lot of farmwork, so my exact chronology didn’t make much difference. On top of that, I had done well. I was at the top of my class, which admittedly wasn’t saying all that much since by twelfth grade there were only nine of us left. Almost everybody at Howard County Training got up to the eighth or ninth grade. But then they started dropping like flies, the boys off to the farm, the girls off to marry the boys. By senior year the attrition rate must have been 90 percent. High school graduation was probably the biggest black event of the year in Howard County, regardless of how small the class might be. The auditorium held about five hundred, and there wouldn’t be room to squeeze everybody inside. Graduations were entertainment, something to do and people to see. But they were also emotional, important occasions. So few of the students who started out actually finished that those who did seemed precious in the eyes of those who watched. I may not have actually been the first in my family to finish high school. I think one or two of my aunts and uncles may have done it before me. But it was unusual enough to be something special. Mama and Grandma Minnie had had their hearts set on this moment for years. The first part of graduation was what was called Baccalaureate. This was a kind of presenting the graduates to the community ceremony that was always held on the Sunday before commencement. We all marched in shining with pride in our white caps and gowns. Under my gown I was

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wearing the prettiest dress I had ever seen, or at least the prettiest I had ever owned, made of a white, silky material with a white-on-white stripe in it and a tie belt around the waist. Homemade, of course, by Miss Beatrice, who did everybody’s fine work in Schaal. The nine of us were introduced. Then we sat there facing the packed school auditorium while a preacher gave the invocation and preached, and another speaker made a speech. Sitting there in front of that crowd, I was too taken up with the whole thing to listen that intently to what they were saying. At least I can’t remember any of it now. The fact is I can barely remember the valedictorian speech I gave the following Thursday night at the diploma ceremony. I do remember the title of that though. It was “Let Down Your Bucket Where You Are.” I got that from one time at Grandma Minnie’s when she had sent me out to draw a bucket of water and I had taken too much time doing it for her liking. What happened was that the area around the well was muddy from a rainstorm and I had a hard time finding a good place to stand so I could lower the bucket. When I didn’t get back fast enough, Grandma Min yelled out, “What’s going on down there?” And when I shouted back that I was trying to find a place to stand, she said, “Just let down your bucket where you are.” That struck me as good advice generally, and still does. The speech I made from it was about doing the absolute best you can wherever you find yourself and whatever the circumstances. I think I don’t remember the actual speech because I was too nervous in front of that auditorium. Pride and nerves are about all I do remember from that commencement. Except that all of us were wondering about the white man who was sitting up on the stage with Mr. Turner, the school principal. None of us had any idea of who he was until he got up and made a short announcement. He was a professor, he said, representing Philander Smith College in Little Rock and the United Methodists. Philander Smith was a fine Methodist College, and he was there to award a full-tuition scholarship to the class valedictorian. He didn’t mention me by name, but I had just given the speech. So it was pretty clear that I was the one he was talking about. Additional Readings: Angelou, Maya. “Graduation.” I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 2009. Ashmore, Harry S. “The Deep-Running Currents of Change.” The Negro and The Schools.1954. Ernest Gaines. “The Professor.” Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman. 1971.

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A Life of Learning John Hope Franklin How does Franklin who grows up in a middle-class family contribute to what Heather Williams would call the “alternative narrative” to literacy and the African American experience? Please explain. Also explain how Franklin enters discussions with Joycelyn Elders and Marian Wright Edelman on the role of family, church and school in his intellectual development? Do the familial, spiritual and education goals referenced by Franklin, Elders and Edelman reflect a continuity of a "shared consciousness" in Black America? Discuss how Edelman’s father (who resides in the South) and Franklin’s father (who resides in the mid-West) maintain a cultural tradition of “reading” in the evenings, a tradition that also is traceable to the slave communities in Heather Williams and Janet Duitsmen Cornelius? Discuss the symbolic meanings of “reading” in the works of these writers. According to Franklin, “Two factors plagued my world of learning for all of my developing years—race and financial distress.” How does Franklin add to Booker T. Washington’s autobiographical discussions about race and “socio-economics” as barriers to educational access? Rely on testimonies of DuBois and Franklin and discuss what remains to be the role of the Black college in educating members of the middleclass Black community? Both Franklin and DuBois attended Fisk and Harvard. Compare and contrast the summaries of their graduate experiences. As I began the task of putting the pieces together that would describe how I moved from one stage of intellectual development to another, I was reminded of a remark that Eubie Blake made as he approached his ninetyninth birthday. He said, “If I had known that I would live this long I would have taken better care of myself.” To paraphrase him, if I had known that I would become a historian I would have kept better records of my own pilgrimage through life. I may be forgiven, therefore, if I report that the beginnings are a bit hazy, not only to me but to my parents as well. For example, they had no clear idea of when I learned to read and write. It was when I was about three or four, I am told. My mother, an elementary school teacher, introduced me to the world of learning when I was three years old. Since there were no day care centers in the village where we lived she had no alternative to taking me to school and seating me in the rear of her classroom where she could keep

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an eye on me. I remained quiet but presumably I also remained attentive, for when I was about five my mother noticed that on the sheet of paper she gave me each morning, I was no longer making lines and sketching out some notable examples of abstract art. I was writing words, to be sure almost as abstract as my art, and making sentences. My mother later said that she was not surprised much less astonished at what some, not she, would have called my precocity. Her only reproach—to herself, not me— was that my penmanship was hopelessly flawed since she had not monitored my progress as she had done for her enrolled students. From that point on, I would endeavor to write and, through the written word, to communicate my thoughts to others. My interest in having some thoughts of my own to express was stimulated by my father who, among other tasks, practiced law by day and read and wrote by night. In the absence of any possible distractions in the tiny village, he would read or write something each evening. This was my earliest memory of him and, indeed, it was my last memory of him. Even after we moved to Tulsa, a real city, and after we entered the world of motion pictures, radio, and television, his study and writing habits remained unaffected. I grew up believing that in the evenings one either read or wrote. It was always easy to read something worthwhile, and if one worked at it hard enough he might even write something worthwhile. I continue to believe that. Two factors plagued my world of learning for all of my developing years. One was race, the other was financial distress; and each had a profound influence on every stage of my development. I was born in the all-Negro town of Rentiesville to which my parents went after my father had been expelled from court by a white judge who told him that no black person could ever represent anyone in his court. My father resolved that he would resign from the world dominated by white people and try to make it among his own people. But Rentiesville’s population of less than two hundred people could not provide a poverty-free living even for one who was a lawyer, justice of the peace, postmaster, farmer, and president of the Rentiesville Trading Company which, incidentally, was not even a member of the New York Stock Exchange. The quality of life in Rentiesville was as low as one can imagine. There was no electricity, running water or inside plumbing. There was no entertainment or diversion of any kind—no parks, playgrounds, libraries, or newspapers. We subscribed to the Muskogee Daily Phoenix, which was delivered by the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad as it made its way southward through the state each morning. The days and nights were lonely and monotonous, and for a young lad with boundless energy there

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was nothing to do but read. My older sister and brother were away in private school in Tennessee, and one did not even have the pleasure of the company of older siblings. Now and then one went to Checotah, six miles away, to shop. That was not always pleasant, such as the time when my mother, sister, and I were ejected from the train because my mother refused to move from the coach designated for whites. It was the only coach we could reach before the train moved again, so my mother argued that she would not move because she was not to blame if the train’s white coach was the only one available when the train came to a halt. Her argument was unsuccessful, and we had to trudge back to Rentiesville through the woods. There were the rare occasions when we journeyed to Eufala, the county seat, where I won the spelling bee for three consecutive years. There was Muskogee to the north, where I went at the age of five for my first pair of eye glasses—the malady brought on, I was told, by reading by the dim light of a kerosene lamp. It was a combination of these personal and family experiences that forced my parents to the conclusion that Rentiesville was not a viable community. They resolved to move to Tulsa. First, my father would go, find a place, set himself up in the practice of law, and we would follow six months later, in June, 1921, when my mother’s school closed for the summer recess. That June, however, we received word that in Tulsa there was a race riot, whatever that was, and that the Negro section of that highly segregated community was in flames. At the age of six I sensed from my mother’s reaction that my father was in danger. We were all relieved several days later, therefore, when a message arrived that he had suffered no bodily harm, but that the property he had contracted to purchase was destroyed by fire. He practiced law in a tent for several months, and our move to Tulsa was delayed by four years. In the month before I reached my eleventh birthday, we arrived in Tulsa. It was quite a new world, and although a city of less than moderate size at the time, it was to my inexperienced eyes perhaps the largest city in the country. I did not see much of it, however, for racial segregation was virtually complete. I thought that Booker T. Washington, the school where I enrolled in grade seven, was the biggest and best school until one day I saw Central High for whites. It was a massive, imposing structure covering a city block. I was later to learn that it had every conceivable facility such as a pipe organ and a theater-size stage, which we did not have. I also learned that it offered modern foreign languages, and calculus, while our school offered automobile mechanics, home economics, typing, and shorthand. Our principal and our teachers constantly assured us that

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we need not apologize for our training and they worked diligently to give us much of what was not even in the curriculum. Now that the family was together again I had the example and the encouragement of both of my parents. My mother no longer taught but she saw to it that my sister and I completed all of our home assignments promptly. Quite often, moreover, she introduced us to some of the great writers, especially Negro authors, such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and James Weldon Johnson, who were not a part of our studies at school. She also told us about some of the world’s great music such as Handel’s Oratorio “Esther,” in which she had sung in college. While the music at school was interesting and lively, especially after I achieved the position of first trumpet in the band and orchestra, there was no Handel or Mozart, or Beethoven. We had a full fare of Victor Herbert and John Philip Sousa, and operettas, in more than one of which I sang the leading role. Often after school I would go to my father’s office. By the time I was in high school, the Depression had yielded few clients but ample time, which he spent with me. It was he who introduced me to ancient Greece and Rome, and he delighted in quoting Plato, Socrates, and Pericles. We would then walk home together and after dinner he went to his books and I went to mine. Under the circumstances, there could hardly have been a better way of life, since I had every intention after completing law school of some day becoming his partner. It was in secondary school that I had a new and wonderful experience which my parents did not share. It was the series of concerts and recitals at Convention Hall, perhaps even larger than the theater at Central High School which I never saw. As in the other few instances where whites and blacks were under the same roof, segregation was strict, but I very much wanted to go with some of my teachers who always held season tickets. My parents would never voluntarily accept segregation, consequently, the concerts were something they chose to forego. Even at court my father refused to accept segregation. Whenever I accompanied him, which was as often as I could, he would send me to the jury box when it was empty or, when there was a jury trial, have me sit at the bench with him. They took the position, however, that if I could beat the humiliation of segregation, I could go to the concerts. Thus, I could purchase my own tickets with the money I earned as a paper boy. To be more accurate, I was not the paper boy, but the assistant to a white man who had the paper route in the black neighborhood. It was at one of these concerts that I heard Paul Whiteman present Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” while on a nationwide tour in 1927. I also attended the annual performance of the Chicago Civic Opera Company, which

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brought to Tulsa such stellar singers as Rosa Raisa, Tito Schipa, and Richard Bonelli. I am not altogether proud of going to Convention Hall; there are times, even now, while enjoying a symphony or an opera, when I reproach myself for having yielded to the indignity of racial segregation. I can only say that in the long run it was my parents who knew best, though later I made a conscious effort to regain my self-respect. There were many sobering experiences at Fisk, which I entered on a tuition scholarship in 1931. The first was my encounter with at least two dozen valedictorians and salutatorians from some of the best high schools in the United States. The fact that I had finished first in my high school class did not seem nearly as important in Nashville as it had in Tulsa. Imagine my chagrin when a whiz kid from Dayton made all A’s in the first quarter while I made two B’s and a C+. My rather poor grades were somewhat mitigated by my having to hold three jobs in order to pay my living expenses. I was also absolutely certain that the C+ resulted from whimsical grading by the teaching assistants in a course called “Contemporary Civilization.” As I think of it now I still become infuriated, and if there was anyone to listen to my case today I would insist that my examination be reevaluated and my grade raised accordingly! I was consoled by my salutatorian girl friend, now my wife of forty-seven years, who over the years had lent a sympathetic ear to my rantings about the injustices in that course. She can afford to be charitable, she received a grade of B+. Another sobering experience was my first racial encounter in Nashville. At a downtown streetcar ticket window, I gave the man the only money I possessed, which was a $20 bill. I apologized and explained that it was all I had and he could give me my change using any kind of bills he wished. In an outburst of abusive language and using vile racial epithets, he told me that no nigger could tell him how to make change. After a few more similar statements, he proceeded to give me $19.75 in dimes and quarters. From that day until I graduated I very seldom went to Nashville, and when I did I never went alone. It was about as much as a sixteen-yearold could stand. I thought of that encounter some three years later, and felt almost as helpless, when a gang of white hoodlums took a young black man from a Fisk-owned house on the edge of the campus and lynched him. As president of student government I made loud noises and protests to the mayor, the governor, and even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but nothing could relieve our pain and anguish or bring Cordie Cheek back. Incidentally, the heinous crime he had committed was that, while riding his bicycle, he struck a white child who was only slightly injured.

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Still another sobering, even shattering, experience was my discovery at the end of my freshman year that my parents had lost our home and had moved into a four-family apartment building which they had built. I knew that the country was experiencing an economic depression of gigantic proportions, that unemployment had reached staggering figures, and that my father’s law practice had declined significantly. I was not prepared for the personal embarrassment that the Depression created for me and my family, and frankly I never fully recovered from it. The liquidation of all debts became an obsession with me, and because of that experience my determination to live on a pay-as-you-go basis is as great today as it was when it was not at all possible to live that way. Despite these experiences my years in college were pleasant if hectic, rewarding if tedious, happy if austere. Most classes were rigorous, and everyone was proud of the fact that the institution enjoyed an A rating by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The faculty was, on the whole, first-rate, and they took pride in their scholarly output as well as in their teaching. Although the student body was all black, with the exception of an occasional white exchange student or special student, the faculty was fairly evenly divided between white and black. It was an indication of the lack of interest in the subject that we never thought in terms of what proportion of the faculty was white and what proportion was black. Since I was merely passing through college en route to law school, I had little interest in an undergraduate concentration. I thought of English, but the chairman of that department, from whom I took freshman English, discouraged me on the ground that I would never be able to command the English language. (Incidentally, he was a distinguished authority in American literature and specialized in the tradition of the Gullah-speaking people of the Sea Islands. I was vindicated some years later when he chaired the committee that awarded me the Bancroft Prize for the best article in the Journal of Negro History.) My decision to major in history was almost accidental. The chairman of that department, Theodore S. Currier, who was white, had come into that ill-fated course in contemporary civilization and had delivered the most exciting lectures I had ever heard. I decided to see and hear more of him. During my sophomore year I took two courses with Professor Currier, and my deep interest in historical problems and the historical process and what he had to say was apparently noted by him. Soon we developed a close personal relationship that developed into a deep friendship. Soon, moreover, I made the fateful decision to give up my plan to study and practice law and to replace it with a plan to study, write, and teach history.

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My desire to learn more about the field resulted in his offering new courses, including seminars, largely for my benefit. He already entertained the hope that I would go to Harvard, where he had done his own graduate work. I had similar hopes, but in the mid-1930s when the Depression wreaking its havoc, it was unrealistic to entertain such hopes. With a respectable grade point average (that C+ prevented my graduating summa cum laude) and strong supporting letters from my professors, I applied for admission to the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Harvard required that I take an aptitude test that must have been the forerunner to the Graduate Records Examination. It was administered at Vanderbilt University, just across town but on whose grounds I had never been. When I arrived at the appointed place and took my seat, the person in charge, presumably a professor, threw the examination at me, a gesture hardly calculated to give me a feeling of welcome of confidence. I took the examination but cannot image that my score was high. As I left the room a Negro custodian walked up to me and told me that in his many years of working there I was the only black person he had ever seen sitting in a room with white people. The record that Fisk made that year was more important. The Association of American Universities placed Fisk University on its approved list. On the basis of this new recognition of my alma mater, Harvard admitted me unconditionally. Apparently this was the first time it had given a student from a historically black institution an opportunity to pursue graduate studies without doing some undergraduate work at Harvard. The University declined, however, to risk a scholarship on me. Admission to Harvard was one thing, getting there was quite another. My parents were unable to give me more than a very small amount of money and their good wishes. I was able to make it back to Nashville, where Ted Currier told me that money alone would not keep me out of Harvard. He went to a Nashville bank, borrowed $500, and sent me on my way. Shortly after my arrival in Cambridge in September, 1935, I felt secure academically, financially, and socially. At Fisk I had even taken two modern foreign languages in order to meet Harvard’s requirement, and in Currier’s seminars I had learned how to write a research paper. Since I was secretary to the librarian at Fisk for four years, I had learned how to make the best use of reference materials, bibliographical aids, and manuscripts. Even when I met my advisor, Professor A. M. Schlesinger, Sr., I did not feel intimidated, and I was very much at ease with him while discussing my schedule and my plans. After I got a job washing dishes for my evening meal and another typing dissertations and lectures, a feeling of

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long-range solvency settled over me. Although I had a room with a Negro family that had taken in black students since the time of Charles Houston and Robert Weaver, I had extensive contact with white students who never showed the slightest condescension toward me. I set my own priorities, however, realizing that I had the burden of academic deficiencies dating back to secondary school. I had to prove to myself and to my professors that the Association of American Universities was justified in placing Fisk University on its approved list. I received the M.A. degree in nine months and won fellowships with which I completed the Ph.D requirements. There were few blacks at Harvard in those days. One was completing his work in French history as I entered. As in Noah’s Ark, there were two in the law school, two in zoology, and two in the college. There was one in English and one in comparative literature, there were none in the Medical School and none in the Business School. The most traumatic social experience I had there was not racist but anti-Semitic. I was quite active in the Henry Adams Club, made up of graduate students in United States history. I was appointed to serve on the committee to nominate officers for the coming year which, if one wanted to be hypersensitive, was a way of making certain that I would not be an officer. When I suggested the most active, brightest graduate student for president, the objection to him was that although he did not have come of the more reprehensible Jewish traits, he was still a Jew. I had never heard any person speak of another in such terms, and I lost respect not only for the person who made the statement but for the entire group that even tolerated such views. Most of the members of the club never received their degrees. The Jewish member became one of the most distinguished persons to get a degree in United States history from Harvard in the last half-century. The course of study was satisfactory but far from extraordinary. Mark Hopkins was seldom on the other end of the log, and one had to fend for himself as best he could. I had no difficulty with such a regimen, although I felt that some of my fellow students needed more guidance than the university provided. In my presence, at the beginning of my second year, one of the department’s outstanding professors verbally abused a student visiting from another institution and dismissed him from his office because the student’s question was awkwardly phrased the first time around. Another professor confessed to me that a doctoral committee had failed a candidate because he did not look like a Harvard Ph.D. When the committee told him that he would have to study four more years before applying for reconsideration, the student was in the library the following morning to begin his four-year sentence. At that point, the chairman of the

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committee was compelled to inform the student that under no circumstances would he be permitted to continue his graduate studies there. When I left Harvard in the spring of 1939 I knew that I did not wish to be in Cambridge another day. I had no desire to offend my advisor or the other members of my doctoral committee. I therefore respectfully declined suggestions that I seek further financial aid. It was time, I thought, to seek a teaching position and complete my dissertation in absentia. I had taught one year at Fisk following my first year at Harvard. With five preparations in widely disparate fields and with more than two hundred students, I learned more history than I had learned at Fisk and Harvard. I early discovered that teaching had its own very satisfying rewards. For some fifty-two years, there have been many reasons to confirm the conclusions I reached at Fisk, St. Augustine’s, North Carolina College at Durham, Howard, Brooklyn, Chicago, Duke, and short stints in many institutions here and abroad. After I committed myself to the study, teaching, and writing of history. I was so preoccupied with my craft that I gave no attention to possible career alternatives. Less than two years into my career, however, when I was working on my second book, the president of a small but quite respectable historically black liberal arts college invited me to become dean of his institution. It was at that point that I made a response that was doubtless already in my mind but which I had not yet articulated. I thanked him and respectfully declined the invitation on the grounds that my work in the field of history precluded my moving into college administration. When the president received my letter, he sent me a telegram informing me that he was arriving the following day to explain his offer. During the three hours of conversation with him I had ample opportunity to state and restate my determination to remain a teacher and writer of history. Each time I did so I became more unequivocal in my resistance to any change in my career objectives. I believe that he finally became convinced that he was indeed wrong in offering me the deanship in the first place. From that day onward, I had no difficulty in saying to anyone who raised the matter that I was not interested in deanships, university presidencies, or ambassadorships. And I never regretted the decision to remain a student and teacher of history. There is nothing more stimulating or satisfying than teaching bright, inquisitive undergraduates. It was puzzling, if dismaying, when a student complained, as one did at Howard that my lengthy assignments did not take into account the fact that his people were only eight-five years removed from slavery. It was sobering, but challenging when an undergraduate asked, as one did at Brooklyn if I would suggest additional

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readings since he had already read everything in the syllabus that I distributed on the first day of class. It was reassuring to find that some students, such as those at Chicago, came to class on a legal holiday because I neglected to take note of the holiday in my class assignments. It was refreshing, even amusing, when students requested as some did at Duke, that the date for the working dinner at my home be changed because it conflicted with a Duke-Virginia basketball game. As Harry Golden would say, only in America could one find undergraduates with so much chutzpah. There came a time in my own teaching career when I realized that with all my frantic efforts at research and writing I would never be able to write on all the subjects in which I was deeply interested. If I only had graduate students who would take up some of the problems regarding slavery, free blacks, the Reconstruction era and its overthrow, it would extend my own sense of accomplishment immeasurably. That was a major consideration in my move in 1964 from Brooklyn College to the University of Chicago, where for the next eighteen years I supervised some thirty dissertations of students who subsequently have published more than a dozen books. In view of Chicago’s free-wheeling attitude toward the time for fulfilling degree requirements, there is a possibility that eight years after retirement, I might have more doctoral students to complete their work and write more books. Meanwhile, I continue to revel in the excitement of teaching in still another type of institution, the law school at Duke University. I could not have avoided being a social activist even if I had wanted to. I had been barred from entering the University of Oklahoma to pursue graduate studies, and when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People asked me to be the expert witness for Lyman Johnson, who sought admission to graduate program in history at the University of Kentucky. I was honored to do so. After all, it was easy to establish the fact that Johnson could not get the same training at the inferior Kentucky State College for Negroes that he could get at the University of Kentucky. Johnson was admitted forthwith. To me it was one more blow against segregation to Oklahoma as well as Kentucky. The defense argument collapsed when the University of Kentucky placed one of its history professors on the stand and asked him about teaching Negroes. He replied soberly that he did not teach Negroes, he taught history, which he was pleased to do. Then, Thurgood Marshall asked me to serve on his nonlegal research staff when the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sought to eliminate segregation in the public schools. Each week in the late summer and fall of 1953 I journeyed from Washington to New York, where I worked from

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Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. I wrote historical essays, coordinated the work of some other researchers, and participated in the seminars that the lawyers held regularly, and provided the historical setting for the questions with which they were wrestling. I had little time for relaxing at my home away from home, the Algonquin Hotel, but each time I entered this establishment, I made eye contact with an imaginary Tallulah Bankhead, Agnes DeMille, or Noel Coward, who were among the more famous habitués of its lobby. The historian, of all people, must not make more of his own role in events, however significant even if it is tempting to do so. It would be easy to claim that I was one of the 250,000 people at the March on Washington in 1963. I was not there and perhaps the truth is even more appealing. Since I was serving as Pitt Professor at the University of Cambridge that year, I was something of a resource person for this BBC-TV. On Richard Dimbleby’s popular television program, Panorama. I tried to explain to the British viewers what had transpired when James Meredith sought to enter the University of Mississippi. I suspect there was a bit of advocacy even in the tone of my voice. In the summer of 1963 I took British viewers through what the BBC called “A Guide to the March on Washington.” Here again, with film clips on Malcolm X, James Baldwin, A. Philip Randolph, and others. I explained why the march was a very positive development in the history of American race relations. Finally, in 1965, I was actually on the Selma march. No, I did not march with Martin, as some imaginative writers have claimed. I doubt that Martin ever knew that I was there, far back in the ranks as I was, I was not at Pettus Bridge in Dallas County, but joined the march at the city of St. Jude on the outskirts of Montgomery. I took pride in marching with more than thirty historians who came from all parts of the country to register their objection to racial bigotry in the United States. And I want to make it clear that I was afraid, yes, frightened out of my wits by the hate-filled eyes that stared at us from the sidewalks, windows, businesses, and the like. It was much more than I had bargained for. One must be prepared for any eventually when he makes any effort to promote legislation or to shape the direction of public policy or to affect the choice of those in the public service. This came to me quite forcefully in 1987 when I joined the others from many areas of activity in opposing the Senate confirmation of Robert H. Bork as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In what I thought was a sober and reasoned statement, I told the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate that there was “no indication—in his writings, his teachings, or his rulings—that this nominee has any deeply held commitment to the

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eradication of the problem of race or even of its mitigation.” It came as a shock, therefore, to hear the president of the United States declare that the opponents of the confirmation of Judge Bork constituted a “lynch mob.” This was a wholly unanticipated tirade against those activists who had merely expressed views on a subject in which all citizens had an interest. It was necessary, as a black historian, to have a personal agenda, as well as one dealing with more general matters, that involved a type of activism. I discovered this in the spring of 1939 when I arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina, to do research in the state archives, only to be informed by the director that in planning the building the architects did not anticipate that any Afro-Americans would be doing research there. Perhaps it was the astonishment that the director, a Yale Ph.D. in history, saw in my face that prompted him to make a proposition. If I would wait a week he would make some arrangements. When I remained silent, registering a profound disbelief, he cut the time in half. I waited from Monday to Thursday, and upon my return to the archives I was escorted to a small room outfitted with a table and chair which was to be my private office for the next four years. (I hasten to explain that it did not take four years to complete my dissertation. I completed it the following year, but continued to do research there as long as I was teaching at St. Augustine’s College.) The director also presented me with keys to the manuscript collection in order to avoid requiring the white assistants to deliver manuscripts to me. That arrangement lasted only two weeks, when the white researchers, protesting discrimination, demanded keys to the manuscript collection for themselves. Rather than comply with their demands, the director relieved me of my keys and ordered the assistants to serve me. Nothing illustrated the vagaries of policies and practices of racial segregation better than libraries and archives. In Raleigh alone, there were three different policies. The state library had two tables in the stacks set aside for the regular use of Negro readers. The state supreme court library had no segregation while, as we have seen, the archives faced the matter as it arose. In Alabama and Tennessee, the state archives did not segregate readers, while Louisiana had a strict policy of excluding Negro would- be readers altogether. In the summer of 1945, I was permitted by the Louisiana director of archives to use the manuscript collection since the library was closed in observance of the victory of the United States over governmental tyranny and racial bigotry in Germany and Japan. As I have said elsewhere, pursuing southern history has been for me a strange career. While World War II interrupted the careers of many young scholars, I experienced no such delay. At the same time, it raised in my mind the most profound questions about the sincerity of my country in fighting

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bigotry and tyranny abroad. And the answers to my questions shook my faith in the integrity of our country and its leaders. Being loath to fight with guns and grenades in any case, I sought opportunities to serve in places where my training and skills could be utilized. When the United States entered the war in 1941, I had already received my doctorate. Since I knew that several men who had not been able to obtain their advanced degrees had signed on as historians in the War Department, I made application there. I was literally rebuffed without the department giving me any serious consideration. In Raleigh, where I was living at the time, the Navy sent out a desperate appeal for men to do office work, and the successful ones would be given the rank of petty officer. When I answered the appeal, the recruiter told me that I had all of the qualifications except color. I concluded that there was no emergency and told the recruiter how I felt. When my draft board ordered me to go to its staff physician for a blood test, I was not permitted to enter his office and was told to wait on a bench in the hall. When I refused and insisted to the draft board clerk that I receive decent treatment, she is turn insisted that the doctor see me forthwith, which he did. By this time, I had concluded that the United States did not need me and did not deserve me. I spent the remainder of the war successfully outwitting my draft board, including taking a position at North Carolina College for Negroes whose president was on the draft appeal board. Each time I think of these incidents, even now, I feel nothing but shame for my country—not merely for what it did to me, but for what it did to the million black men and women who served in the armed forces under conditions of segregation and discrimination. One had always to be mindful, moreover, that being a black scholar did not exempt one from the humiliations and indignities that a society with more than its share of bigots can heap upon a black person, regardless of education or even station in life. This became painfully clear when I went to Brooklyn College in 1956 as chairman of a department of fifty-two white historians. There was much fanfare accompanying my appointment, including a front-page story with picture in the New York Times. When I sought to purchase a home, however, not one of the thirty-odd realtors offering homes in the vicinity of Brooklyn College would show their properties. Consequently, I had to seek showings by owners who themselves offered their homes for sale. I got a few showings including one that we very much liked, but I did not have sufficient funds to make the purchase. My insurance company had proudly advertised that it had $50 million to lend to its policy holders who aspired to home ownership. My broker told me that the company would not make a loan to me because the house I wanted was several blocks beyond where blacks should live. I

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cancelled my insurance and, and with the help of my white lawyer, tried to obtain a bank loan. I was turned down by every New York bank except the one in Brooklyn, where my attorney’s father had connections. As we finally moved in after the hassles of more than a year, I estimated that I could have written a long article, perhaps even a small book, in the time expended on the search for housing. The high cost of racial discrimination is not merely a claim of the so-called radical left. It is as real as the rebuffs, the indignities, or the discriminations that many black people suffer. Many years ago, when I was a fledging historian, I decided that one way to make certain that the learning process would continue was to write different kinds of history; even as one remained in the same field. It was my opinion that one should write a monograph, a general work, a biography, a period piece, and edit some primary source and some work or works, perhaps by other authors, to promote an understanding of the field. I made no systematic effort to touch all the bases, as it were, but with the recent publication of my biography of George Washington Williams. I believe that I have touched them all. More recently, I have started the process all over again by doing research for a monograph on runaway slaves. Another decision I made quite early was to explore new areas or fields, whenever possible, in order to maintain a lively, fresh approach to the teaching and writing of history. That is how I happened to get into AfroAmerican history, in which I never had a formal course, but which attracted a growing number of students of my generation and many more in later generations. It is remarkable how moving or even drifting into a field can affect one’s entire life. More recently, I have become interested in women’s history, and during the past winter I prepared and delivered three lectures under the general title of “Women, Blacks, and Equality, 1820-1988.” I need not dwell on the fact that for me it was a very significant learning experience. Nor should it be necessary for me to assure you that despite the fact that I have learned much, I do not seek immortality by writing landmark essays and books in the field of women’s history. I have learned much from my colleagues both at home and abroad. The historical associations and other learned societies have instructed me at great length at their annual meetings, and five of them have given me an opportunity to teach and to lead by electing me as their president. Their journals have provided me with the most recent findings of scholars and they have graciously published some pieces of my own. Very early I learned that scholarship knows no national boundaries, and I have sought

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the friendship and collaboration of historians and scholars in many parts of the world. From the time that I taught at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in 1951, I have been a student and an advocate of the view that the exchange of ideas is more healthy and constructive than the exchange of bullets. This was especially true during my tenure on the Fulbright Board, as a member for seven years and as the chairman for three years. In such experiences one learns much about the common ground that the peoples of the world share. When we also learn that this country and the western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth or of skills and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensible to making a better world. In a life of learning that is perhaps the greatest lesson of all. Additional Readings: Hughes, Langston. “Central High School.” The Big Sea. 1940.

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A Family Legacy From The Measure of Our Success A Letter to My Children and Yours Marian Wright Edelman From the perspective of Marian Wright Edelman, what is the role of family, school, and church in the intellectual development of the Black child? How does Edelman define and characterize her “extended family”? How is she able to enter discussions with both John Hope Franklin (who resides in the mid-West) and with Jocelyn Elders ( who resides in rural southwest) about the role of the “family” and/or “extended family” in communicating an African American education ethos? Examine Edelman’s article and determine the usefulness of familial, spiritual, community and education goals in Black America in the mid-1950s. Compare and contrast your findings with evidence presented by earlier Black writers in this collection. Discuss how Edelman’s father and Franklin’s father are “keepers” of a cultural tradition regarding “reading” in the evenings, a tradition that also is traceable to the slave communities. According to Edelman, “all children [must be] provided a sense of life that transcends the artificial boundaries of race, gender, class, and things.” With this statement, how does Edelman enter discussions with Booker T. Washington, Josephine Brown, and even some former slaves about the importance of preserving certain values within the Black community? Identify other customs, manners and traditions which Edelman contends should be preserved and passed on to the next generation? South Carolina is my home state and I am the aunt, granddaughter, daughter, and sister of Baptist ministers. Service was as essential a part of my upbringing as eating and sleeping and going to school. The church was a hub of Black children’s social existence, and caring Black adults were buffers against the segregated and hostile outside world that told us we weren’t important. But our parents said it wasn’t so, our teachers said it wasn’t so, and our preachers said it wasn’t so. The message of my racially segregated childhood was clear: let no man or woman look down on you, and look down on no man or woman…. Child-rearing and parental work were inseparable. I went everywhere with my parents and was under the watchful eye of members of the congregation and community who were my extended parents. They kept me when my parents went out of town, they reported on and chided me when I strayed from the straight and narrow of community expectations,

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and they basked in and supported my achievements when I did well. Doing well, they made clear, meant high academic achievement, playing the piano in Sunday school or singing or participating in other church activities, being helpful to somebody, displaying good manners (which is nothing more than consideration toward others), and reading. My sister Olive reminded me recently that the only time our father would not give us a chore (“Can’t you find something constructive to do?” was his most common refrain) was when we were reading. So we all read a lot! We learned early what our parents and extended community “parents” valued. Children were taught—not by sermonizing, but by personal example—that nothing was too lowly to do. I remember a debate my parents had when I was eight or nine as to whether I was too young to go with my older brother, Harry, to help clean the bed and bedsores of a very sick, poor woman. I went and learned just how much the smallest helping hands and kindness can mean to a person in need. The ugly external voices of my small-town, segregated childhood (as a very young child I remember standing and hearing former South Carolina Senator James Byrnes railing on the local courthouse lawn about how Black children would never go to school with whites) were tempered by the internal voices of parental and community expectations and pride. My father and I waited anxiously for the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. We talked about it and what it would mean for my future and for the future of millions of other Black children. He died the week before Brown was decided. But I and other children lucky enough to have caring and courageous parents and other adult role models were able, in later years, to walk through the new and heavy doors that Brown slowly and painfully opened—doors that some are trying to close again today. The adults in our churches and community made children feel valued and important. They took time and paid attention to us. They struggled to find ways to keep us busy. And while life was often hard and resources scarce, we always knew who we were and that the measure of our worth was inside our heads and hearts and not outside in our possessions or on our backs. We were told that the world had a lot of problems; that Black people had an extra lot of problems, but that we were able and obligated to struggle and change them; that being poor was no excuse for not achieving; and that extra intellectual and material gifts bought with them the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate. In sum, we learned that service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time. When my mother died, an old white man in my hometown of Bennettsville asked me what I do. In a flash I realized that in my work at

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the Children’s Defense Fund I do exactly what my parents did—just on a different scale. My brother preached a wonderful sermon at Mama’s funeral, but the best tribute was the presence in the back pew of the town drunk, whom an observer said he could not remember coming to church in many years. The legacies that parents and church and teachers left to my generation of Black children were priceless but not material: a living faith reflected in daily service, the discipline of hard work and stick-to-it-ness, and a capacity to struggle in the face of adversity. Giving up and “burnout” were not part of the language of my elders—you got up every morning and you did what you had to do and you got up every time you fell down and tried as many times as you had to get it done right. They had grit. They valued family life, family rituals, and tried to be and to expose us to good role models. Role models were of two kinds: those who achieved in the outside world (like Marian Anderson, my namesake) and those who didn’t have a whole lot of education or fancy clothes but who taught us by the special grace of their lives the message of Christ and Tolstoy and Gandhi and Herschel and Dorothy Day and Romero and Kind that the Kingdom of God was within—in what you are, not what you have. I still hope I can be half as good as Black church and community elders like Miz Lucy McQueen, Miz Tee Kelly, and Miz Kate Winston, extraordinary women who were kind and patient and loving with children and others and who, when I went to Spelman College, sent me shoeboxes with chicken and biscuits and greasy dollar bills. It never occurred to any Wright child that we were not going to college or were not expected to share what we learned and earned with the less fortunate. I was forty years old before I figured out, thanks to my brother Harry’s superior insight, that my Daddy often responded to our requests for money by saying he didn’t have any change because he really didn’t have any rather than because he had nothing smaller than a twenty dollar bill. I was fourteen years old the night my Daddy died. He had holes in his shoes but two children out of college, one in college, another in divinity school, and a vision he was able to convey to me as he lay dying in an ambulance that I, a young Black girl, could be and do anything; that race and gender are shadows; and that character, self-discipline, determination, attitude, and service are the substance of life…. Additional Readings: Ellison, Ralph. “What These Children Are Like” (A lecture). September, 1963.

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Alma Mater From The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Hailey When asked by audiences, what is your Alma Mater, Malcolm X always responds, “Books.” Discuss “books” as a significant symbol in the African American experience in general and specifically for Malcolm X. The biographer spent a significant number of years of his life incarcerated, but when he writes about his experience while in prison, he underscores his discovery of the values of “literacy.” How does such an experience connect Malcolm X to a definable “shared consciousness” in Black America? Be specific. Critique Malcolm 's statement: reading “attacked my ignorance.” Examine and explain the significance of such a statement from the perspective of an African American male? How does Malcolm's revelation help him to enter discussions with other African American males in this collection, starting as early as the Slave era, about education and the African American experience? The first man I met in prison who made any positive impression on me whatever was a fellow inmate, “Bimbi.” I met him in 1847, at Charlestown. He was a light, kind of red-complexioned Negro, as I was; about my height, and he had freckles. Bimbi, an old-time burglar, had been in many prisons. In the license plate shop where our gang worked, he operated the machine that stamped out the numbers. I was along the conveyor belt where the numbers were painted. Bimbi was the first Negro convict I’d know who didn’t respond to “What’cha know, Daddy?” Often after we had done our day’s license plate quota, we would sit around, perhaps fifteen of us, and listen to Bimbi. Normally, white prisoners wouldn’t think of listening to Negro prisoners’ opinions on anything, but guards, even, would wander over close to hear Bimbi on any subject. He would have a cluster of people riveted, often on odd subjects you never would think of. He would prove to us, dipping into the science of human behavior, that the only difference between us and outside people was that we had been caught. He liked to talk about historical events and figures. When he talked about the history of Concord, where I was to be transferred later, you would have thought he was hired by the Chamber of Commerce, and I wasn’t the first inmate who had never heard of Thoreau until Bimbi expounded upon him. Bimbi was known as the library’s best customer. What fascinated me with him most of all was that he was the first man I had ever seen command total respect…with his words.

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Bimbi seldom said much to me; he was gruff to individuals, but I sensed he liked me. What made me seek his friendship was when I heard him discuss religion. I considered myself beyond atheism – I was Satan. But Bimbi put the atheist philosophy in a framework, so to speak. That ended my vicious cursing attacks. My approach sounded so weak alongside his, and he never used a foul word. Out of the blue one day, Bimbi told me flatly, as was his way, that I had some brains, if I’d use them. I had wanted his friendship, not that kind of advice. I might have cursed another convict, but nobody cursed Bimbi. He told me I should take advantage of the prison correspondence courses and the library. When I finished the eighth grade back in Mason, Michigan, that was the last time I’d thought of studying anything that didn’t have some hustle purpose. And the streets had erased everything I’d ever learned in school; I didn’t know a verb from a house…. Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies. It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversation he was in, and I had tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did. It was that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary – to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school. I spend two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying. In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks. I believed it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

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I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words – immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary's first page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants. I was so fascinated that I went on – I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A section had filled a whole tablet – and I went on into the B’s. That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words. I supposed it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors – usually Ella and Reginald – any my reading books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life…. As you can imagine, especially in a prison where there was heavy emphasis on rehabilitation, an inmate was smiled upon if he demonstrated an unusually intense interest in books. There was a sizable number of well-read inmates, especially the popular debaters. Some were said by many to be practically walking encyclopedias. They were almost celebrities. No university would ask any student to devour literature as I did when this new world opened to me, of being able to read and understand. I read more in my room than in the library itself. An inmate who was known to read a lot could check out more than the permitted maximum number of books. I preferred reading in the total isolation of my own room.

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When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten P. M. I would be outraged with the “lights out.” It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of something engrossing. Fortunately, right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a glow into my room. The glow was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So when “lights out” came, I would sit on the floor where I could continue reading in that glow. At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes – until the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning. Three or four hours of sleep a night was enough for me. Often in the years in the streets I had slept less than that. I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I know right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness, that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man…. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read – and that’s a lot of books these days. If I weren’t out there every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity – because you can hardly mention anything I’m not curious about. I don’t think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did. In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I had attended some college. I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that. Where else but in prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day? Additional Reading: McCall, Nathan. Makes Me Wanna Holler. 1995.

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The Introduction from Vernon Can Read! A Memoir Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Examine Vernon Jordan’s Memoir as a signifying text on “black literacy” and the African American experience from the 1800s to the 1960s. As a graduate student, Jordan works his summer months and holidays as a chauffeur for one of Atlanta’s former mayors and financiers. Identify and discuss Jordan’s ambitions when he is not driving around the Georgia retiree? Explain how Jordan uses clearlydefined ambitions to signify on the icon of the Old South? Identify the suggested barriers which the Mayor and his generation have placed on the ancestors of Jordan. Then, explain how Jordan and members of his generation who study law at prestigious white institutions have come to undermine the Old South and its barriers? How does Jordan critique the Old South, especially its refusal to provide statewide public education for African Americans until well into the 1940s? Explain how such an obstacle does not prevent Jordan from completing his secondary and postsecondary education? Review discussions of Kelly Miller and W. E. B. Du Bois on the following: "liberal arts education," "industrial education" and "the Talented Tenth" (see Intellectual Perspectives in this text), and then examine how Jordan, the chauffeur during the summer and the prospective lawyer and "talented tenth," enters the “great debate.” In the Summer of 1955, at the end of my sophomore year in college, I worked as a chauffeur in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. It had not been my first choice of jobs. I was originally supposed to work as a salesman for the Continental Insurance Company, which had made me an offer during a campus interview at my school, DePauw University. When the interviewer said there was an opening for me in the company’s Atlanta office, I jumped at the chance. It was the perfect arrangement for me. I would have a job in the place where I most wanted to be—at home in Atlanta. At the end of the term, brimming with the confidence of a young man with two years of college behind me, I packed my bags and headed south thinking everything was in place. After a few days settling in with my family, I put on my best suit and headed downtown to the Fulton National Bank Building, where Continental had its offices. I went up to the receptionist’s desk to present myself. “My name is Vernon Jordan,” I said. “I’m a student at DePauw University, and I’m here to begin my summer internship.”

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The receptionist seemed in need of a translator to help clarify what I had just said. She was, at that moment, like a machine whose gears had ground to a halt and was struggling to get restarted. When she finally realized she’d heard what she thought she’d heard, she called for the man in charge of summer workers. “You won’t believe this,” she told him, “but there’s a colored boy out here who says he’s a summer intern.” The supervisor, a tall fellow who looked to be in his mid-thirties, came out; I introduced myself. “I’m Vernon Jordan, I was hired to be a summer intern in your office.” His reaction was not unlike the receptionist’s. But he quickly composed himself and took me inside his office. An awkward moment passed before he said, “They didn’t tell us.” “They didn’t tell you what?” I asked, even though I suspected where he was heading. “They didn’t tell us you were colored,” he replied. At that time in history, we had not yet become “black.” He went on. “You know, you can’t work here. It’s just impossible. You just can’t.” Of course, segregation was still very much a fact of life in Georgia in the summer of 1955. I was well aware of that, and of the rules that were still propping up the system. But I had thought—hoped—during those months after my interview that I had somehow made my way around them. It was my policy then, and it remains the same today, never to expect defeat before making an honest effort. Also, by then I’d come to think of Jim Crow as a lame horse that was about to be put down. The feeling was in the air. And I wanted to do whatever I could to help speed the process along. But it wouldn’t happen on that day at the Continental Insurance Company. Although I was disappointed, I knew there was nothing to be done about the situation at that particular moment. As I got up to go, my neverto-be-supervisor, not wanting to leave things as they stood, said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to call J. L. Wolfe Realty. We do business with them sometimes, and we can see if they can give you an office.” …………………………….. When I could stand it no longer, my mother, who knew I was deeply unhappy, suggested an alternative. The summer was passing, and the opportunities for other office jobs had dwindled. I wanted to work. So why not, she asked, work the balance of the time using other skills I had? I was a good driver and, like many young men in the 1950s, I was in love with

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cars. My mother ran a catering business, which meant she had contacts within most, if not all, the prominent white households in Atlanta. That is how I became a chauffeur for Robert F. Maddox. Robert Maddox was one of the leading figures in Atlanta’s white elite for most of the early part of the twentieth century. He was mayor of the city in 1910, and before that he had been active in the civic and social affairs of the town. A man of finance, he was the president of the First National Bank of Atlanta and president of the American Banking Association. Maddox’s interests and influence were wide-ranging. He had a fabulous garden on his grounds and was, for a time, the president of the Garden Clubs of America. In many ways Maddox was a symbol of the New South—open to business and economic development and devoted to progress, as long as it was within certain boundaries. When Booker T. Washington gave his famous Atlanta Exposition address (sometimes called the Atlanta Compromise), Maddox had been among the dignitaries on the platform, listening while the “wizard of Tuskegee” assured whites that blacks would make no immediate press for social equality. Maddox was very proud of having built the first very large home in Buckhead, one of Atlanta’s most exclusive neighborhoods. When I encountered him, he was well into his eighties, a widower living alone in that spectacular house, attended by a small group of servants: Joe, the chauffeur and butler, whose place I took for the month of August, when he was away; Lizzie, the cook, a middle-aged women who played the piano at the Mount Zion Baptist Church; and Troy, the yardman. Every morning I picked up Lizzie and brought her to work. If needed, I would then press one of Maddox’s Palm Beach suits as Lizzie fixed his breakfast. When she finished doing that, she would take the meal up to Maddox and then return to prepare my breakfast, which I ate in the butler’s pantry. Lizzie also made breakfast for Troy. But Troy worked in the yard and, according to age-old protocol, was not allowed to eat inside the house. His meal was handed out to him by Lizzie, and he sat on the back porch of that huge Southern house and had his breakfast. My routine varied little…….. Maddox had a wonderful library that soon became a place of refuge for me during the dead hours of the afternoon. Shakespeare, Thoreau, Emerson—it had everything. What I read most eagerly, however, were the various books of speeches in his collection. There are few things I enjoy more than a good speech and good preaching. I’ve tried my hand at doing both. The experience of saying aloud what needs to be said in front of a group of willing listeners is intoxicating….

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One book in Maddox’s library contained Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition address. Maddox was deeply impressed with Washington, as the well-thumbed pages of that part of the book showed. Maddox has vigorously underlined one particular passage, to the point of damaging the page, where Washington had said of the races, “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” This was Maddox’s credo, but, obviously, not mine. I was, after all, sitting in his private library. I sat there day after day, drinking in the atmosphere of the place—the smell of the books, the feel of them, the easy chairs. The way of life that the library symbolized—the commitment to knowledge and the leisure to pursue it—struck a chord in me that still resonates. I wanted all this for myself and my family. This was what going to college was for, to become a part of a community that appreciated and had access to a place like this. I knew I belonged there. Lizzie, on the other hand, did not think so. Whenever she saw me headed in the direction of my sanctuary, she would remind me that the place was off-limits to servants. Although I had never heard Maddox himself say so, it seemed likely that this was true. I was sure of one thing, however. This was not really any of Lizzie’s business. And I would tell her gently, but firmly, to mind her own. She continued to bother me about it until I decided to play hardball. Lizzie, it turned out, had her own little secret. She had an operation going on with the local grocer. He would overcharge Maddox, and Lizzie would look for the other way in return for provisions—hams, turkeys, and the like—that she would take to Mount Zion for after-church dinners. I suppose she thought it was all somehow in service of the Lord. But I don’t think even He would have been able to help her if Maddox’s family had found out about this. After I casually suggested this to her, I heard no more carping about servants in the Maddox library. One afternoon, as I sat reading, Maddox walked in on me. He had awakened early from his afternoon nap and had come down in his underwear, with a bottle of Southern Comfort in one hand and a glass in the other. He was clearly startled to see me there. “What are you doing in the library, Vernon?” “I’m reading, Mr. Maddox.” “Reading? I’ve never had a “N……..” work for me who could read,” he said. “Mr. Maddox, I can read. I go to college.” “You do what?” he asked. “I go to college.”

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“You go to college over there at those colored schools?” “No, sir. I go to DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.” He pondered this for a moment. “White children go to that school.” “Yes, sir.” Then the inevitable. “White girls go to that school.” “Yes, sir.” “What are you studying to be, a preacher or a teacher?” “Actually, I’m going to be a lawyer, Mr. Maddox.” “N……..aren’t supposed to be lawyers.” “I’m going to be a lawyer, Mr. Maddox.” “Hmmm. Well, don’t you know I have some place downstairs for you all to sit and do what you want to do?” “I know. But I didn’t think you’d want me to take these books down there. They should stay in the library.” He looked around and finally said, “Just read then—just go ahead.” He turned and walked out. I thought the matter was closed. I soon found out it was not. His children and their spouses came for dinner that evening, which was not uncommon. Ed Smith, married to Maddox’s daughter, Laura, was the chairman of the First National Bank, and Maddox’s son, Baxter, was its executive vice president. Maddox was at his customary place at the head of the table. As I moved among them serving soup in my white jacket and bow tie with a napkin draped over my arm, Maddox said, “I have an announcement to make.” “Yes, Papa?” one of his children said. Silence. “Vernon can read.” More silence. Maddox went on. “And he’s going to school with white children.” No one made a sound. Finally, and with a great deal of emotion, Maddox said, “I knew all this was coming. But I’m glad I won’t be here when it does.” The truth is that his guests were all quite embarrassed by this display because they knew I could read. They knew I was a college student. Maddox’s children had hired me, through my mother. My ability to read was not a detail they had thought to mention to him. Why should they have?

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For my part, the whole business seemed so absurd that there was nothing to say. I served dinner, poured the water and wine, and left them to themselves. This was not the last of it. The next day I drove Maddox and two of his friends to lunch. One was his frequent companion, Jim Dickey, another widower who lived across the street from him. The other, ironically, was James Robinson, whose grandson (also named James) in the 1980s was the chairman of the American Express Company where I was, and remain, on the board of directors. The three of them sat in the back talking about various things. I was lost in my own thoughts until Maddox’s voice cut through my reverie. “Jim?” he said to both of them “Yeah, Bob?” they responded. “Vernon can read.” What did Maddox mean to accomplish with this? I knew that some of the people who worked for him could read. Indeed, as I think back on it, I’m sure at some level he knew, too. But it was necessary for him to act as if he did not know it—at least not in any way that could change the way he viewed the brown faces who busied themselves in his service. The simple fact was that he never thought about those who worked for him in any way that did not directly affect their duties to him. We were merely entities who drove him around town, cooked his meals, brought him his food, and kept his house and yard in order. Why think about whether reading and mathematics meant anything to us? (Although I think he should have paid more attention to Lizzie’s use of math.) In the end, that part of our lives just did not matter. When I have told this story to younger people, they often ask why I was not more angry at Maddox. How could I have continued working for him under those circumstances? While I was certainly annoyed by what was going on, I did not think then—and I do not think now—that it would have done any good to lash out at this elderly man for his aggressive backwardness. Each of us has to decide for ourselves how much nonsense we can take in life, and from whom we are willing to take it. It all depends, of course, on the situation and people involved. I knew Maddox, or more precisely, I knew his type. I was aware of and had borne the brunt of the forces that helped shape him. He had lived his life as though Booker T. Washington’s program for black-white relations in the South had been enacted. To me, Robert Maddox was not an evil man. He was just an anachronism. And with the brashness of youth I mentally noted (and counted on) the fact that his time was up. I do not mean just his physical time on earth—but I believed that the “time” that helped shape him was on its way out. His half-mocking, half-serious

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comments about my education were the death rattle of his culture. When he saw that I was in the process of crafting a life for myself that would make me a man in some of the same ways he thought of being a man, he was deeply unnerved. That I was doing it with money gained from working in his household was probably even more unnerving. These things, however, were his problem. As far as I was concerned, I was executing a plan for my life and had no time to pause and re-educate him. I kept reading in Maddox’s library, but he never again announced to anyone that I could read. This story does not have a happy ending, with the old man coming to see the error of his ways and taking on the role of mentor to the young man; I would find mentors in other places. The character of our relationship, however, did change slightly, but perceptibly, about, he was forced to focus on who I really was. He became much more inclined to speak to me at times other than when he wanted me to do something for him. As we drove around, he sometimes tossed out a comment about a current issue with the expectation that I might know something about it. At the very least we could have a conversation. That held true over the course of the next few years when I worked for him during the summers and on vacation from school. The story is told, and I am not sure it is true, that in 1961, when I escorted Charlayne Hunter through the mobs at the University of Georgia to desegregate that institution, Maddox was watching the well-publicized event on television. By that time he was no longer living in the house (in 1963 he would sell the property to the state of Georgia, where the governor’s mansion now stands), and he was living in a smaller place in Atlanta attended by a nurse. The nurse recognized me and said, “Mr. Maddox, do you know who that colored lawyer is?” “I don’t believe I do.” “It’s your chauffeur, Vernon.” Maddox looked hard at the screen and said, “I always knew that “N……” was up to no good.” Additional Readings: Mays, Benjamin. Born to Rebel. 2003.

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Interview with Melba Patillo Beals (Member of the Little Rock Nine) Scholastic, Inc. Following is a transcript of the January 31, 1995 live chat with Melba Patillo Beals, one of the nine African American students who integrated Little Rock’s Central High School in September of 1957. Examine and discuss Beal’s testimony. In particular, examine how she and the other Black students withstood oppositions to enter Central High School in order to acquire equal opportunities in education in the late 1950s. Compare Beals’ testimony with the slave testimonies, compiled by Heather Williams and Janet Cornelius (see elsewhere in this text),and discuss the recurring legal and political barriers prohibiting "black literacy" in the 19th century and now in the 20th century? As revealed in Joycelyn Elders’ testimony, the parents, teachers and ministers of her community helped to instill a "sense of community" and a “spiritual and psychological foundation.” How does Beale enter into discussions with Elders about the role of the African American community in promoting such a “psychological foundation”? Examine and discuss how Beale's interview communicates a “shared consciousness” in the African American experience. Be specific. Online Host: Good afternoon! Today Scholastic is honored to welcome an important figure in the integration of American public schools, Melba Patillo Beals. She’s a featured guest during January’s special event, entitled “Honoring Dr. King.” As a teenager Melba Patillo was one of nine black students who enrolled in Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, amidst protests from the governor and much of the white community. The confrontation grew, until finally, President Dwight Eisenhower ordered thousands of federal troops and the National Guard to surround the school and ensure the safety of these nine brave students. Comment: From Bay Farm: It is so difficult not to give in to public and peer pressure as a teenager, let along facing hundreds of people in a confrontation. Your experience may help students face their own issues and resist the pressure around them. Question: We wondered how and why you were “chosen” as one of the students who would enter Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957? Melba Beals: I was chosen because I lived in the area of the school, because I had good grades, because I seemed to be even-tempered. At the first round of selections, I actually volunteered. I was selected by the Little

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Rock School Board, which sent out a call for students in the area who wanted to go. And from that original pool of more than 100 students, they selected 16, and I was one of these. The NAACP was pushing legislation that forced the school board to integrate. Question: What made you take a stand as a 9th grade student? Melba Beals: I felt that if what my parents said was correct—that God loved me equally with all the white people—then I deserved to have what everybody else had. I deserved to go to whatever school I chose. I trusted 100% that God would take care of me, because I was doing the right thing. Therefore, God was my courage. Question: Why didn’t you tell your parents you’d signed up for Central High School? Melba Beals: I didn’t tell my parents because I wasn’t totally certain at that point that anything would come of their offer to integrate. There were so many forces against it. I knew that by reading the newspaper. So, I didn’t want to frighten or upset them because I wasn’t sure how they’d react. I thought I’d wait until this was a reality. Eventually they learned that I signed up by watching the evening news—they mentioned my name. It resulted in their anguished response—as I’d anticipated. They were so very afraid. They were terrified of what people might do to us for daring to want to go to school with their children. Even though my mother had integrated the university, there seemed to be much more hostility toward black children integrating with white children. Question: Can you describe your feelings as you walked up the sidewalk that historic day? Melba Beals: The first day I approached Central High School, my heart pounded in my ears. My face was hot; I was so frightened about what would happen to me. I still remember that. My skin was stinging. I was right, because the very first day I was chased away by men carrying ropes, men from the white segregationist mob who threatened to kill me. The second time I went to Central High School, I was also frightened because I could see this huge mob gathered directly across the street from the school as I entered the side door. I couldn’t help wondering what would become of me. By noon, I had to be secreted out because the mob was overrunning the school—rushing towards us, rushing past the policemen, who were throwing down their badges and some of them were joining the mob. It was a mess. When I entered the school protected by the 101st Airborne soldiers, sent by the President to enforce the law and hold off the segregationist mob, I felt proud to be an American. I felt hopeful that integration could work. And that it would work almost immediately. I thought to myself, if

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they just get to know me, if they understand that I ‘m smart, I’m clean, that I wear nice clothes, that I polish my saddle shoes, and I sing, they will understand that although my color is brown, I am no different than they are. Question: Were you ever actually accepted by the other students? Melba Beals: In the beginning, a few of the white students reached out to us. They smiled, they wanted to talk to us. They actually tried to befriend us. But as September turned into October, these few souls were crushed in the machinery set up by segregationists to separate us, to torture us until we left the school. Physically and mentally tortured us. So within a short amount of time these white students had to cut off from us to save themselves. Otherwise they, too, would be ostracized by the segregationists. They had to turn away from us. This was the case throughout the year. Comment: We think you were brave to go to a white school. Question: How did your friends, who did not enter the all-white high school treat you? Melba Beals: My black friends eventually turned against us too, because their families were being punished by the white people who didn’t want us to integrate the school. We nine students were eliminated from the normal stream of activities at the black high school because we weren’t there. As time passed it became easier to ignore us. We were trouble in their eyes. I was very lonely. There were times at Central High School that I pinched myself to see if I really was there. Because no one talked to me, no one acknowledged my presence. My grandmother India—who had been a maid—thought that my integrating Central was a way of assuring that I wouldn’t be a maid too. It was a way of demanding that I would be treated equally and have equal opportunity, a life that she never had. So she would talk to me and say that I was chosen to perform this task by God, and if I denied that I had to do it—if I did not comply—then I would suffer in many ways…in my own heart, and in my belief in God. These beliefs were a central part of my upbringing. Comment: Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. You are an inspiration to us. Question: How unequal was your all – black school? Melba Beals: The teachers in my all-black school were dedicated and committed to making our education as good as possible. Central High School was seven floors high and two blocks square, with state-of-the-art equipment. Built in 1940s, it would stand up against any high school in the U.S. today in terms of its equipment. It was ranked very high in the nation—one of the tops in the country.

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My own high school—Horace Mann—was one story high, one tenth as large, and no comparing the equipment. Central High had typewriters, kitchens for home economics, early models of computers, extraordinary musical instruments, extraordinary physical ed. Equipment, and an enviable scholastic program. Still today, many of its students are Rhodes scholars. That was true then, and it is now. I was just there recently. I was astounded to look at the physical plant. Even though it was built so long ago, it resembles a European castle, and has not changed much since I was there. But now it’s 60% black. When I went back with all the students in 1987 (Bill Clinton called a reunion), it reminded me of those days when I walked the stairs so helpless, so powerless, awaiting attack at any moment by some ruthless student who would throw an egg, or trip me up, or call me nigger. When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw a young black boy wearing wire-rimmed glasses, slight of stature. He bowed and said, “Welcome to Central H.S. I’m the president of the student body.” Of course, I was quite tearful. Climbing all those stairs, seeing him. I hadn’t been up those stairs in 40 years. So when he stepped out, I was expecting something other than this black child. This had been my dream, my vision. This was why I had endured all the pain and physical punishment—so this boy could stand there and say that. It was amazing. Comment: I read your book and think you are a marvelous writer. I loved, too, how you gave your mom credit for encouraging that love! Question: Did you ever think about quitting school? Melba Beals: Every moment of every day. If someone called me names or spat on me, or kicked me in the shin, or walked on my heel, I thought I couldn’t make it one more moment. But each time I would go home, and my grandmother would point out that what I was doing was not for myself, but for generations yet unborn. She would tell me that I would be OK, and turn me right around and send me back. She would also inspire me, explain to me why I would want to go back. I never quit. Our goal was to make it through the year. We did. At the end of the year the governor closed all of the schools in order to prevent integration. But eventually in 1962, he would have to open the schools, and two of our nine students went back and graduated. Question: At that time did you realize the significance and impact of the event? Melba Beals: I did not. At the time, all I wanted was an equal education, the right to go to the local movies, and the right to eat in a restaurant. I had no idea of the significance of my struggle during that

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horrifying year. I just knew that something was happening inside me, and I would never, never, be the same again. Question: How did this event change your future? Melba Beals: Because of Central High School I had to leave Little Rock and my family, because the Ku Klux Klan had a price on my head— $10,000 dead and $5,000 alive. I was 16, going on 17 years old. I went to Santa Rose, CA, taken in by Dr. and Mrs. George McCabe, who I still call mom and dad today. I have two sets of parents—I’m very blessed. That’s why I don’t want anyone to believe that I have hatred in my heart for white people, or that I condone any division of the races. I do not. I would not be alive today were it not for the white people who risked their lives for mine, including a white policeman who drove us from the school, a couple of the white officials within the school, a couple of white ministers, news reporters, and people who traveled to Little Rock— Quakers—who set up safe houses and tutoring schools. They taught us nonviolence and how to protect ourselves. In the end, these white parents in Santa Rosa nurtured me, made me whole again, took me to college, and walked me over the bridge to adulthood. I finished high school in California. Montgomery High School—an integrated school. Because the Klan had this reward out for us, and because the governor closed the school, the NAACP put a call out across the country for safe houses, and the remaining black students were sent to these. So how my life was changed was by leaving my family and moving to another place. I would later become a journalist because I watched and understood that if not for the white journalists who saw and reported fairly on the events at Central High School, I would not be alive today. Comment: Melba, this is beautiful and you are doing a fabulous job— an amazing feat, online. Question: Do you still associate with any of the black students you started Central with? Melba Beals: Absolutely. I’m hoping to see them in a couple of weeks. Two of them left the country forever because they were so frightened by events. We’ve all talked regularly by phone over the years. Question: Did you know or ever meet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks? Melba Beals: A couple of times I met him. I’d love to meet her. Dr. King came to Little Rock during our troubles. Just being in the room with him was a meditative experience. It was incredible. He was so centered, so certain of the path, that it encouraged us to stick with our program. Question: When you visit schools today how do you feel when you see all races learning together?

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Melba Beals: It brings joyful tears to my heart! I laugh, and I say to myself, “You see, there is a God.” There are solutions to all of our problems. The answer is time; it takes time to make things happen. But integration is proof that all of our dreams can come true. When I was a child I never would’ve thought that this would ever have happened. And for all those people who are negative and want to look at the glass as half-empty, and who want to say that the “Brown” decision didn’t make any difference and we haven’t made any progress—I say YOU’RE WRONG. We have made progress. Because I’ve come a long way. It is a long, long way from being a little girl who grew up in Little Rock and sat in the back of the bus, and drank from water fountains marked colored, and went to a black school in an apartheid society, to my California home where I am free! A long way, so I say let’s go forward. We’ve done a whole lot in my lifetime, we can do a lot more. Everything is possible to those who have faith and belief. I just want to say also, that we all need each other, love is the answer, and that any time you look at another human being, the same God that exits in you, exists in them, and no matter where they came from, who they worship, or what they wear, you owe them eye contact, consideration, and a smile…at the very least. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you, and thank you very much for hearing me. The greatest gift you can give anyone is to listen, and to care. And that’s exactly what you’re doing. OnlineHost: Many thanks to Melba Beals for joining us this afternoon and for sharing her life and work. We appreciate this special opportunity to speak with you. And thanks to our audience for your great questions. Additional Readings: Gazella, Katie. “Little Rock Nine Alum Stresses Importance of Brown.” The University Record Online: University of Michigan. February 16, 2004. Jacoway, Elizabeth. “Into the Cauldron, The Little Rock Nine.” Turn Away Thy Sons: Little Rock, The Crisis That Shocked The Nation. New York: Free Press, 2007 Kelleher, Elizabeth. “After Facing Mobs 50 Years Ago, Nine Go Home to Honors,” Little Rock Nine Became Part of Civil Rights History as Teens.” Bureau of International Information Programs, U. S. Department of State. Online www.america.gov. August 20, 2007. Williams, Juan. “Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine.” NPR, September 21, 2007.

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The Trial From In My Place Charlayne Hunter-Gault Examine Hunter-Gault's title "In My Place" and determine her critique of social and legal challenges to educational access and opportunities in the 20th century for African Americans? How have the challenges diminished and also stayed the same since the early 18th century? Please specify. What might be concluded about the state of Georgia’s legal attempts to prohibit “Black literacy” in higher education in the 20th century? How does Hunter-Gault’s text critique the judicial policies of the University of Georgia and signify on the rhetoric of the Enlightenment which continues to surface in desegregation cases in America, even in the 20th century? Define the character and conduct of Hunter-Gault and compare it to other African Americans in the collection seeking literacy and other educational opportunities in American society. Please specify. I arrived in Athens, the “Classic City,” on the inhospitably cold morning of December 13. The courthouse, which was also the post office, was a marble building with square columns, situated behind several stately magnolia trees. The courtroom was on the second floor. By the time I arrived, it was overflowing—mostly with Black people. But there were also white spectators present. In the morning, Blacks and whites sat together, but by the afternoon they were sitting on separate sides. As for my own group, my mother was there, and so were Hamp’s father, “Tup,” and his mother, Isabel, along with Hamp. They all sat behind our lawyer’s table, in the first spectators’ row. The Anderson Independent, a newspaper from my native state, which billed itself as “South Carolina’s best newspaper,” reported on Hamp and me this way: “The Hunter girl and Holmes sat side by side during the hearing , behind their attorneys . . . Both the girl and Holmes are light-skinned Negroes. The girl wore a green dress. Holmes was wearing a dark business suit.” I was a little anxious, given how they had treated Hamp before, but I was excited, too. It was the biggest story in the state, if not the nation, that day, and I was at the center of it. In my head, I started composing the story as my eyes searched the courtroom for reporters. Our legal team seemed confident. And they were prepared. The team, besides Don Hollowell, consisted of Constance Baker Motley, from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; Horace Ward, who relished the assignment because he had been turned down years before

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when he applied to the University of Georgia Law School; Vernon Jordan, a young Atlantan who had just graduated that June from Howard University Law School; and Gerald Taylor, the Morehouse College registrar, who was helping with the records search and who would be called by our lawyers as an expert witness. While I was preparing to “cross the burning sands” in Detroit, Mrs. Motley, Vernon Jordan, and Gerry Taylor had been traveling the 75 miles every day from Atlanta to Athens, searching the records of the university for evidence that would show the university was lying about why we had not been admitted. After days of fruitless searching, Vernon Jordan discovered the critical piece of evidence: a case identical to mine in which a white female student, attending a college on the same system as Wayne, had been admitted for the winter term. In addition to asserting that there was no room, Georgia officials had also been arguing that even if they were to admit me, it would be too complicated to do so immediately because of the difficulty, they claimed, of reconciling the credits of Wayne’s quarter system with Georgia’s semester system. In a newfound, unexpected, and disingenuous burst of concern for me, they argued that I would lose credits in the transfer; therefore it would be best to delay my admission at least until I had completed the whole year at Wayne. “This is it,” Vernon remembers saying to Mrs. Motley as he located the document. And their spirits were lifted to their highest point. I had good relations with Don Hollowell, a tall, solidly built man who in some ways reminded me of my father. He spoke slowly and deliberately, savoring the flavor of his words; when he spoke, the sounds seemed to begin somewhere down in his diaphragm. The students were crazy about him. They used to chant, “King is our leader, Hollowell is our lawyer, and we shall not be moved.” Hollowell was always attentive to me, as he might have been to one of his own children. Was I eating properly? Getting enough sleep? How’s Brother Dabney? Things that I never heard from my father during that time. He was full of warmth and caring—not what one might have expected of a man with so much on his plate and so little in the way of financial remuneration to show for it. One day, he might be getting students out of jail; the next, he might be trying to save a Black man named Nathaniel Johnson from the electric chair. And then there was his all-important latest case, which could open the entire educational system in the state of Georgia, from the university level on down. Despite the pressures on him and his small underpaid staff—Vernon remembers making about $35 a week, and he had a wife, Shirley, who worked at the

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Welfare Department, and a baby daughter, Vickee—Hollowell was always calm. I don’t think I ever saw him angry. Vernon Jordan was so close in age to the students that we treated him as if he was one of us. He had just graduated from Howard Law School, in those days, the premier place to attend if you wanted to be a civil-rights lawyer. It was the alma mater of some of the most distinguished civilrights lawyers in the country, including Thurgood Marshall, who was now heading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York and who was overseeing our case, one of almost two hundred cases, the Inc. Fund was pursuing all over the South. As Vernon later recalled, “The Howard University Law School was the place where many of the dry runs for civil-rights cases up to that time were argued, in the moot courtroom.” Not every Black lawyer at Howard wanted to practice civil-rights law, but those like Vernon prepared to, because , as he explained it, “in those days, civil-rights law was at the cutting edge of change in the South. And the South was home, and I wanted to be home and be a part of that change.” He then added, “And, of course, I wanted to join Hollowell. He was the civil-rights lawyer.” Earlier that summer, Vernon had taken the Georgia bar exam. While helping prepare our case, he was once in Judge Bootle’s chambers, along with the State Attorney General, Eugene Cook. Cook started a conversation. As Vernon recalled, he said, ‘You know, you can’t pass the bar this time.” Before Vernon could reply, Cook continued: “You don’t show any respect. Before you could get out of law school good, you were serving the governor with papers, me with papers. Trying to be a lawyer before you were a lawyer.” As Vernon struggled to maintain his composure, Cook continued, in a near-stream-of-consciousness ramble. “You know, Horace Ward made the highest score ever on the bar exam,” he said, referring to the latest young lawyer to join Hollowell’s firm. Ward was eager to be a part of the Georgia case because he had applied in 1950 for admission to the law school and in 1951 had been turned down for much the same “reasons” that Hamp was, some eight years later (“Evasive,” Some doubt about his truthfulness”). He then went on to Northwestern, where he graduated with honors and was named to the prestigious Order of the Coif, an academic distinction similar to Phi Beta Kappa. At this point, Vernon remembers, he couldn’t resist a question. “How did you know that?” he asked Cook. “That’s supposed to be kept by the numbers, so that it can be confidential.” And Cook, smiling slyly, said, “We keep up with y’all.”

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Most of the time, I related to Vernon as I might to an older brother, one that I felt I was probably almost as smart as. And when he had time to think about it, which wasn’t often, he responded in kind. Like the time during the trial when we were having lunch at the small Black restaurant in Athens owned by the Killian family. I wasn’t hungry when the waiter, one of the Killian brothers, took the order. As usual, Vernon, who was 6 feet 5 inches tall, and rail-thin, and had been brought up by his mother, Mrs. Mary Jordan, a popular Atlanta caterer, to appreciate good food, ordered a healthy portion. When his meal came, and before he could raise his fork, I had reached for a French fry. “That looks pretty good,” I said. “You don’t mind if I have a little taste?” “Why don’t we just order another one?” Vernon said, his tone a bit testy. “Oh, that’s okay.” I said, “I’m not really hungry.” I believe Vernon thought I was a little spoiled, but he indulged me. I believe, too, that the few years he had on me gave him a different perspective on my needs then, and what they were likely to be in the trying months ahead. I had a totally different relationship with Constance Baker Motley. In fact, I was hard-pressed to call it a relationship at all. She barely acknowledged my presence—-hardly what I had expected from the lawyer who had come all the way from New York to champion my cause. Almost six feet tall and solidly built, Mrs. Motley had a strong handsome face that bespoke the heritage of a West Indian people who knew where they came from and were proud of it, a face that was rarely disturbed by smiles, and a demeanor that didn’t allow for frivolous laughter. If and when she did laugh, the sound was deep, round, and resonating, and she seemed to regard it as too precious to share with just anyone. I never, for example, heard her laugh in the presence of any of the state or university officials, except as a barely masked form of sarcasm. It seemed as if this was the most important mission of her life. In fact, she often talked about the South in those days as if it were a war zone and she was fighting in a revolution. No one—be it defendant or plaintiff—was going to distract her from carrying her task to a successful conclusion. Even though she ignored me, I didn’t exactly hold it against her. I used to sit in the courtroom and watch her in action, suffering not a single state witness gladly, from the chairman of the Board of Regents to the president of the university, O. C. Aderhold.

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The university, of course, continued to say that they were not discriminating against us. As Calvin Trillin later wrote in An Education in Georgia: In a state whose highest officials were declaring daily that there would be no integration, a state that had a law on the books establishing that funds would be cut off from any school that was integrated, a state whose governor had promised in his campaign that “not one, no, not one” Negro would ever attend classes with whites in Georgia, Omer Clyde Aderhold . . . had the following exchange with the state’s own lawyer, B. D. Murphy: “Murphy: Now I’ll ask you if, as an official of the University of Georgia for the period you have stated and as President of the University of Georgia since 1950, you do know any policy of the University of Georgia to exclude students on account of their race or color? “Aderhold: No, sir, I do not. “Murphy: Have you ever had any instructions from the Chancellor of the University System or the Chairman of the Board of Regents or anybody else to exclude Negroes as applicants to the University of Georgia? “Aderhold: I have not. “Murphy: Have their applications, so far as you know, been considered on the same basis as the application of white people? Aderhold: On exactly the same basis, as far as I know.”

Mrs. Motley’s style could be deceptive, often allowing a witness to get away with one lie after another without challenging him. It was as if she would lull them into an affirmation of their own arrogance, causing them to relax as she appeared to wander aimlessly off into and around left field, until she suddenly threw a curve ball with so much skill and power that she would knock them off their chair. It happened with the university registrar, a small, weasel-like man who appeared stooped from carrying the white man’s burden. Trillin captured it this way: At some point in every higher-education case, Mrs. Motley, who has handled practically all such cases for the Inc. Fund, always asks the university registrar what she calls “the old clincher”: Would he favor the admission of a qualified Negro to the university? The registrar, often a segregationist himself, has to answer yes, as Danner did during the Georgia trial, and face the newspaper stories the next day that begin, as the Atlanta Journal’s began: “The University . . . registrar has testified in Federal Court here that he favors admission of qualified Negroes to the University.

It was during his testimony that some white spectator in the back of the room was heard to say: “Look at that poor lying bastard. He’s so damn dumb he doesn’t even know what just hit him.”

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I tried to but couldn’t read Judge Bootle. He seemed not to be intimidated by, or to favor, either side. He’d just sit there, behind his black horn-rimmed glasses, seemingly at ease in his empowering black robes as he listened for evidence that could lead him to go against every tradition in his Southern upbringing and culture. Could we count on him to have the courage to uphold the law of the land, or would he be just another Southern white man? As the week wore on, the crowd of spectators grew. Some two hundred were on hand when Hamp and I testified. On December 15 Billy Dilworth of the Anderson Independent reported it in a way that got the basics right, although the interpretation was clearly a reflection of the source: Holmes, talking in a muffled-like tone and appearing nervous at varying periods, said university officials, at an interview several weeks ago, did not ask him about traffic violations. He said he was charged with speeding at Hapeville and drew a $20 fine. He does not consider this an arrest, he said. On examination by Horace Ward, one of four attorneys, Holmes said he has never attended any racially-mixed parties, does not have any comment on the present segregation problem at New Orleans and Atlanta and has never taken part in so-called “tea house’ parties in Atlanta. Holmes, of athletic build, said university officials also interviewed him about a “red light district’ in Athens. Holmes said he replied he knew nothing about such a place. Holmes also denied “attending” any houses of prostitution. He did admit taking part in inter-racial cultural groups, which he described as lectures, and debates between school groups, including Emory and Ga. Tech. Earlier, Paul R. Kea, assistant registrar at the university, said Holmes “seemed to have a chip on his shoulder,” in the interview with Registrar Walter Danner, Dr. M. O. Phelps, admissions counselor, and Kea. “He was not as cooperative as we would have liked him to have been,” Kea declared. “Holmes directed answers more to the floor than to us, and answered, in many cases, in monotone, mumbling, and slouched in his chair. “It seemed he had the attitude,” Kea said, “that now you folks have something to sell me and I am here.” The Hunter girl, in a brief appearance before the court, said she desires entry in the university because of economic factors. She said she is presently working on a newspaper in Atlanta and “wants to write about people in Georgia.” The Hunter girl seemed calm and obviously chose her words carefully. Kea, in describing the girl in an interview with university officials, said she was “well-mannered, and answered questions forthrightly.”

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Our side presented, “what they seemed to think [was] their prize example so far,” as the Atlanta Journal put it. It was the case of Bebee Dobbs Brumby “of the Marietta Brumbys,” as the white Southerners were inclined to say when identifying their well-to-do. (Bebee, who wanted to study journalism, had applied a year after I did and was admitted to the winter term.) Another related piece of evidence that Vernon had discovered was a handwritten note written by the chancellor and attached to a letter asking him to use his influence to get a white girl admitted. The note read: “I have written Howard [Howard Calloway, a member of the Board of Regents] that it is my understanding that all of the dormitories for women are filled for the coming year. I have also indicated that you relied on this fact to bar the admission of a Negro girl from Atlanta . . . ” After my testimony, I asked if I could go back to Detroit. I now had a feeling that my “normal” days as a college student were about to end, and I was eager to get in as much as possible. This would be my first Christmas party as a Delta, a Big Sister, and I really didn’t want to miss it. My lawyers said it was fine for me to go, but when they asked the counsel for the state, the answer was no. I was as furious as I think Hamp had been about the way he had been treated during the examination. And while they had been much gentler with me, I now felt they were getting back at me. After court adjourned for the day, I lapsed into a funk so strong it was casting a separate shadow from my own. I walked to the car and slumped down in the back seat , funk in tow. A few minutes later, Mrs. Motley slid into the car beside me. The first thing she did was take off her shoes. She had a problem with water retention, and during the long periods in the courtroom when she was examining or cross-examining a witness, and refusing to diminish her power and authority by sitting down, her legs would swell so much that her ankles would disappear and her feet would look as if they were about to spill over the sides of her shoes. When she got in the car, I hadn’t expected her to say anything, so I was startled when she spoke. “I know how you feel,” she said in a voice more tender than I had ever heard from her before. “You do?” I said in disbelief. “Oh yes,” she said warmly. “My husband and 8-year-old son, Joel, are back in New York, and I had hoped to be able to get away early so we could have a long weekend. I have to be away from them so much.” Then she paused, as if she were contemplating the faces of her loved ones, and she frowned. “Those bastards!”

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I instantly forgave every slight. Here was this woman who was systematically making mincemeat of all of “those bastards,” now empathizing with the crushed feelings of a nineteen-year-old in a way so tender as to be almost unimaginable. I was so moved by this moment of connection that I almost got over my funk, except that I didn’t want to abandon the mood that we were now so intimately sharing. On Saturday, I returned to the stand briefly to testify that I was not taking any courses at Wayne that I couldn’t get credit for if I didn’t continue with them in the second semester. Then Judge Bootle gave our lawyers five days to submit their briefs, and the state five days after that. He sat a deadline of January 4, by which time he said he wanted to have everything in his hands. I flew back to Detroit just long enough to pack for the holidays and attend our party. Back home, the student boycott of the Atlanta stores, with its slogan “Wear old clothes for dignity,” had already significantly hurt retail sales and was now affecting Christmas shopping. Bobby Dabney, who had graduated from Tuskegee Institute the year I graduated from Turner, and had been commissioned in the air force as a second lieutenant, was home on leave from Hempstead Air Force Base in New York. He had rediscovered me the year I graduated, and we had been developing a relationship through the mail. We spent a lot of time with each other over the holidays, discussing, among other things, whether we had a future together. The papers had been full of stories about the trial, and everywhere I went people wanted to discuss the case. One night Bobby raised the issue of my career aspirations, which were now familiar to everybody who read the newspaper, listened to the radio, or watched television. “How serious are you about this reporter business?” he asked. “Very,” I answered. “It’s the only thing I’ve wanted to do since ninth grade.” “Well, can you imagine if we get married and I’ve been on the base all day, and you’ve been at the newspaper all day. Do you think I’d be interested in hearing about all of that?” I was so taken aback by the question that I had to think about my response for a minute. Had I heard what I thought I heard? I said, “Well, I would hope so.” Then he said, “Well, I’m not so sure.” Remembering Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie, I felt something inside me fall off the shelf, and I had to go inside and look around to see what it was. On Bobby’s final night home, we went to Mass and came home late. I was driving, so I dropped him off first. We sat talking in his driveway for

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a few minutes, and I brought up the thing he had said and tried to tell him how it had affected me. He said I had misunderstood. What he was trying to say was that he didn’t know anything about the newspaper business and that it would be hard for him to discuss it. I responded by telling him that he could learn more if he read more newspapers and magazines and books. He then promised me he would, and asked me to continue to think about our spending our life together. At that moment, he was very tender and appealing. We kissed good night, and he got out of the car. I lived just a few blocks away, and was home only a few minutes before the phone rang. I was startled, because everyone knew that my mother didn’t allow calls that late. When I answered, it was Bobby. I thought he was calling to make sure that I got in all right, but before I could be please at the thought, he said, “Two white men just left my house. They approached me as soon as you drove off and said they wanted to ask me some questions.” My heart started pounding hard. Who were these men? What did they want? Was there any danger? I told Bobby to sit tight, that I would call Donald Hollowell immediately. I awoke him out of a deep sleep, but he was immediately alert. He listened as I outlined the conversation I’d just had, and then asked for Bobby’s phone number. “I think I’ll just have a little conversation with the brother,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’s unfortunate for him, but this is what we’ve got to expect. Now, you get some sleep. And don’t worry.” I was worried but reassured. Hollowell had that effect. Within no time I was asleep. We never did figure out exactly who the men were, but Hollowell thought they might have been Georgia investigators. We never heard any more of it, and they never again attempted to see Bobby. When I left from Wayne a few days later, no one was making any predictions about what Judge Bootle was going to do. Back on campus, it was business as usual—until Friday, the end of my first week back. An article I wrote shortly after for a new Black magazine, The Urbanite, captured the moment as I live it: So it was on that afternoon of January 6, 1961m when I rushed into the dormitory at Wayne, grabbed my mail and ran up to my room on the second floor, my only concern was getting into something comfortable before going to a sorority meeting at five o’clock. I had not been in my room ten minutes before I was called to answer the phone out in the hall. Expecting to hear one of my friends on the other

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end, I was surprised to hear, instead, an unfamiliar voice saying, “Congratulations!” “For what?” I asked, completely in the dark. The woman on the other end identified herself as a reporter for a New York newspaper. She told me that news had just come over the wires that Federal Judge Bootle had ordered Hamp and me admitted to the University of Georgia. By the time she managed to read the entire release to me, both of us were between laughter and tears. My caller brought both of us back to reality by pointing out that she had a story to write. From that moment on there was no possibility of a moment of calm and quiet in which I could think about what was ahead. Downstairs the switchboard operator was so swamped by calls. I grew even more confused as reporters seemed to be arriving by the carload. In a way it was a relief to break away and rush off to a sorority meeting. I arrived, bubbling over with elation, and began eagerly sharing the long-awaited news with my Delta sisters. But I found [some of] their reaction[s] rather puzzling. Instead of sharing in my jubilation, they became quiet and solemn. I remember walking over to one of the several Pats in the room, throwing my arms around her, and asking her why she was so solemn. “This is so great!” Pat, barely able to contain her emotions, reached to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye and said “I’m afraid of what they might do to you.” It was a thought that had never crossed my mind, so I held her even closer now , a little teary-voiced myself, said, “Don’t worry, Pat. It’s going to be all right.” It was not until thirty-six hours later, as I sat on the plane to Atlanta, that I began to realize what Pat had already seen. As I looked around the plane, wishing for someone with whom I could share my happiness, all the faces I saw were cold and unfamiliar. Gradually I began to realize what I had left behind, and what might lie ahead. Additional Reading: Douglass Martin. "Vivian Malone Jones 63 Dies; First Black Graduate of University of Alabama." New York Times, October 14, 2005.

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UGA: The Beginning Charlayne Hunter-Gault Identify and discuss the numerous barriers faced by Hunter-Gault as she seeks admissions to the University of Georgia. Compare and contrast the barriers faced by Hunter-Gault with the barriers faced by African Americans excerpted in Heather Andrea Williams, Janet Duitsman Cornelius, W. E. B. DuBois , Melba Beale, John Hope Franklin, and Vernon Jordan. Explain your findings. Define and discuss “resilience” and “perseverance” as exemplified in the testimonies of African Americans from the slaves seeking literacy as early as the 17th Century to Frederick Douglass of the 19th Century and Hunter-Gault of the 20th Century. I arrived at the Atlanta airport on Sunday and was greeted by a lively throng: my mother, grandmother, and brothers; Attorney Hollowell; Father Banks; lots of reporters and photographers. I was wearing one of my favorite new acquisitions, which I had purchased with the money I had earned at Wayne, a fake-fur leopard jacket, and I was carrying my talisman, a stuffed dog named Snooky. My aging grandmother grabbed us both with a hug that belied her increasing frailty. Everybody was very excited and happy. All over the airport, I could see people reading newspapers that carried headlines about the decision and its immediate aftermath: STATE ASKS U.S. JUDGE TO STAY NEGRO ENTRY. NEGRO BOY REGISTERS AT ATHENS. UNIVERSITY, STUDENT LEADERS PRESS FOR ORDER ON CAMPUS. I could see in the eyes and on the faces of Black skycaps and porters, maids and janitors, not the shiftless, diffident “niggah, naggah, reggah, taggah,” but the same prideful brightness that I saw emanating from my own family as one after the other recognized me as I walked through the airport. Our time has come. It was a heady but humbling experience—one that I would go through many times in the coming years, saying of them and people like them, as my father had said of God to me, “If you are with Him, you are Power.” They imbued me with their power through the light in their eyes and the smiles on the faces, the light that would keep fear in its place and confidence in mine. I had been disappointed when I learned, before I left Wayne, that Hamp had already gone to the campus on Saturday morning. But as Donald Hollowell explained, the Attorney General had dispatched himself to Macon to request that Judge Bootle grant a stay of his order “to allow

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[the State] more time to prepare an answer” to the integration order, or , as one paper called it, the “mix” suit. In addition to Attorney Hollowell, Hamp had been accompanied by his father, the Reverend Samuel Williams, the pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta and president of the vigorous NAACP Atlanta chapter, and Julian Bond, in his capacity as reporter for the Atlanta Inquirer, an upstart new newspaper that grew out of the movement. They caught the registrar’s office by surprise as they entered and laid a copy of the court order on Walter Danner’s desk. After securing the registration papers, Hamp and the others left, with Hamp promising to return Monday morning. Later, President O. C. Aderhold told reporters, “If he shows up with all the credentials required by the court, then I think Mr. Danner will be required to register him.” That day, the university was relatively quiet, although some students burned crosses and, at the entrance to the campus, hung a Black effigy, which they called “Hamilton Holmes.” Calvin Trillin, then a reporter for Time, had arrived on campus Saturday, and later wrote about a “sorry demonstration” he had witnessed that night. He described it this way: “Twenty or so students wanted to burn a cross made of two-by-fours, but, owning to lack of kerosene and a lack of experience in the art, they were unable to get it ablaze.” Some students, however, were successful in another location and even one white journalism student, Marcia Powell, told me later that it was a frightening, almost unbelievable spectacle. The dean of students, Joe Williams, met with campus leaders, including fraternity and sorority heads, presumably in an effort to head off trouble. He later revealed that he had a “plant” among the fraternity brothers who kept him apprised of the real attitudes inside the fraternity houses. Later, there were reports of Klan members visiting some frat houses and urging members to revolt against the desegregation order. There was also great fear at the university, from the president on down, that Governor Ernest Vandiver would attempt to honor his campaign promise of closing down the university by letting ‘not one, no, not one” Negro student ever to attend classes with whites. President Aderhold issued a statement expressing the “firm belief” that the university would continue its century and a half of service to “people of this state without interruption.” And a group of students began organizing a petition drive to that effect. One eighteen-year-old student from Macon was quoted in the combined Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution:”I don’t want them to close the school. I had rather that [integration] just happened than to close the school.”

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If there was one symbol of pride that personified the aspirations of white Georgians of every class and stripe, it was the 176-year-old state university, or, as Georgia liked to claim, on a technicality, the oldest statechartered university in the nation. To be sure, Georgia was not Yale, the elite institution that inspired its charter and much of its early architecture—the explanation for the fact that many of the buildings on campus have what Trillin called “a blocky, New England look.” But it was the place where the sons of Georgia’s majority—small-town farmers and businessmen—passed on their traditions and sense of place, not only in Georgia but in the universe, which also tended to be Georgia. It was through such critical institutions that white privilege and power were nurtured and preserved. The governor of Georgia was an alumnus, and so was U. S. Senator Richard B. Russell, along with members of the Board of Regents and the state legislature. Georgia was the place where the good ol’ boys cemented their relations with other good ol’ boys, and where they found wives among the good ol’ girls, most of whom had come there for that purpose. But on that Saturday the governor was telling Georgians that Judge Bootles’s ruling had put the university in jeopardy of closing, and that if Hamp and I entered a fund cutoff would go into effect because of the provision in the state law that said, “No further funds shall be used or expended on an integrated school.” On Sunday, we had a reunion at my house. It was decided that we would go to the campus early Monday morning, in part because there were no hotels for Blacks in Athens, and even if we could find a Black home courageous enough to take us in, we had no security. We weren’t afraid, but we weren’t crazy. Throughout the weekend, the entire state was caught up in the fast-moving developments that had now placed Georgia in a historic spotlight, white sons and daughters facing their most apocalyptic moment since Sherman marched to the sea. Black sons and daughters their most liberating moment since the Emancipation Proclamation. It was with a heady sense of history that we started out for Athens early Monday, just as the sun was rising on a cold Georgia morning. My mother, Vernon Jordan, and I were in one car, and Hamp and his father in another. We had no security, and no plan for what we would do in the event that we were attacked on the way or after we got there, despite the history of white violence on this route. No, this was the morning when I thought about how I was going to take my first steps onto the campus as if I knew my place, only this time, for the first time, it would be I who would be defining my place on my terms, on territory that was their pride but was now mine, too.

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I found myself thinking about Gwen Walker and how she glided so regally across the Spelman campus, in a cool, confident stride that said, “I love myself, and even if you don’t love me, you will respect that which I love above myself.” That’s how I would walk onto the campus at Georgia, loving myself a lot and demanding respect. It was on the way to Athens that my mother recalled for me her first memory of the University of Georgia, and the fate of the niece of the white woman who had been so evil to my grandmother. It wasn’t as if my mother took any pleasure in the awful event of the niece’s untimely death all those years ago, but it seemed just one of the many ways that a Black mother of Georgia could put into context the awesome step that her child was about to take. I didn’t know what to expect as we pulled up to the entrance to the campus and saw a large crowd milling about the arch. We got out of the car, and with Vernon Jordan leading the way, we mounted the steps and walked onto the campus. The crowd, noisy and boisterous but not threatening, was all white, and turned easily into a blur on my visual screen. We walked through the crowd, unhurried but with purposeful strides. The university did not have a security force that hadn’t made any provisions even for temporary protection on this potentially troublesome occasion. As the crude dissents of some of the louder students found their way to my ears—“Nigger, go home” and “There goes the nigger”—I thought of them as just that: the crude dissents of people not sophisticated enough to “throw some big words on them,” as I used to do on the way home from E. R. Carter. And while I felt that they were more of an amusing nuisance than anything else, the pace that Vernon and I had set proved too much for my mother, who was several inches shorter than either of us. At one point halfway between the registrar’s office and the Journalism Building—a five-minute walk at most—she called out, “Slow down. My legs are not as long as yours.” Even when the distraction caused by the crowds I was struck by the quiet majesty of the beautiful old white building, with its two towering Roman columns, which housed the Henry W. Grady-School of Journalism. That remarkable façade did not relate to anything inside; still, I looked forward to its seedy, unpretentious interior, which I imagined would be rather like some old Southern newspaper office. I was met at the door by George Abney, a member of the journalism faculty, a gentle, balding man of medium height and weight who always seemed to be on the verge of being embarrassed about something. As I got to know him later on, I came to realize that that was just a manifestation of his shy nature. Despite his apparent nervousness, he was friendly and

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almost warm. He looked me straight in the eye when he talked to me, and I liked that. As we discussed my schedule, it sounded almost like a routine student conference, but for the presence of my mother, my lawyer, and a horde of newspeople outside clamoring to get in. In fact, although we were unaware of it at the time, a local radio reporter had been peering through the mail slot and recording for broadcast later that night an “on the scene” report. Everything was going smoothly, when we suddenly heard a loud cheer rise from the crowd. We had no idea what provoked it, until seconds later when the phone rang. George Abney listened without expression and a lot of “Un-huhs,” then hung up. He told us he had just been informed that Judge Bootle had granted the state’s request to halt the registration. The disappointment was obviously evident, as, from over the transom, one of the students who had a clear view of Vernon yelled out. “The nigger lawyer ain’t smiling no more.” It was a devastating blow. We had come so far, and now this. Wasting no time, we gathered up our things and headed for the car, saying nothing and trying to put on our best faces. Once in the car, we discussed our options. Ray Ware, the local Black businessman who had been gracious and helpful during the trial, lived a few blocks away, over a funeral home in an old two-story wooden building. So we drove to his house, where we found him and wife, Lulu, eager to help. Vernon got on the phone and learned that Mrs. Motley and Attorney Hollowell were already on their way to the Court of Appeals in Atlanta with a request to lift the stay. Marcia Powell, the perky nineteen-year-old white sophomore from Columbus, who had introduced herself as a reporter for the campus newspaper, The Red and Black, and who seemed to understand that this was no ordinary campus assignment, had somehow managed to latch on to us and was now scribbling furiously. Years later, she shared her notes of that moment. They read: A little after 2 p.m. two newspapermen and I arrived at the apartment where Hamilton and Charlyne [sic] were resting and awaiting the decision of Judge Tuttle . . . We sat watching TV, several other white people there—reporter from the Banner and another student . . . Charlyne was sleeping when we arrived . . . looked completely exhausted. . . Hamilton and I talked for a while, he said he was pre-med & wanted to specialize in surgery; rest just general conversation. . . His lawyer asked me where I was from, etc. I let them know my position on the issue . . . [around] 3:30 p.m. the phone rang & Hamilton answered, then called the lawyer, who listened for several seconds. Hamilton woke Charlyne and we & her mother waited for the lawyer. Vernon George [sic] to give us the decision of the judge. . . He hung up and said that the judge had thrown out

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Bootle’s ruling . . . “We’re in,” was Hamilton’s reaction . . . His father, Alfred, said, “Well, I’m happy now. I’ve been awfully disappointed, but now I’m jubilant. . . About that time everyone seemed to come in & prepare to go to the university. .. Charlyne said when asked her feeling: “I’m just anxious to begin classes.” I had been chatting with Mrs. Hunter, passing time, until the news came. Watching bulletin on TV, she said, “God is good, isn’t He?”

Judge Elbert Tuttle’ “hard-hitting” decision generated the headline TUTTLE BOOTS BOOTLE. Judge Bootle had said his stay was solely for the purpose of allowing the state to “test the correctness” of his integration order, but Judge Tuttle declared that “the quickest disposition that can be made of this case, so far as granting these plaintiffs their right to an education in a state institution—as the trial court has clearly found that they are entitled to—is the best solution not only for them but for all others concerned.” As to the argument that the state faced a possible fund cutoff, Tuttle said that the courts cannot fail “to prevent a continued denial” of constitutional rights simply because granting relief “will produce difficult or unpopular results.” White sons of Georgia, affronted by one of their own, lashed out at Tuttle. Lieutenant Governor Garland Byrd called the ruling “a political decision,” and, echoing a widespread sentiment among white Southerners everywhere, said that the decision indicated that Tuttle “apparently has no regard for the general welfare of our educational institutions and further demonstrates an inclination to impose the harshness of the full force and effect of the U. S. government on the people of his native state.” The Attorney General announced that he would fly to Washington to appeal to another Southerner, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. The Atlanta papers profiled Tuttle, Byrd, and Black as the “Trio Deciding School’s Fate,” pointing out that Black, a former Ku Klux Klanner, was feared by both liberals and conservatives, who pointed to his record as a New Deal liberal senator from Alabama; Tuttle was a native Californian, a vigorous long-time Republican, and trustee of three of the Black colleges in Atlanta; and Bootle, a long-time Republican and former law-school dean. Both Bootle and Tuttle were appointed to the bench by President Eisenhower, who in 1957 had ordered federal troops in to protect the “Little Rock Nine,” the Black children who were integrating Little Rock’s Central High School. This week, coincidentally, was Eisenhower’s last as President. He never spoke on the matter. (A good many Blacks in the South still maintained allegiance to the “party of Lincoln,” despite the

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Kennedy victory, and these actions by Republican judges helped solidify that allegiance.) At that moment, we all loved Judge Tuttle and, with warmth for him in our hearts, rushed back to the university to complete our registration. To sign up for our classes, we had to actually go to each of the various departments, which were situated all over the vast, sprawling, hilly campus. The crowds followed us everywhere we went—especially me, for some reason. There was always speculation about why they followed me and not Hamp, but I didn’t and don’t have a clue, because while the officials were more willing to admit me than Hamilton, this display seemed to suggest that perhaps they thought I would be the more easily frightened. The closest we came that day to an incident that could have turned ugly was when we got into a car belonging to William Tate, the dean of men, to drive to Ag Hill, the part of the campus where agriculture and sciences were taught, and where all the dormitories were situated. Dean Tate was a bear of a man, with a rather odd shape. He was burly and broad on top, and his body increasingly narrowed below the waist and toward his feet. He was easy to caricature because he was so much like a caricature in the flesh. The gruff old dean had spent most of his life at Georgia, dating back to the beginning of his own student days in 1920. Years after this particular day, he told me that he and President Aderhold “felt that integration was inevitable; it would come. But we felt . . . that the longer we could delay it, the less possibility there was of violence.” However Tate felt at the time, his stoic countenance obscured it. Late they told Calvin Trillin that his philosophy during that first week was merely “to keep some of the boys who feel strongly from making fools of themselves.” As we got into the car, Tate had his first big opportunity. We were a tight fit, and at first, the students thought this was funny; then, as they moved in closer to peer into the car, some of them started to rock the vehicle. It was a very tense moment—but only a moment—before Tate hurled himself out of the driver’s seat and started grabbing at the students closest to him. He was known for snatching up ID cards, and this whirlingdervish act did the trick. While not dispersing, the crowd pulled back far enough to allow the car to pass and, except for a few “nigger this's” and “nigger that’s,” we proceeded without any more interference. We returned to Atlanta that night with plans to come back to Athens for classes the following morning—amid rumors that the school was going to be closed for a “holiday” session, the governor calling it “the saddest duty of my life.”

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Meanwhile, the campus was in turmoil, with the mood changing often, depending on what was leaking out about plans to close the university. The students pressed President Aderhold, whose inconclusive statements led some to call our, “O.C., can you say?” In Washington, the appeal was passed to the full Supreme Court, which declined to hear it. Students responded by hoisting Confederate flags, exploding firecrackers, and roaming up and down the streets of Athens chanting and blowing horns. Later that day, Hamp and I returned for classes and went our separate ways, he to the home of the Black restaurant owners, the Killians, who had rented him a room in their house, and I to Center Myers Hall, the central dorm of three adjoining buildings called North and South Myers. Had we been admitted as freshmen, Hamp would have had to stay on campus, too, but now the on-campus requirement applied only to women. I was met at the entrance to Center Myers by a charming, grandmotherly woman with thinning grey hair and case of low-slung postmiddle-age spread. Greeting me kindly and without self-consciousness, she introduced herself as Mrs. Minnie Porter and welcomed me to Center Myers. I introduced my mother. We chatted for a few minutes; then she led us across the huge, unadorned center lobby, furnished with chairs and low tables where the young women “received company” and up two steps to a narrower corridor. A few more feet beyond, on the left, Mrs. Porter stopped and opened the door onto a two-room suite. As I stepped inside, I quickly eyeballed the spacious room, seeing a kitchenette to my left, an adjoining room to my right with a twin bed, and off the room in which I was standing, a full bathroom. Not bad, I thought; it could have been a lot worse. The suite, she explained, had been the offices of the Women’s Student Government Association, but they had been moved elsewhere to make room for me. The fiction of no-room-in-the-inn was still being maintained, although I didn’t get the feeling that Mrs. Porter really cared one way or the other. During the course of the conversation, I learned that there were no other students living on the first floor. Since we hadn’t known what to expect, I had packed only a few clothes in a small suitcase, which I now placed on the floor in the bedroom off to the right. Mrs. Porter showed me the phone buzzer, explaining that I would have to come out of the room and into the hallway booth to receive any calls. It had been a long day and we had come a long way, and while I wasn’t sure how I would feel after my mother and Don Hollowell left, I knew that it wouldn’t help matters if I delayed their departure. At that point, however, no provisions had been made for me to eat. Whether I would be

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allowed in the cafeteria was still an open question, one that nobody wanted to pursue at that moment. So, after I deposited my things, we went off to Killian’s and ate an early dinner. I was back before dark. My mother and I hugged each other, and if she was worried she never let me know. I said goodbye and went into my room to await my first night as a student at the University of Georgia. Within a few minutes, there came a knock on my door. A few of the girls wanted to say hello. Somewhat shyly, they introduced themselves, and I invited them in. They looked around and commented on the spaciousness of the suite, and on the fact that I had a full bathroom. Upstairs, they told me, they had only showers. And no cooking facilities. They didn’t stay long, and soon I was along and thinking about what my life was going to be like in the coming days. Outside, a crowd was gathering as the early winter darkness fell. Dean Joe Williams had advised me to keep my blinds drawn for the time being, but I could plainly hear the noise outside. Two, four, six, eight, We don’t want to integrate Eight, six four, two We don’t want no jigaboo

I was too tired at this point even to be tempted to look out the window. I reached into the suitcase, which was still where I had set it down, and took out a pair of pajamas. Within a few minutes, I had drifted off to sleep, to the strains of those peculiar Southern lullabies. On Wednesday morning, Hamp and I sat down in our first classes at the University of Georgia. Although nearly two hundred years of segregation had just officially died, in my classroom in Meigs Hall, at least it was a quiet death. No words were spoken to mark the moment, although a psychology class on human behavior might have been a good place for it. In a way, though, this was a relief to me, because at that point I just wanted to get on with being a student as quickly as possible. I thought that the worst was over. Sometime near the end of the class, I wrote in the margin of my notebook “Boring.” When I left Meigs that morning, accompanied by a university official, I caught sight of Calvin Trillin. I really liked him, and so did Hamp and Carl Holman, who always called him Trilling. He was known as “Bud,” and he had a way of interviewing that was unobtrusive, that made you feel he really cared. I think it was because he listened more than he talked. A lot of the white reporters seemed always to be trying to convince me that they weren’t “like the rest of them,” that they weren’t bigots or, in a kind of cathartic confession, that they once had been but were getting over it. Then they’d want to tell you their theories and solutions and give you advice on

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what you should do and how you should act. Then, too, there was the egregious incident in which a CBC reporter, Robert Shackney, or his cameraman—there’s always been a dispute over which it was but no question that it was a CBS employee—who had arrived late to a demonstration that had taken place as I walked by, and not to be outdone by the other networks, organized a group of students to reenact the incident long after I had left. But even against lesser sensation-mongering. Trillin, but I trusted him instinctively. We developed such a good rapport that in no time he was telling me what a dumb idea it was to major in journalism. An English major from Yale, Trillin, whenever he had an opening pressed me to switch my major to English . But I wouldn’t hear of it. My first journalism course, Ethics, was taught by the dean, John Drewry, the epitome of the aging Southern gentleman, courtly, portly, and deliberate in speech. The one thing no one discriminated about was gossip about the dean, and within short order I had found out about his peccadilloes, one of which had led his wife to shoot him in the behind—an image that defied even my vivid imagination. I was a little taken aback by his announcement that he was about to call the roll, a practice I thought I had left back in grade school but given the lingering antebellum attitude toward women on the campus and the immature behavior of many of its students, I soon realized that it made all the sense in the world. It was about 2 p.m. when a college official brought me back to my ground-floor room at Center Myers. I did an interview with newspaperwomen in which I was asked if I was excited during the hours preceding my first class. I responded, “The only thing that excites me in the night before a German exam. I also was upbeat about the reception I had received throughout the day both in class and at the dorm. I said I felt that it seemed to me that one of the big problems in this situation was that “a lot of people don’t know about other people. And a part of a lot of this is that people don’t know enough about one another.” I added, “The best way to find out is to ask questions.” I was asked a lot of questions, which ranged all over the lot, including what I was planning to do for the weekend (“Go home and get some more clothes”) and for the coming summer (“…thinking about going to Africa,” a trip the Deltas were offering for the best essay on “Why I Want to Go to Africa,” which I was sure I would win).

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Early that night, on the NBC network news, Chet Huntley praised the governor, the university, and the students for their behavior, which, he said, “has made this whole country feel good.” His comments proved premature. Outside the door there were crowds. At one point, I got a phone call. It was Bud Trillin calling—to see how I was holding up, suspect—but asking me instead if I wanted him to bring me a pastrami sandwich. I captured the rest of the events of that fateful day in an article. I wrote soon after for The Urbanite. The new Black entry into the magazine world was published by Bryon Lewis, the former private in my father’s glee club in Alaska, who was now out of the army and living in New York. I wrote: The lobby of the dormitory was almost empty, but after I had gone to my room many of the girls came down as they had the day before—to welcome, observe, inspect. Mrs. Porter, the housemother, came down and told the girls not to stay too long because I was tired. She had advised me earlier that it would be best to have my dinner in my room that night. This, again, seemed only a normal precaution, considering the circumstances. It began getting dark around six o’clock. After the last of the girls had gone, everything became amazingly quiet inside the dorm. I picked up a book and tried to study, but then firecrackers began popping outside, as they had the night before. I decided there was nothing to do but go to bed, despite the racket outside. Mrs. Porter came in again to see if I had eaten and to ask how I was feeling. She suggested that I keep the blinds closed and stay away from the windows. “We expect some trouble,” she said. Later, as I went into the hall for a drink of water, I caught a glimpse of the faculty members the students had nicknamed “The Baby-Sitting Crew,” because they had volunteered to patrol the building. It seemed to me the group was larger than it had been the night before. I returned to my room. After a while, the noise outside gradually grew larger and uglier. Though I did not know it at the time, a hotly disputed last-minute defeat of the basketball team at the hands of Georgia Tech had helped create anything but a mood of sweet reasonableness in the crowd that had marched from the gym to the dormitory. Reading or sleeping was out of the question. I was in the first room of the duplex apartment. Suddenly there was a loud crash in the bedroom. Not stopping to think, I rushed in, only to be stopped in my tracks by another crash, as a Coca-Cola bottle followed the brick that had ripped through the window a moment before. Jagged splinters of window glass and fragments of the bottle had spattered across my dress, slippers, and the skirts and blouses that I had not yet had time to unpack. Strangely, I was not at all afraid at this moment. Instead, I found myself thinking, as I stood there in the midst of the wreckage. So this is how it is. At this time, I did not know that all the students had been told by the riot planners to turn off the lights in their rooms when it got dark. With the

A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience rest of the building in darkness, the three brightly lit windows of my apartment must have made an inviting target for the mob out on the lawn. I heard the dean’s voice in the hall and called out to him, but he didn’t hear me. I met a campus patrolman in the hall and told him what had happened. As he went into my room to investigate, I continued down the hall to a counselor’s office a couple of doors away. There in the darkness I went to the window and looked out. All I could see was a moving mass— not a face that could be recognized as belonging to a separate person. Even the voices seemed to run together in one confusion of shouts and jeers. Turning from the window, I saw that the partition between the counselor’s office and the lobby was open. The crashing of the glass and the screams of one girl on the floor above, who had been struck by a brick as she looked out her window, had brought most of the girls into the lobby. Some of them passed back and forth, looking to see how I had reacted to all of this. I realized that it was nearing time for the eleven o’clock news and that my mother in Atlanta would be waiting up for it. I called her and told her that I was all right. Though I knew she could hear the noise in the background, she seemed relatively calm. But I could not get her to promise that she would go to bed at once, without waiting to look at the television news program. After I hung up, [Paula Leiter], one of the most genuine persons it has been my good luck to meet came down and began talking to me. Though it was clear that she herself was nervous, she did all she could under the circumstances to take my mind off what was going on. This was anything but easy, since by now the hostility from outside was being echoed by some of the girls inside the dorm. Perhaps it was partially out of hysteria, or partially because the girl upstairs had been hurt. At any rate, a group of girls began tramping in a continuous circle, yelling insults first at me and then at the schoolmate who had come in to befriend me. It was hard to sit there and listen to some of the things that were said about me without being able to answer. I was told I was about to become “a Black martyr, getting fifty dollars a day for this from the NAACP”—a piece of news that would have considerably surprised my family. The city police outside, after having waited in vain for the state patrol, finally resorted to tear gas. The gas fumes began seeping into the dorm, and the girls were told to change the linen on their beds. This prompted deliberately loud offers of a dime or a quarter to Charlayne for changing the sheets of these same residents who professed to believe that I was already being paid at a rate of over six dollars an hour, if figured on the basis of an eight-hour day. My new friend was beginning to get drowsy, though she tried not to show it, and I suggested that she go to bed, assuring her that I would be all right. After she had left, I wondered how many people, myself included, would have had the courage to do what she had done.

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“suspended.” Yet what could we say or do about it? I remember almost nothing of the trip itself. Before I knew it, we were in Atlanta, turning into my block and pulling up in front of the porch where a local Black man had stood so many months ago telling me that I should give up the idea of trying to go to the University of Georgia. The news of our coming home had preceded us, and a few close friends had gathered at the house. Most reassuring of all, my mother, her hair all done up in braids, came out with open arms to welcome both Hamp and me and to take some of the sting out of our forced homecoming.

No one I knew slept much that night. Wylma and Carolyn had sat glued to the television set, waiting for a call or some kind of word. But, of course, I had no time to call. Events were moving too fast. At my house, reporters and supporters mingled in what for me was a very surrealistic moment. Hollowell talked about the plan to go to Macon the next day to file a motion to get us readmitted, and there was some talk about whether we would go back immediately or get some rest, at least through the weekend. A lot would depend on what Judge Bottle said. Finally, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, the only person left at our house was Carl Holman. By this time he had become, if not the guru to me that the he was to the Student Movement, something close to that. Whenever I needed to talk to an adult on whom I could count not to be judgmental but to give me advice that I could trust without qualification, the person I went to was M. Carl, as the students who were closest to him called him, or “Mo,” for Moses, as those who knew him going back to his younger days in St. Louis called him. Like Elsie Evans before him, Carl came close to my idea of an educated person—quick-witted, sharptongued (when necessary). He not only was well-read but retained everything he had ever read and could quote with ease (though never pedantically) from Shakespeare, Marx, Gandhi, Faulkner, Du Bois, the Bible, you name it. While most of us treated him as if he were married to the Movement, Carl, in fact, had an actual family. His wife, Mariella, taught high-school French and had an appealing sassiness that complemented and sometimes checkmated Carl’s sharp wit. They had three children: Kerry, Karen, and Kent, all under ten at the time. And then there were all of us. Carl was the guiding light of the Inquirer, which had evolved from the early days of the Movement, when the students made use of leaflets to inform the community of their activities, local support being an important element of their efforts. The leaflets took the form of a newsletter entitled The Student Movement and You, and every Sunday, Julian Bond, Mary Ann Smith and her sister, Ruby Doris and a handful of others would fan

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out to the churches and, as worshippers entered or emerged, hand them a leaflet. Each Sunday, Julian recalled, they would hand out between 50,000 and 75,000 leaflets. At the same time, James Gibson, who was home from the army and taking a break before going back to graduate school at Temple University, was working at the Welfare Department. As his younger brothers, John and Ben, students at Morehouse, told him what was going on with the students, he soon got the idea of sharing this information with other Black workers at the Welfare Department. Using sheets of carbon paper, Jim typed summaries of the information piped from John and Ben. Workers surreptitiously began funneling contributions for the students’ bail fund through Jim. “I used to put the money in a brown paper bag and deliver it to the switchboard operator at Atlanta Life,” Jim recalled. “They, one day, the switchboard operator told me Jesse Hill wanted to meet me. When he came down, he told me he wanted me to meet Julian Bond and Whitney Young. Shortly after that meeting, we combined all our efforts and became the Publicity Committee for the Students. Jesse Hill and others arranged for Black realtors to withhold their advertising from the Atlanta World, which was refusing to report on the students’ boycott, and with the first $300 they collected from the realtors to place their ads with the students, the Inquirer was born. In many ways Carl, who was well over six feet and had a kind of gangly walk, was like the typical bespectacled, absentminded professor. For example, he would begin boiling eggs on the stove, then go off to work on an editorial. Once, we were all working in his basement, where the Inquirer was produced, when we were stunned by what sounded like shots being fired. Since that was totally within the realm of possibility, we headed upstairs somewhat uneasily, only to find out that the water had boiled out of the pot and the eggs had exploded all over the ceiling. But there was nothing typical about his forty-two-year old “Young Turk.” If, as the students used to say, “King is our leader, Hollowell is our lawyer, and we shall not be moved.” Carl was surely their philosopher-king, who inspired them with his clarifying vision, both in his crusading editorials, in which he wrote under the pen name Vox, and in the endless strategy sessions among the students and all the various adult camps. From the first day, Carl treated my journalistic aspirations with dead seriousness, and helped nurture and encourage them every step of the way. “Char,” he said now, in my empty living room, calling me by the name used by my family and closest friends “you’re not going to like this, but you’re going to have to abandon your precious bedroom tonight and sleep in the back.”

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“But why, Vox?” I asked. Well, it’s just a precaution, in case we get some visitors of the unwanted kind.” Although he never said it, there was a lot of concern over the fact that there were no grown men in my house—just my younger brother, my mother, and my grandmother. The two women had been taking care of us and each other and the house for so long that they never would have given the situation a second thought. But in this case, the gentle giant, through still gentle, was talking like a warrior. My mother didn’t say anything, just quietly left the room . A few minutes later she reappeared. “Here,” she said as she walked up to Carl. “You may be needing this.” “Yikes!” Carl yelped, lurching back and throwing his hands up in the air. “What’s that?” It’s an old German Luger that Charlayne’s daddy brought home from the war. But it works and its fully loaded.” laugh. “You better hang on to that. It’d be just my luck to open those blinds and wing a policeman.” Earlier in the evening, there had been considerable police activity outside. My ten-year-old brother, Henry, told me that earlier that night he had slipped out onto our screened-in-front porch and, crawling around on his hands and knees, had witnessed an incident in which a white man drove up into our driveway. As the man was getting out of his car, he was set upon by several white men wearing suits and stingy brim hats, one of the identifying symbols of the FBI. The man did come fast talking, and they let him continue up to our door. It turned out to be Father Banks, who had seen what was happening on television and had come to offer support. But now, as Carl prepared to be bedded down for the night in the most vulnerable spot in the house, we couldn’t be sure if the good eyes were really good guys and if they were still out there. There were no incident that night, and early the next morning a rather sleepy-eyed Vox ambled out of our house and went home to his family. Throughout the day, reporters dropped in or called. Sometimes, it all resembled a wake. As they interviewed me about my reaction to the riot, I interviewed them about the same thing. Although I was yet to take the course, I was practicing basic Journalism 101: Who, what, when, where, and why? I learned that there had been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about whether to cancel the basketball game. Everyone knew that such a blood-feud event would be intense in the best of times, and it was a mild understatement to say that these were not the best of times. In fact, one

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student was quoted after the game as saying, “We got beat by Georgia Tech and we got beat by the niggers.” In addition, the plan for the evening’s post-game activities was so well known that one of the main activities around campus was getting a date to the riot. Also, Klansmen had been spotted in the crowd, including the Grand Kleagle from Atlanta, Calvin Craig. And it was known that several Klansmen had visited some of the fraternity houses during the day. The papers were reporting that six Klansmen had been arrested and accused of disorderly conduct. They were all released on $205 bond. This information was disturbing, but I think there were two things that disturbed me more than any of the others. One was that the riot was being organized by students from the law school, possibly during a meeting of the Demosthenian, a campus literary society. During an earlier meeting, one of the ardent segregationists had predicted that we would “receive the same greeting Autherine Lucy had gotten at the University of Alabama.” Lucy, the first Black woman to enter the University of Alabama, had been expelled from there five years before. It was this core group that was believed to have been encouraged with phone calls from top officials of the state and other “big names in state politics.” John Pennington and Gordon Roberts, two well-plugged-in reporters I got to know during the crisis, wrote on Sunday: “Judging from the wild disregard for law and order, and the open flouting of city police and university officials, the demonstrators must have had reason to believe that they could raise the roof with impunity.” One of the names most often mentioned was Peter Zack Geer, executive secretary to the governor, who in fact issued a statement saying, “The students of the university have demonstrated that Georgia youth are possessed with the character and courage not to submit to dictatorship and tyranny.” The other piece of what I considered really bad news was that ‘at the height of the mob action,” after at least ten windows in my dorm had been smashed by bottles and bricks, Joe Williams, the Dean of Students, who later led me out through tear gas, had called for help from the State Patrol, whose headquarters was only five minutes away, and they had never arrived during the riot. They did come eventually to take Hamp and me back to Atlanta. Upon learning that bit of news, I felt a total vindication for my histrionics of the night before. When reporters asked me about the riot, I first tried to correct their mistaken assumption that I had been crying because I was afraid. “I was crying because I was very much disturbed, disappointed and hurt that I had been suspended,” I said

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When asked if I would go back, I said, “I would go back if given the chance, whatever it entails.” No one had ever told us what to say or what not to say, from the very beginning of the process. We did know that Autherine Lucy was expelled from the University of Alabama when critical remarks were made by her Inc. Fund lawyers over her suspension “for her own safety” during a riot the previous day. She never went back. Our attorneys had simply told us to be careful not to give the Georgia officials the kind of bogus excuse they used against Autherine. But other than that, we had not been coached. And generally we spoke our minds. While I continued to be upbeat, saying that the ugliness was far outweighed in my mind by “the friends I made who impressed me as being really sincere,” Hamp was less sanguine. “I’ll go back with an open mind,” he said, but added, “I don’t think anything could compensate for what happened Wednesday night.” Meanwhile, Attorneys Hollowell and Motley made it to Macon and asked Judge Bottle orally for an immediate reversal of the suspension. Bootle refused to entertain the plea, and ruled instead on another motion before the court that struck down the state law that would have cut off funds to any state institution that desegregated. In Georgia newspapers, it was called “A Killing Blow to Ga. School Segregation Laws.” It wasn’t the victory our attorneys had gone after, but it was a victory nonetheless. One day later, however, on Friday afternoon, our attorneys had again made the trip back to Macon and stood, once again, before Judge Bootle. After giving the university time to readmit us voluntarily, and following a discussion about whether rules would be bent or changed to allow me to live off campus, Judge Bottle issued his next-to-last ruling in the case of Holmes et al. v. Danner. He ordered the university to admit us no later than 8 a.m., Monday morning. Additional readings: James Meredith. Three Years in Mississippi. Indiana University Press, 1966.

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Reflections of Family and Education from Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud: A Memoir Cornel West Cornel West engages readers in discussions about "perseverance," "resilience" and "survival" as he shares what he has learned from his immediate and extended family members who struggled with and triumphed over racism and discrimination. Identify and discuss the lessons which are passed on to him. Examine the value of education in the home of the West family. Identify the ways in which the West family echoes a "shared consciousness" about the values of education within Black America. Please specify. Examine West's testimony and give evidence of what has been worth preserving regarding the "humanity" of the Black family. In his excerpted Memoir, Cornel West critiques the racial, social, and economic barriers in the 1960s that contribute to the achievement gaps in the education of African American males. Discuss West's personal findings. How prophetic are West's explanations for the achievement gaps among African American males in the 21st century when he writes, “Give him more trained teachers.” "Give this child more books." “Give him tougher lessons.” “Challenge his little mind.” “Keep him busy learning new things.” “Keep him intellectually stimulated”? January 1, 1961 I cannot possibly conceive of two brothers being any closer than Cliff and Cornel West. I followed him every minute of the day from sports to music to church. He taught me how to read when he first learned how to read. The way he walked and talked and related to people was the way I wanted to walk and talk and relate to people. He was my model in every sphere of life. On the streets and in the classrooms and sanctuaries of our childhood the West brothers were indivisible and inseparable. Cliff was my model in every sphere of life. In fact he made history as one of the first black kindergarten students enrolled in Topeka, Kansas after the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Over the Christmas holidays Cliff said, “Time for us to get baptized.” We made the decision together, two brothers on a mission. I thought about it. Thought about how, for years, I’d been watching my daddy’s daddy, the great Reverend Clifton L. West, Sr., come to deliver guest sermons at our church. He was a pillar of strength and a man dedicated to service. For years I’d been sitting under the teaching of our

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own deeply loved minister, Reverend Willie P. Cooke, whose humble person-to-person pasturing could bring the most cold-blooded sinner to salvation. We decided to make Jesus our choice on Christmas Day and to be faithful unto death with baptism on New Year’s Day. We vowed to never forget it. We never have. I was seven. Cliff was ten. I was seized by a spirit and, owing to the gravity of the decision, trembled with joy. I decided to love my way through the darkness of the world. We decided to go under the water. Even then I had a good sense of what it meant. We were making a choice. We were choosing the kind of love represented by a Palestinian Jew named Jesus whose hypersensitivity to the sufferings of others felt real and right. A lifetime later, it still feels real and right. My parents sat there beaming. Their boys were following the same path as their parents and their parents’ parents. Following Jesus was no small matter in the West household. I remember someone asking, “Do you have pictures of Jesus all over your house?” “We don’t have to,” I said. “We have Jesus in our hearts.” This declaration, made arm in arm by two young black boys in Sacramento, California, in the early days of what would be one of the bloodiest and most disturbing decades in American history, would gain momentum and meaning as their bodies grew and their minds blossomed. Jesus Christ at the center. Jesus Christ as model and motivator, Jesus Christ as moral instructor, Jesus Christ as source of unarmed truth and unconditional love. But that love, no matter how powerful and life-altering, was accompanied by other emotions far less ennobling. Those were years when I was called Little Ronnie—Ronald is my middle name—and for Little Ronnie rage was perhaps the main ingredient. Like morning thunder, rage came early and rained over the first part of my life. I’m not sure I can explain it entirely. Psychological theories won’t do. I’m unable to name the cause of this restless anger that led to the violent behavior marking my childhood and troubling my parents to no end. Little Ronnie was, in short, a little gangsta. When it came to confrontations of any kind, Little Ronnie was always up for bit drama. Facing the most formidable opponent, he just wouldn’t back down. As a little kid, his hands were sore from fighting. He’d take on kids older and meaner and, more often than not, he’d prevail. What were his motives for such outlandish behavior? Hard to say. He certainly wasn’t angry at his folks. Fact is, he adored them. Mom was a schoolteacher, a remarkably energetic woman with a rare gift for teaching

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young children to read. She would make her mark as a legendary educator. She taught first grade, became a principal—the first black person in both roles—and when she retired, so great was her contribution that the Irene B. West Elementary School was named in her honor. Mom was in perpetual motion, a woman of dynamic intelligence, grace, and dignity. She was a quiet storm of charitable work and extraordinary instruction. Because of her sensitivity for children, it’s no surprise that her oldest son Cliff became a model student. You might assume the same for Little Ronnie, whom she showered with endless love and affection. But I’m afraid you’d be wrong. Little Ronnie was out of control. Dad tried his best. And Dad, the sweetest and gentlest of men, was always cool. When he entered a room, his smile lit it up. He worked at McClellan Air Force Base for thirty-six years buying and selling parts for fighter jets, and was the most popular guy on the base. He was a college grad and, as an active Alpha, was also the most popular brother in his fraternity. (Later I, too, became an Alpha Man.) Everyone loved Clifton L. West, Jr. Nothing flustered Dad, not even Little Ronnie’s rebellious antics. Like Lester Young, the poetical laid-back saxophonist who floated over the beat like an angel floating over fire. Dad never got flustered. Mom might call Dad during the day and tell him that Little Ronnie had messed up again, gone after some kid in his class for God knows what reason. Mom would put me on the phone. “Little Ronnie,” Dad would say, “when I get home, have the strap ready.” He’d drive home, cool as a cucumber, give Mom a kiss—“How you doin’, baby?” –and then turn to me. “Boy, when you ever gonna learn?” After the whipping, he’d hug me and say, “Hope this is the last one.” Then we’d eat dinner and he’d watch sports or his favorite shows, like Bonanza or Gunsmoke. No, I wasn’t rebelling against Mom and wasn’t rebelling against Dad, who headed Shiloh’s social outreach program and, along with the other fathers, like Mr. Peters, in our neighborhood, created our Little League and built our ballparks with their own hands. When it came to my parents, I harbored no anger. Then, what was it? In second grade, our teacher was Miss Silver, a lovely woman, who simply couldn’t deal with so many bad Negroes. Little Ronnie was the baddest of the bad. “Where’s your lunch?” kindly Miss Silver would ask my classmate Linda. “Mama forgot to pack it,” Linder would answer.

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But I saw that every single day Linda’s mama forgot to pack her daughter a lunch. That was a funky situation. Shouldn’t have been. Linda needed to eat. So when I saw Bernard strolling into the classroom, a boy big as a barn with a lunch bag stuffed with goodies, I had to jump the brother, beat him up, and give some of his food to Linda. Drove poor Miss Silver crazy. Miss Silver, though, had it easy compared to Mrs. Yee, my teacher in the next year. I loved Mrs. Yee, but Mrs. Yee and I had the worst encounter of my childhood. Happened in 1962 when I was nine. “Students,” said Mrs. Yee, “please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.” Everyone got up—except me, I didn’t move. “Please rise, Cornel,” she said, I still didn’t move. “You heard me, Ronnie.” I heard her, but I wasn’t rising. Even at that age, I had issues with America. Most of my fights had to do with bullies beating on weaker kids. Yet Mrs. Yee wasn’t a bully—she was a sweet woman who also happened to be pregnant—and she wasn’t preying on the weak. But she was insisting that I pledge allegiance to a flag that stood for some things I didn’t like. Her request stirred up ugly memories of racist treatment of my family in Jim Crow Texas during the summers and the piercing story of how my great uncle was lynched and his broken body was left hanging, wrapped in the American flag. In my little boy’s mind, I saw saluting the flag as an insult to my family and an imposition on my free will. If I didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the flag, I didn’t have to pledge allegiance. “You will pledge allegiance to the flag!” she demanded, coming over to me and slapping my face. Something snapped inside me. Her slap stung and, just like that, I socked her in the arm. Hard in the arm. She ran out of the room and came back with the principal. Principal had a paddle and went after me. My partners and I jumped the principal until he had to back off. It was practically a riot. The principal expelled me. When told what had happened, Mom wept. Dad gave me the whipping of my life. And when that was over, I decided I had to leave. I had to run away from home. I packed my little bag and started leaving the house when Cliff saw me. “What happened?” he asked. I told him about hitting the teacher. I said that to me the flag stands for a nation that treats us bad. I went on about how when we visited our grandparents over the summer we had to sit in the balcony of the movie theater, unable to sit on the ground floor where the white kits sat. I said that our dad and uncles fought for our country but our country didn’t treat them right. “Well, all that’s true, baby bro,” said Cliff, “but where you off to?”

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“Away.” “Away to where?” “Far away.” “What’s that gonna do.?” “I don’t know.” “When you get back, you just gonna get a worser whipping.” I thought about what Cliff said, but I left anyway. Went down to the street to stay with a friend and his folks. But then a funny thing happened. My friend and his brothers ran around the house doing whatever they wanted. For some reason, that didn’t sit well with me. I disliked being there because their household had no rules. Rules, I realized, could be good, and often came from a place of love. So that very evening I took my little bag, went back home and, as Cliff predicted, got a worser whipping. My rage, my antagonism, my aggression. Why, where, and how? Maybe I saw myself in some heroic Robin Hood role. I’d notice that poor kids came to our school without lunch money. Others had money to spare. So I forced the haves into giving to the have-nots. If anyone resisted, I’d beat them until they forked over their nickels and dimes. In the fighting itself, I turned into an unapologetic brute. Mom would try to reason with me: It’s not your responsibility to distribute the money among your classmates.” Dad would try to reason with me: “You might think you’re helping some of these kids, but doing it by hurting others makes no sense, son.” Reason, though, didn’t calm the storm raging inside me. Besides, it wasn’t just the money issues that triggered me. Big kids who teased little kids got me just as incensed. I took it personally and beat up the big kids as if they had been picking on me. Every week my parents were given reports of a new incident, another fight, some classmate whose nose I had bloodied or even broken. In one encounter, I pinned a boy down on the ground and rubbed sand in his eyes. His whole family came after us. Were it not for Dad’s super-cool diplomacy, the thing could have blown up into full-scale warfare. Other times, I came close to actually killing some of my adversaries. I was a dangerous thug. Only big brother Cliff could restrain me. That’s because big brother Cliff could handily kick my behind—and did so whenever I was out of control. For all this bullying of the bullies, I wasn’t a big kid. In fact, I remained small until I went off to college. I wasn’t a kid who harbored negative feelings about my family. Not only did I feel deep love for Mom and Dad, but I had mad love for my grandparents as well.

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Dad’s dad was Reverend C. L. West, Sr., pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma for forty years. A small, handsome man, he was a tower of strength and a paragon of Christian compassion. His life was all about self-sacrifice and spiritual growth. His drive to break through the boundaries that would imprison most men was extraordinary. Born in Hamburg, a hamlet outside Alexandria, Louisiana, he went through grade six only to learn that’s where the black school stopped. But Grandpa couldn’t be stopped. He walked, hitch-hiked, and rode borrowed bikes into Alexandria for six years straight years until he earned a highschool diploma. One summer, I couldn’t have been older than four when Grandpa took me and Cliff, along with Mom and Dad, way out into the fields to meet his dad. This was my great-grandfather, James West, and his wife. They were sharecroppers and former slaves. I was fascinated by their grace, dignity, and old ways but was frightened by their frail appearance. They looked like skeletons, ghosts from a God-forsaken past. After marrying Grandma Lovie O’Gywn, Grandpa moved to Tulsa when my dad, the baby of their children, was an infant. Granddad got a job as a bellhop in an upscale hotel while Grandma, the most elegant of women, built up her culinary skills to the point where she was catering for the governor of Oklahoma. These were some highly motivated folk. University of Tulsa wouldn’t admit even the most motivated Negro, though, so Grandpa held down his hotel job as he commuted to Langston University, an historically black land-grant school located about a hundred miles from Tulsa, where, in true West fashion, he didn’t leave before graduating. Later Grandpa and Grandma Lovie divorced—she told me that she never wanted to be married to a preacher—but both remained an integral part of my life when we visited Tulsa every summer. Big Daddy—Mom’s father—was one bad brother. Born in Crowley, Louisiana, he chose to be maladjusted to injustice. Big Daddy was my kind of black man. Looking back, hearing how he talked back to whites that disrespected him, I’m amazed that he lived a long and fruitful life. He lived without fear or apology. When accused of miscegenation—his Creole white was often confused for white—he scoffed at his accusers so threateningly that they thought it best to back off. A churchgoer and believer, he also told the deacons where to go when they chastised him for operating a liquor store. “I just don’t work in the store,” he ‘d say, “I own the store. Don’t toil for nobody but myself. . . .” When Mom was three, her mother complained of a bad tooth. During the day, the pain became unbearable and Big Daddy took his wife to the only hospital in Crowley. The sole black doctor was working elsewhere

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that week, and no white doctor would touch my grandmother. She was told to wait outside on the steps. The infection spread and within a day or two she passed. She was thirty-one. Enraged, Big Daddy could not be contained. Fearing for his safety, his friends urged him to leave town. That’s how he wound up in Orange, Texas just across the border. Of his seven children, five would go to college. His second wife, T’Rose, was a loving force in all our lives. Mom went off to Fisk University in Nashville, where she met my father in August 1949. By year’s end they were married. She was seventeen, he was twenty-one. Dad had gone into the Army after high school to benefit from the GI Bill. There was no other way to pay for college. He served in Guam and Okinawa for two years, then showed up at Fisk, where he became a member of the service-oriented Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He was a star basketball player who, even with his average height, could dunk the ball authoritatively. But the Army called him back and sent him to Fort Hood near Killen, Texas. Meanwhile, Mom, who had given birth to Cliff in 1950, returned to college at Dillard University in New Orleans. When Dad was transferred to Fort Bliss, way out in El Paso, he wouldn’t dream of going without his family. Consequently, Mom’s college career, just like Dad’s was cut short. Fort Bliss is where I was conceived, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, home of my father’s preacher daddy, is where we moved after Dad’s stint was up. I was born in Tulsa on June 2, 1953. But University of Tulsa still refused blacks, so my folks’ next stop was Topeka, Kansas. For two years we lived on the campus of Washburn College where Dad earned his degree. Around the time of the birth of my sister Cynthia in 1955, Dad found work at the Forbes Air Force Depot. When the depot closed, he applied for a teaching job in Washington, D.C. His credentials were superb and he was quickly accepted. The letter of acceptance, though, had one proviso. They demanded a photo of Dad before giving the final word. He sent the photo and the final word came back: Sorry, Mr. West, no job. They had presumed anyone that qualified had to be white. My father was always a favorite in the workplace, and the senior officers at Forbes recommended him to three other bases: one in Alabama, a second in Pennsylvania, and a third in Sacramento. My parents knew California had the superior educational system, so they chose Sacramento…. We moved to Sacramento in August 1958. Shortly after my sister Cheryl was born in 1959, Mom went right back to college. No brothers have ever been more devoted to and appreciative of their sisters. Cliff and

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I adored Cynthia and Cheryl. Cynthia, our oldest sister possessed incredible sensitivity and undeniable compassion. She was a member of the California State Hall of Fame in gymnastics. Her heart was always overflowing with laughter. Like all the West kids, she excelled in school. Cheryl was our cherished baby girl. Early on, she followed her own path. That meant pursuing her deep love for animals. Her extraordinary ability to identify with others was always on inspiration to us. She enacted and embodied a tremendous empathy. The West family looked like this: Corn and Cliff on one side, like white on rice; Cynthia and Cheryl on the other side, like wet on water; and Mom and Dad the loving bond holding us all together. By the early 60’s Mom had her degree in education and was teaching first grade in the Elk Grove school district. She had a heart and gift for teaching young people to read. I have no doubt that her heart was broken time and again when she saw how her second son was unable to control his violent temper. Teachers complained; parents of kids I attacked complained; and in the instance when I struck Mrs. Yee, the school principal himself brought the news of my expulsion to my mother. Given my love and respect for my parents, you would think I’d find a way to curb my fury. But Little Ronnie could not and would not listen to anyone. For reasons that remain mysterious to this day, Little Ronnie was born to rebel; the kid was primed to slug it out with anyone he considered an oppressor. In consideration of Little Ronnie’s knuckleheaded nature, drastic measures had to be taken. Given their deep intelligence, my folks responded by turning to the solution they understood best: education. Seeing that I was already an advanced reader, Mom made certain that I take an IQ test for gifted children. When I received a score of 168, I was placed in the Earl Warren Elementary School, an institution dedicated to dealing with gifted children. That’s where I met my close friends: Brother Gary Schroder, of German extraction, and my Japanese-American brother, Randy Arai. Two loving teachers, beautiful white sisters named Nona Sall and Cecilia Angell, took me under their wings and taught me to fly. I immediately skipped the fourth grade and put in the fifth. When I graduated I received the highest award, the American Legion Medal. That’s when my change arrived. When Sam Cook sang “A Change Gonna Come,” he expressed the centuries-held hope of black folks trapped in a country that considered them subhuman. Sam’s song was played in millions of households, especially the West household at 7990 Forty-eighth Avenue in the Glen Elder section of Sacramento. To this day I consider myself a Glen Elder-

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styled Negro. Glen Elder was cool. Our neighborhood was populated by solid working-class blacks. Fact is, Dad was the only man on the block who wore a white shirt and tie to his job. Sam Cooke’s “Change” brought with it a certain hard-earned sense of possibility tempered by reality. “I was born by the river in a little tent,” sang the singer, “and just like the river I’ve been running ever since.” The West family had been running. Running from Texas and Louisiana to Oklahoma and Tennessee to Kansas and now out here in California. We’d been running after that change. My people saw that the best way to realize that change was schooling. So when one school shut us out, we’d run after another. Running was in our blood, and literal running became a big part of how Brother Cliff and I got over. But back in the day when my rage got me into so much hot water most parents wouldn’t know what to do, Mom and Dad knew just what to do. “Give this child more books,” they said. “Give him more trained teachers. Give him tougher lessons. Challenge his little mind. Keep him busy learning new things. Keep him intellectually stimulated and all that violent business will soon fall by the wayside.” And it did. And when I say, “Thank you, Jesus, for giving my folks the wisdom to push for my change-- and push in exactly the right direction,” I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Additional Readings: Davis, Angela. The Autobiography of Angela Davis.2013.

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School Days Oprah Winfrey Oprah Winfrey joins other African Americans in her discussions about how to improve African American life, and that is through education. Review Winfrey’s support group which helps “uplift her” successfully and to shape her mindset about education: family members, teachers, and members of the church community. What does Winfrey learn from her support group about "perseverance," "resilience," "strong psychological foundations," and "survival"? Discuss her findings. In her narrative, Winfrey unknowingly provides future glimpses of how other African American students in the 1970s and early 1980s are starting to fall behind academically and to fail the expectations of the Black community. Review Oprah's conversations with her teacher, Mr. Abrams, and identify some of the disturbing causes of achievement gaps among African Americans as witnessed by Oprah and her teacher Mr. Abrams, as early as the mid-1970s? In the fall of 1959, Oprah started kindergarten in the nearby town of Buffalo, Mississippi. Unlike the other children in her class, five-year-old Oprah could already read and write. She quickly became bored with the simple play and basic lessons of kindergarten. One day soon after school began, Oprah wrote a note to her teacher, Miss Knew. She wasn’t sure how to spell her teacher’s name, but she did her best. Oprah’s teacher read the carefully printed words: “DEAR MISS NEW. I DO NOT THINK I BELONG HERE.” The teachers was very surprised that Oprah could already write. Right away, she had Oprah moved into the first-grade class. Soon Oprah faced a different kind of move. By 1960, her grandmother had become ill. Oprah was sent to live with her mother in Milwaukee. She left Mississippi, and her grandmother, forever. . . . Oprah’s mother grabbed Oprah’s book out of her hand. Six-year-old Oprah felt her pulse race and her face get hot. “You’re nothing but a bookworm!” her mother yelled. “You think you’re better than other kids! Get your butt outside!” Oprah fought back tears and went outside. What was wrong with loving books? she wondered. Vernita Lee, Oprah’s mother, had little education. She didn’t understand the beauty and power of books. She discouraged her daughter from reading. And she refused to take Oprah to the public library, the place Oprah most wanted to go.

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Oprah didn’t like her new home in Milwaukee….Oprah missed her grandmother, her teacher and schoolmates, and people at church. Vernita lived in a single room in a boardinghouse on Ninth Street. A boardinghouse is a house where rooms are rented and meals are included in the rent. Vernita worked as a maid, cleaning the homes of white people. Her pay was lower than she hoped to earn. And Vernita had two children to feed. She had recently given birth to her second child, Patricia. Oprah now had a baby half-sister. Vernita worked long, difficult hours. Still, she sometimes had to rely on welfare to make ends meet…She had little time to care for Oprah and the new baby. When Vernita did have time at home, she showered the baby with affection, ignoring Oprah. “[Patricia] was adored because she was light-skinned,” Oprah said later. “My half-sister and mother slept inside. I was put out on the porch.” . . . . Oprah lived with her mother for a little more than a year. In early 1962, Vernita decided that Oprah should go stay with her father in Nashville, Tennessee, for a while…. Oprah didn’t know her father, Vernon Winfrey very well. She hadn’t seen him since she was a small child. And she had never been to Tennessee. She wasn’t sure what to expect. Vernon had moved to Nashville after his service in the U.S. Army…. Vernon had married a women named Zelma. He had also bought a onestory brick house with white shutters. He worked two jobs as a janitor. One was at a hospital and the other was at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Vernon and Zelma were very happy to have seven-year old Oprah join their household. They loved kids and were unable to have children of their own. Oprah felt welcomed in their home right away. She was thrilled to discover that, for the first time in her life, she would have her own bedroom and bed. In school, Oprah was ahead of most children her age. So she skipped a grade in her new school, Wharton Elementary School, in Nashville. Instead of being in second grade, Oprah would be in third. Her father and stepmother wanted Oprah to be prepared for third grade. They spent many hours helping her learn what she needed to strengthen her language and math skills. Vernon and Zelma were strict parents. They believed that children needed structure in their lives. Vernon and Zelma were not educated themselves, but they understood the importance of schoolwork and reading.

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Oprah’s father and stepmother took her to the library soon after she arrived in Nashville. To Oprah’s delight, they insisted that she get a library card. “Getting my library card was like citizenship, it was like American citizenship,” remembered Oprah. Oprah liked to day dream. Sometimes she imagined herself as a character in the book she was reading. “I read a book in the third grade about Katie John, who hated boys, and she had freckles,” Said Oprah. “Well, Lord knows, I’m not going to have freckles, no way, no how. But I tried to put some on. And I went through ‘my Katie John phase.’ ” Vernon and Zelma required Oprah to write book reports on the books she checked out of the library. She also had to complete her regular school assignments. Oprah didn’t mind the extra work. She liked to read and study. And she liked the fact that her father and stepmother paid so much attention to her. Vernon and Zelma were active members of Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville. They were pleased to see how well Oprah could recite Bible passages and stories. Oprah began speaking in church, as she had in Kosciusko…. When the school year ended in 1962, eight-year-old Oprah traveled back to Milwaukee. It was time for a summer visit with her mother. When Oprah saw her mother again, she was surprised. So much had changed in the past year. Vernita had moved to a two-bedroom apartment with Patricia. And she had another baby, a boy named Jeffrey. In Milwaukee, Oprah shared a bedroom with her half-brother and half-sister. She spent the summer reading and looking after Patricia and Jeffrey. She didn’t see much of her mother, who worked long hours. When Vernita was home, she spent most of her time caring for her youngest children. As autumn approached, Vernon arrived in Milwaukee to take Oprah back to Nashville. But Oprah told him she wanted to stay in Milwaukee. She missed her father, her stepmother, and her house in Nashville. But she wanted to please her mother. Disappointed, Vernon returned by himself to Nashville. Oprah busied herself with schoolwork. She liked the fourth grade. She especially admired her teacher, Mrs. Mary Duncan. Mrs. Duncan treated Oprah like she was a special person. She gave Oprah the attention, advice, and direction she wasn’t getting from her mother. When Oprah was young, many public schools set aside time during the day for “devotion.” This included Bible readings, religious lessons, and prayer. Mrs. Duncan often asked Oprah to lead the daily devotion in class.

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Some of Oprah’s classmates didn’t like her, because she was smart and good at reciting. They called her Preacher Woman. Each Sunday in church, Oprah would memorize the minister’s sermon, or speech. Then she recited bits and pieces of the sermon during devotion periods the next week. “My, my, that just lovely Miss Oprah Gail,” Mrs. Duncan said…. In books, Oprah could lose herself in other worlds and forget her troubles for a while. When she was a young teenager, Oprah’s favorite book was Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It is the story of Francie Nolan, a lonely but hopeful poor girl growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in the early 1900s. Oprah stayed up all night long reading the book in the small bedroom that she shared with Patricia and Jeffrey. “There was a tree outside my apartment, and I used to imagine it was the same tree,” remembered Oprah. “I felt like my life was like [Francie Nolan’s].” In spite of her difficulties at home, Oprah did well in school and earned good grades. But she spent a lot of time alone and had few friends. In the mid-1960s, Oprah started attending Lincoln Middle School in downtown Milwaukee. One of the teachers at Lincoln was a man named Gene Abrams. He saw Oprah reading in the school cafeteria each day. Oprah was different from the other students. She wasn’t rowdy and loud. She wasn’t surrounded by chatty friends like the other girls. Instead, she was quiet and liked to study. She was always reading a book. Abrams decided to help Oprah. He helped her transfer to Nicolet High School. Nicolet was an all-white school in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale. There, Oprah could take part in a program called Upward Bound. Oprah had earned good grades. Through the program, she would have a chance for a better education. Oprah was both excited and nervous about changing schools. Her daily routine changed a lot. She had to ride three buses to get to the suburban school. She was the only African American student there. Oprah still spoke with a southern accent, so she didn’t talk like the other kids either. Most of the students at Nicolet were nice to Oprah and she quickly made friends. But she wasn’t sure if people liked her because of who she was or because she was black. “In 1968 it was real hip to know a black person, so I was very popular,” Oprah recalled. It was easy to see the difference between her life and the lives of her white friends. She felt poor. She wished she had nice clothes and a big house like the kids at Nicolet High. Oprah liked her friends, but she couldn’t really relate to them. The students at Nicolet had not known many black people—and it showed.

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“The kids would all bring me back to their houses, . . . bring out their maid from the back and say, ‘Oprah do you know Mabel?’” Oprah remembered. Life at home was also difficult. Oprah still wished for more affection from her mother. Vernita seemed to like Patricia and Jeffrey more than her…. Her unhappiness showed in her behavior. She became wilder during her teen years. In 1968, when Oprah was fourteen, she was having trouble reading. Her mother took her to an eye doctor. The doctor told Oprah that she needed glasses. Oprah’s mother chose the least expensive frames for the eyeglasses. They were old-fashioned frames and shaped like butterflies. Oprah wanted a pair of stylish, attractive glasses. Vernita told her they couldn’t afford nicer frames. But Oprah wasn’t ready to give up. She waited until her mother left for work one day. Then Oprah stomped on the new glasses, crushing them to bits. She wanted to make the living room look like someone had broken in. So she knocked a lamp to the floor and tore down the curtains. Next she called the police. “We’ve been robbed,” she cried. When the police arrived at the apartment, Oprah was laid out on the floor. She pretended someone had hit her on the head and knocked her out. The officer was suspicious. He thought Oprah might be faking the robbery. But when Oprah “came to,” the officer took her to the hospital. Workers there called Oprah’s mother. Vernita rushed to the hospital in a panic. She, too, wondered if Oprah was acting, but she wasn’t sure. In the end, Oprah’s trick worked. Her mother bought her a new pair of glasses. Oprah’s behavior grew wilder and wilder. She skipped school, dated many boys, and stole money from her mother’s purse. She ran away from home more than once. One time when Oprah ran away, she headed for downtown Milwaukee. There she saw a big limousine in front of a fancy hotel. Oprah spotted Aretha Franklin, the famous singer, stepping out of the limo. Oprah quickly made a plan. She boldly ran up to Aretha and told her a wild story. She said her parents had kicked her out of the house and she needed to buy a bus ticket to go stay with relatives in Ohio. Reportedly, Aretha felt sorry for Oprah. She handed her a crisp one-hundred dollar bill. Oprah happily took the money and stayed in a hotel for a few days. In the hotel room, she lived it up, watchin TV and ordering room service. Oprah’s mother didn’t understand what had happened to her daughter. Just a few years earlier, Oprah had been a sweet, quiet girl. Vernita could see that something was wrong, but she didn’t know what to do to help. Eventually her patience wore thin. She looked for another home for Oprah.

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She called a detention home for troubled teens. But the institution was full. Vernita decided to send Oprah back to her father’s house in Nashville…. Oprah’s father and stepmother were happy to have her back. They had missed her, and they welcomed her back into their cozy house in Nashville. But Vernon and Zelma didn’t approve of Oprah’s grown-up new look. She wore short miniskirts and heavy makeup. She also had a sassy new attitude. Vernon felt that Oprah’s mother hadn’t provided her with proper care and direction. He wanted to get Oprah “back on track” in Nashville. Even with the rules, Oprah was glad to be back in her father’s home. Vernon and Zelma’s house seemed like a mansion compared to her mother’s small apartment. They weren’t wealthy, but they had plenty of food and money to buy clothes for Oprah. Vernon now owned his own barbershop. Vernon did not know that Oprah had been sexually abused in Milwaukee. Oprah hid another secret from him too. She was pregnant. She was afraid and ashamed to tell him the truth. She hid her pregnancy, wearing baggy clothing until her seventh month. At that point, Oprah’s belly was very round. She knew she had to tell her father. On the day she broke the news, she was even more upset than her father was. She was so stressed, in fact, that she went into early labor. She gave birth to the baby that day. The tiny infant died within two weeks…. In September 1968, Oprah began tenth grade at East High School in Nashville. Because she’d skipped second grade, Oprah was younger than the other tenth-graders…. At first, her grades were almost all Cs. Vernon pushed Oprah to try harder. “If you were a child who could only get Cs, then that is all I would expect of you,” he told her. “But you are not. So, in this house, Cs are not acceptable.” Oprah tried to see the loss of her baby as a lesson. In a way, she had been given a second chance in life. She was determined to turn her grades, and her life, around. Throughout high school, Oprah continued to read a great deal. She especially liked books about women who showed courage in getting through hard times. She read about Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who had kept a diary while her family hid from Hitler’s Nazis during World War II (1939-1945). She read about Helen Keller, who lived a full, rich life even though she was blind, deaf, and couldn’t talk. Oprah also admired Sojourner Truth. Truth fought for the end of slavery. She also fought for the women’s rights long before the women’s suffrage (right to vote) movement of the early 1900s.

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When Oprah was sixteen, she read autobiography that affected her deeply. It was Maya Angelou’s 1970 best-seller, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Like Oprah, Angelou was raised in the South by her grandmother. She later lived with her mother and then her father. She was raped as a child and found comfort in books. “I read it over and over,” said Oprah. “I had never before read a book that validated my own existence [described similar life situations].” Vernon and Zelma Winfrey continued to encourage Oprah’s studies as well as her talent for public speaking. “We knew she had great potential. We knew she had a gift and talent to act and speak,” said Oprah’s father. “She’s never been a backseat person, in school or in church. She always loved the limelight.” Oprah attended Faith Missionary Baptist Church each Sunday with her father and stepmother. She sometimes gave Bible reading there. She also spoke at other area church and clubs. Her talent earned her wider recognition in 1970. That year, she won a speech contest sponsored by the Elks Club. Oprah was filled with happiness when she took the prize, a four-year college scholarship. A scholarship is money for school, awarded for doing something well. She would begin looking at her college options next year, when she was a senior…. Additional Readings: Cary, Lorene. Black Ice, A Memoir. 2010.

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Two Positives from Gifted Hands Ben Carson M. D. with Cecil Murphy Ben Carson returns the reader to national conversations about education and the African American experience: What is the role of family, the function of community, and the responsibility of the academy in the promotion of academic excellence among African American students? What remains unchanged and what has changed? In Carson’s household, his support comes specifically from his mother and brother. But who specifically in the community supports Carson? How supportive are his teachers? Carson also introduces “health” as a barrier to Black education if left unattended. Explain how “needing eye glasses” underscores an often overlooked barrier to the academic performance of some students of color? Contrast Ben Carson’s testimony of “acquiring literacy” with the testimonies of earlier writers in this collection. Over the centuries what has changed socially, politically and economically and what has remained unchanged? “I don’t know,” I said as I shook my head “I mean, I can’t be sure.” Again I felt stupid from the top of my head to the bottom of my sneakers. The boy in front of me had read every single letter on the chart down to the bottom line without any trouble. I couldn’t see well enough to read beyond the top line. “That’s fine,” the nurse said to me, and the next child in line stepped up to the eye-examination chart. Her voice was brisk and efficient. “Remember now, try to read without squinting.” Halfway through my fifth grade the school gave us a compulsory eye examination. I squinted, tried to focus, and read the first line—barely. The school provided glasses for me, free. When I went to get fitted, the doctor said, “Son, your vision is so bad you almost qualify to be labeled handicapped.” Apparently my eyes had worsened gradually, and I had no idea they were so bad. I wore my new glasses to school the next day. And I was amazed. For the first time I could actually see the writing on the chalkboard from the back of the classroom. Getting glasses was the first positive thing to start me on my climb upward from the bottom of the class. Immediately after getting my vision corrected my grades improved—not greatly, but at least I was moving in the right direction.

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When the mid-term report cards came out, Mrs. Williamson called me aside. “Benjamin,” she said, “on the whole you’re doing so much better.” Her smile of approval made me feel like I could do better yet. I know she wanted to encourage me to improve. I had a D in math—but that did indicate improvement. At least I hadn’t failed. Seeing that passing grade made me feel good, I thought, I made a D in math. I’m improving. There’s hope for me. I’m not the dumbest kid in the school. When a kid like me who had been at the bottom of the class for the first half of the year suddenly zoomed upward—even if only from F to D—that experience gave birth to hope. For the first time since entering Higgins School I knew I could do better than some of the students in my class. Mother wasn’t willing to let me settle for such a lowly goal as that! “Oh, it’s an improvement all right,” she said. “And, Bennie, I’m proud of you for getting a better grade. And why shouldn’t you? You’re smart, Bennie.” Despite my excitement and sense of hope, my mother wasn’t happy. Seeing my improved math grade and hearing what Mrs. Williamson had said to me, she started emphasizing. “But you can’t settle for just barely passing. You’re too smart to do that. You can make the top math grade in the class.” “But, Mother, I didn’t fail,” I moaned, thinking she hadn’t appreciated how much my work had improved. “All right, Bennie, you’ve started improving.” Mother said, “and you’re going to keep on improving.” “I’m trying,” I said. “I’m doing the best I can.” “But you can do still better, and I’m going to help you.” Her eyes sparkled. I should have known that she had already started formulating a plan. With Mother, it wasn’t enough to say, “Do better.” She would find a way to show me how. Her scheme, worked out as we went along, turned out to be the second positive factor. My mother hadn’t said much about my grades until the report cards came out at mid-year. She had believed the grades from the Boston school reflected progress. But once she realized how badly I was doing at Higgins Elementary, she started in on me every day. However, Mother never asked, “Why can’t you be like those smart boys?” Mother had too much sense for that. Besides, I never felt she wanted me to compete with my classmates as much as she wanted me to do my best. “I’ve got two smart boys,” she’d say. “Two mighty smart boys.”

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I’m doing my best,” I’d insist. I’ve improved in math.” “But you’re going to do better, Bennie,” she told me one evening. “Now, since you’ve started getting better in math, you’re going to go on, and here’s how you’ll do it. First thing you’re going to do is to memorize your times tables.” “My times tables?” I cried. I couldn’t imagine learning so much. “Do you know how many there are? Why that could take a year!” She stood up a little taller. “I only went through third grade, and I know them all the way through my twelves.” “But, Mother, I can’t—“ “You can do it, Bennie. You just have to set your mind to concentrating. You work on them, and tomorrow when I get home from work we’ll review them. We’ll keep on reviewing the times tables until you know them better than anyone else in your class!” I argued a little more, but I should have known better. “Besides—here came her final shot—“you’re not to go outside and play after school tomorrow until you’ve learned those tables.” I was almost in tears. “Look at all these things!” I cried, pointing to the columns in the back of my math book. “How can anyone learn all of them?” Sometimes talking to Mother was like talking to a stone. Her jaw was set, her voice hard. “You can’t go outside and play until you learn your times tables.” Mother wasn’t home, of course, when school let out, but it didn’t occur to me to disobey. She had taught Curtis and me properly, and we did what she told us. I learned the times tables. I just kept repeating them until they fixed themselves in my brain. Like she promised, that night Mother went over them with me. Her constant interest and unflagging encouragement kept me motivated. Within days after learning my times tables, math became so much easier that my scores soared. Most of the time my grades reached as high as the other kids in my class. I’ll never forget how I felt after another math quiz when I answered Mrs. Williamson with “Twenty-four!” I practically shouted as I repeated, “I got 24 right.” She smiled back at me in a way that made me know how pleased she was to see my improvement. I didn’t tell the other kids what was going on at home or how much the glasses helped. I didn’t think most of them cared. Things changed immediately and made going to school more enjoyable. Nobody laughed or called me the dummy in math anymore! But

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Mother didn’t let me stop with memorizing the times tables. She had proven to me that I could succeed in one thing. So she started the next phase of my self-improvement program to make me come out with the top grades in every class. The goal was fine, I just didn’t like her method. “I’ve decided you boys are watching too much television,” she said one evening snapping off the set in the middle of a program. “We don’t watch that much,” I said. I tried to point out that some programs were educational and that all the kids in my class watched television, even the smartest ones. As if she didn’t hear a word I said, she laid down the law. I didn’t like the rule, but her determination to see us improve changed the course of my life. “From now on, you boys can watch no more than three programs a week.” “A week?” Immediately I thought of all the wonderful programs I would have to miss. Despite our protests, we knew that when she decided we couldn’t watch unlimited television, she meant it. She also trusted us, and both of us adhered to the family rules because we were basically good kids. Curtis, though a bit more rebellious than I was, had done better in his schoolwork. Yet his grades weren’t good enough to meet Mother’s standards either. Evening after evening Mother talked with Curtis, working with him on his attitude, urging him to want to succeed, pleading with him not to give up on himself. Neither of us had a role model of success, or even a respected male figure to look up to. I think Curtis, being older, was more sensitive to that than I was. But no matter how hard she had to work with him, Mother wouldn’t give up. Somehow, through her love, determination, encouragement, and laying down the rules, Curtis became a more reasonable type of person and started to believe in himself. Mother had already decided how we would spend our free time when we weren’t watching television. “You boys are going to go to the library and check out books. You’re going to read at least two books every week. At the end of each week you’ll give me a report on what you’ve read.” That rule sounded impossible. Two books? I had never read a whole book in my life, except those they made us read in school. I couldn’t believe I could ever finish one whole book in a short week. But a day or two later found Curtis and me dragging our feet the seven blocks from home to the public library. We grumbled and complained, making the journey seem endless. But Mother had spoken, and it didn’t occur to either of us to disobey. The reason? We respected her. We knew she meant business and knew we’d better mind. But, most important, we loved her.

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“Bennie,” she said again and again, “if you can read, honey, you can learn just about anything you want to know. The doors of the world are open to people who can read. And my boys are going to be successful in life because they’re going to be the best readers in the school.” As I think about it, I’m as convinced today as I was back in the fifth grade, that my mother meant that. She believed in Curtis and me. She had such faith in us, we didn’t dare fail! Her unbounded confidence nudged me into starting to believe in myself. Several of Mother’s friends criticized her strictness. I heard one woman ask, “What are you doing to those boys, making them study all the time! They’re going to hate you.” “They can hate me,” she answered, cutting off the woman’s criticism, “but they’re going to get a good education just the same!” Of course I never hated her. I didn’t like the pressure, but she managed to make me realize that this hard work was for my good. Almost daily, she’d say, “Bennie, you can do anything you set yourself to do.” Since I’ve always loved animals, nature, and science, I chose library books on those topics. And while I was a horrible student in the traditionally academic subjects, I excelled in fifth-grade science. The science teacher, Mr. Jaeck, understood my interest and encouraged me by giving me special projects, such as helping other students identify rocks, animals, or fish. I had the ability to study the markings on a fish, for instance, and from then on I could identify that species. No one else in the class had that knack, so I had my chance to shine. Initially, I went to the library and checked out books about animals and other nature topics. I became the fifth-grade expert in anything of a scientific nature. By the end of the year I could pick up just about any rock along the railroad tracks and identify it. I read so many fish and water life books, that I started checking streams for insects. Mr. Jaeck had a microscope, and I loved to get water samples to examine the various protozoa under the magnified lenses. Slowly the realization came that I was getting better in all my school subjects. I began looking forward to my trips to the library. The staff there got to know Curtis and me, offering suggestions on what we might like to read. They would inform us about new books as they came in. I thrived on this new way of life, and soon my interests widened to include books on adventure and scientific discoveries. By reading so much, my vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension. Soon I became the best student in math when we did story problems.

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Up until the last few weeks of fifth grade, aside from math quizzes, our weekly spelling bees were the worst part of school for me. I usually set down on the first word. But now, 30 years later, I still remember the word that really got me interested in learning how to spell. The last week of fifth grade we had a long spelling bee in which Mrs. Williamson made us go through every spelling word we were supposed to have learned that year. As everyone expected, Bobby Farmer won the spelling bee. But to my surprise, the final word he spelled correctly to win was agriculture. I can spell that word , I thought with excitement. I had learned it just the day before from my library book As the winner sat down a thrill swept through me—a yearning to achieve—more powerful than ever before. “I can spell agriculture,” I said to myself, “and I’ll bet I can learn to spell any other word in the world. I’ll bet I could learn to spell better than Bobby.” Learning to spell better than Bobby Farmer really challenged me. Bobby was clearly the smartest boy in the fifth grade. Another kid named Steve Kormos had earned the reputation as being the smartest kid before Bobby Farmer came along. Bobby Farmer impressed me during a history class because the teacher mentioned flax, and none of us knew what she was talking about. Then Bobby, still new in school, raised his hand and explained to the rest of us about flax—how and where it was grown, and how the women spun the fibers into linen. As I listened, I thought, Bobby sure knows a lot about flax. He’s really smart. Suddenly, sitting there in the classroom with spring sunshine slanting through the windows, a new thought flashed through my mind. I can learn about flax or any subject through reading. It is like Mother says—if you can read, you can learn just about anything. I kept reading all through the summer, and by the time I began sixth grade. I had learned to spell a lot of words without conscious memorization. In the sixth grade, Bobby was still the smartest boy in the class, but I was starting to gain ground on him. After I started pulling ahead in school, the desire to be smart grew stronger and stronger. One day I thought, It must be a lot of fun for everybody to know you’re the smartest kid in the class. That’s the day I decided that the only way to know for sure how that would feel was to become the smartest. As I continued to read, my spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension improved, and my classes became much more interesting. I improved so much that by the time I entered seventh grade at Wilson Junior High, I was at the top of the class.

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But just making it to the top of the class wasn’t my real goal. By then, that wasn’t good enough for me. That’s where Mother’s constant influence made the difference. I didn’t work hard to compete and to be better than the other kids as much as I wanted to be the very best I could be—for me. Most of the kids who had gone to school with me in fifth and sixth grade also moved on to Wilson. Yet our relationships had drastically changed during that two-year period. The very kids who once teased me about being a dummy started coming up to me, asking, “Hey, Bennie, how do you solve this problem?” Obviously I beamed when I gave them the answer. They respected me now because I had earned their respect. It was fun to get good grades, to learn more, to know more than was actually required. Wilson Junior High was still predominantly White, but both Curtis and I became outstanding students there. It was at Wilson that I first excelled among White kids. Although not a conscious thing on my part, I like to look back and think that my intellectual growth helped to erase the stereotypical idea of Blacks being intellectually inferior. Again, I have my mother to thank for my attitude. All through my growing up, I never recall hearing her say things such as “White people are just…” This uneducated woman, married at 13, had been smart enough to figure out things for herself and to emphasize to Curtis and me that people are people. She never gave vent to racial prejudice and wouldn’t let us do it either. Curtis and I encountered prejudice, and we could have gotten caught up in it, especially in those days—the early 1960s. Three incidents of racial prejudice directed against us stand out in my memory. First, when I started going to Wilson Junior High, Curtis and I often hopped a train to get to school. We had fun doing that because the tracks ran parallel to our school route. While we knew we weren’t supposed to hop trains, I placated my conscience by deciding to get only the slower trains. My brother would grab on to the fast-moving trains which had to slow down at the crossing. I envied Curtis as I watched him in action. When the faster trains came through, just past the crossing he would throw his clarinet on one of the flat cars near the front of the train. Then he’d wait and catch the last flat car. If he didn’t get on and make his way to the front, he knew he’d lose his clarinet. Curtis never lost his musical instrument. We chose a dangerous adventure, and every time we jumped on a train my body tingled with excitement. We not only had to jump and catch a car

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railing and hold on, but we had to make sure the railroad security men never caught us. They watched for kids and hoboes who hopped the trains at crossroads. They never did catch us. We stopped hopping trains for an entirely different reason. One day when Curtis wasn’t with me, as I ran along the tracks, a group of older boys—all White—came marching toward me, anger written on their faces. One of them carried a big stick. “Hey, you! N…….boy!” I stopped and stared, frightened and silent. I’ve always been extremely thin and must have looked terribly defenseless—and I was. The boy with the stick whacked me across the shoulder. I recoiled, not sure what would happen next. He and the other boys stood in front of me and called me every dirty name they could think of. My heart pounded in my ears, and sweat poured down my sides. I looked down at my feet, too scared to answer, too frightened to run. “You know you N…..kids ain’t supposed to be going to Wilson Junior High. If we ever catch you again, we’re going to kill you.” His pale eyes were cold as death. “You understand that?” My gaze never left the ground. “Guess so,” I muttered. I said, “Do you understand me, N…..boy?” the big boy prodded. Fear chocked me. I tried to speak louder. “Yes.” “Then you get out of here as fast as you can run. And you’d better be keeping an eye out for us. Next time, we’re going to kill you!” I ran then, as fast as I could and didn’t slow down until I reached the schoolyard. I stopped using that route and went another way. From then on I never hopped another train, and I never saw the gang again. Certain that my mother would have yanked us out of school right away, I never told her about the incident. A second, more shocking episode occurred when I was in the eighth grade. At the end of each school year the principal and teachers handed out certificates to the one student who had the highest academic achievement in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades respectively. I won the certificate in the seventh grade, and that same year Curtis won for the ninth grade. By the end of eighth grade, people had pretty much come to accept the fact that I was a smart kid. I won the certificate again the following year. At the all-school assembly one of the teachers presented my certificate. After handing it to me she remained up in front of the entire student body and looked out across the auditorium: “I have a few words I want to say right now,” she began, her voice unusually high. Then, to my embarrassment, she bawled out the White kids because they had allowed me to be number one. “You’re not trying hard enough,” she told them.

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While she never quite said it in words, she let them know that a Black person shouldn’t be number one in a class where everyone else was White. As the teacher continued to berate the other students, a number of things tumbled about inside my mind. Of course, I was hurt. I had worked hard to be the top of my class—probably harder than anyone else in the school—and she was putting me down because I wasn’t the same color. On the one hand I thought, What a turkey this woman is! Then an angry determination welled up inside. I’ll show you and all the others too! I couldn’t understand why this woman talked the way she did. She had taught me herself in several classes, had seemed to like me, and she clearly knew that I had earned my grades and merited the certificate of achievement. Why would she say all these harsh things? Was she so ignorant that she didn’t realize that people are just people? That their skin or their race doesn’t make them smarter or dumber? It also occurred to me that, given enough situations, there are bound to be instances where minorities are smarter. Couldn’t she realize that? Despite my hurt and anger, I didn’t say anything, I sat quietly while she railed. Several of the White kids glanced over at me occasionally, rolling their eyes to let me understand their disgust. I sensed they were trying to say to me, “What a dummy she is!” Some of those very kids, who, three years earlier, had taunted me, had become my friends. They were feeling embarrassed, and I could read resentment on several faces. I didn’t tell Mother about that teacher. I didn’t think it would do any good and would only hurt her feelings. The third incident that stands out in my memory centered around the football team. In our neighborhood we had a football league. When I was in the seventh grade, playing football was the big thing in athletics. Naturally, both Curtis and I wanted to play. Neither of us Carsons were large to begin with. In fact, compared to the other players, we were quite small. But we had one advantage. We were fast—so fast that we could outrun everybody else on the field. Because the Carson brothers made such good showings, our performance apparently upset a few of the White people. One afternoon when Curtis and I left the field after practice, a group of White men, none of them over 30 years old, surrounded us. Their menacing anger showed clearly before they said a word. I wasn’t sure if they were part of the gang that had threatened me at the railroad crossing. I only knew I was scared.

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Then one man stepped forward. “If you guys come back we’re going to throw you into the river,” he said. They then turned and walked away from us. Would they have carried out their threat? Curtis and I weren’t as concerned about that as we were with the fact that they didn’t want us in the league. As we walked home, I said to my brother, “Who wants to play football when your own supporters are against you?” “I think we can find better things to do with our time,” Curtis said. We never said anything to anyone about quitting, but we never went back to practice. Nobody in the neighborhood ever asked us why. To Mother I said, “we decided not to play football.” Curtis said something about studying more. We had decided to say nothing to Mother about the threat, knowing that if we did, she’d be worried sick about us. As an adult looking backward, it’s ironic about our family. When we were younger, through her silence Mother had protected us from the truth about dad and her emotional problems. Now it was our turn to protect her so she wouldn’t worry. We chose the same method. Additional Readings: Gates, Henry Louis. Jr., Colored People. 1994.

LITIGATIONS FEDERAL COURT DECISIONS, SCHOOL REFORM, AND AFRICAN AMERICAN EDUCATION: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ADRIA ALLEN AND PATRICIA WALKER SWINTON

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) The Plessy v. Ferguson case originated in Louisiana from laws passed in 1890 by the Louisiana General Assembly that established a segregated society. In particular, this case detailed the incidence of Homer Plessy, a mixed race man who bought a first class train ticket in Louisiana and occupied a seat in the white only car of the train, despite directives from the conductor to board the black car. After being forcibly removed, Plessy was charged with violating the act of occupying an undesignated train car and faced a $25 fine or up to twenty days imprisonment. New Orleans Judge John Howard Ferguson found Plessy criminally guilty. As a result, Plessy took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments had been violated since he was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black. Plessy further argued that he was entitled to “every right, privilege, and immunity” given to United States citizens of the white race. The US Supreme Court determined, however, that any person with black blood is Black. Such a ruling by the Supreme Court upheld Judge Ferguson’s decision, citing also that: (1) Cases dealing with racial identification was the jurisdiction of each state; (2) Plessy’s arrest was not a violation of involuntary servitude, which is the basis of the Thirteenth Amendment; (3) The Fourteenth Amendment was not violated because Plessy was not denied equal protection of the law. After such interpretations by the US Supreme Court, established in the United States in the nineteenth century is the “separate but equal” law, which further leads to states’ rights that establish segregated societies and "separate" schools for white and black children. Indirectly assumed after the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling is also that any person with black blood is regarded as Black.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) Unlike the Plessy v. Ferguson case which led to the "separate but equal” law and eventually to "separate" schools for black and white children, the McLaurin v. Oklahoma case is cited as the first case before the Supreme Court that sought equal educational opportunities for African Americans. Following the World Wars, George W. McLaurin attended and earned a master's degree from Langston University, an HBCU located in Langston, Oklahoma. After graduation from Langston, McLaurin sought admissions to the doctoral program at the white majority University of Oklahoma. He was denied admissions based on race. Despite the fact that in Oklahoma in the 1950s, it was a misdemeanor for blacks and whites to attend desegregated institutions of higher education whether it’s a classroom,

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library, or cafeteria, McLaurin filed a suit with the Oklahoma District Courts citing the University of Oklahoma and state law for denying him admissions to the school of his choice as unconstitutional. The District Court of Oklahoma ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny McLaurin access to the University of Oklahoma. The state was ordered to comply and admit the state resident. The Oklahoma legislature, however, amended the ruling. While McLaurin was permitted to attend the white majority University of Oklahoma, he had to sit in an assigned desk in a room next to the classroom. Also, he was assigned to a desk in the mezzanine of the library and was assigned to a table in the university's cafeteria but could not use the cafeteria when other students were present. Such treatment forced McLaurin to file a motion in the Oklahoma District Court, which ruled that his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment had not been violated and that he had been afforded "equal educational opportunities." McLaurin filed his displeasure with the U. S. Supreme Court. Before the Supreme Court heard McLaurin's case, a modification was made by the University of its treatment. In particular, McLaurin was allowed to sit in the classroom even though the room was sectioned off with a sign that read, "Reserved for Colored." By the time the Supreme Court heard the McLaurin v Oklahoma State Regents case, the university had removed signs and designated McLaurin to a row for black students only. Too, he had been given a designated table on the main floor of the university's library, and he was allowed to eat in the cafeteria when other students were present yet at a separate table. While the state of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma contented "equal educational opportunities" for McLaurin, the Supreme Court reversed the District Court's ruling, stating that the state of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma had deprived McLaurin of an education and equal protection of the laws. In particular, the Court wrote: "The result is that appellant [McLaurin] is handicapped in his pursuit of effective graduate instruction. Such restrictions impair and inhibit his ability to study, engage in discussions, exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession."

Sweatt v. Painter (1950) Heman Marion Sweatt was denied admissions to the University of Texas Law School because he was black. Under the equal protection clause of the law, Sweatt sued a university official named Theophilus Painter. The state court suspended the case for six months in order to allow Texas time to provide "equal but separate" law school facilities for African

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Americans. After six months, the court denied Sweatt’s case because university officials had arranged to open a law school for African Americans. When the Black law school opened, it did not have its own faculty. There were few books, and no full-time librarian. In addition, the school lacked accreditation. Sweatt refused to enroll. He lost his appeal to the Texas Count of Civil Appeals and the state's University of Texas Law School. The Texas Law School had sixteen full-time and three part-time faculty members. Too, the law school's library held 65.000 books and had full-time librarians. White students at the University of Texas Law School also had available most court facilities, a law review, and scholarships. Unlike the Black law school, the University of Texas Law was accredited. After losing his appeals, Sweatt appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the additional improvements that followed with the facilities at the Black law school, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sweatt. On behalf of the plaintiff, the high courts ruled that Sweatt had been denied equal protection of the law based on three points: (1) Law schools should provide knowledge and practices of the legal profession; therefore, law students cannot be skilled in the profession if they are isolated from the people and institutions involved with the law; (2) The exchange of views and ideas about the law is necessary to learning the profession; and (3) Sweatt's enrollment in the black law school would exclude him from 85 percent of the state’s population. Being a member of the Texas Bar, Sweatt would need to come in contact with such a portion of the population.

Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I) (1954) A consolidation of cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware became known as Brown et al. and as the landmark case upon which all subsequent education desegregation cases on behalf of African Americans were based. Subsequently, referred to as Brown I, this cornerstone case carried a similar history for its plaintiffs. All had been denied public schooling within their respective school districts because of race. The federal district courts in Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia ruled that the rights of the plaintiffs were not denied under the Fourteenth Amendment and concluded that the consistent decision actually merited the ruling of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which was “separate but equal” schools. To the contrary, before the Supreme Court, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that segregated public schools were not equal and could not be made equal nor could the plaintiffs receive protection of their rights by such ruling.

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The Brown et al. case was first argued in 1952 and reargued in the high court in 1953; the justices wanted to examine the original intent of the opponents of the Fourteenth Amendment, especially in light of a segregated society. Too, the justices heard testimony from psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark who underscored the psychological effects of segregation on the development of African American children. Dr. Clark demonstrated how segregation had left a sense of inferiority among African American children. The justices concluded that "in the field of education," the doctrine of "separate but equal has no place." Furthermore, in their decision, the justices posed the question, "Does the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other tangible factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?" The unanimous response from the justices was, "yes."

Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II) (1955) Referred to as Brown II, this litigation focused on how to ease school segregation. During a hearing with the U.S. Supreme Court, attorney generals from various states illustrated what they had done to rectify school segregation. Due to complexities and other problems associated with dismantling long-standing segregation in the public schools, the US Supreme Court justices were convinced that there was no single remedy to ending segregated public education in the states; therefore, the high court granted the responsibility of desegregating school districts to school district officials. In essence, school district officials were required to submit a desegregation plan to the lower courts, which would supervise the desegregation process. Officials also had to include agreements concerning administration, facilities, transportation, personnel, attendance, and amendments to laws and regulations. Except for the cases in District Courts in Kansas, Virginia, and South Carolina and the case in Delaware that was sent to the Delaware Supreme Court, the lower courts posed a fundamental question about creating a time frame of outcomes, and that was if such time frames would produce prompt and reasonable compliance.

Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) Central to this case is “freedom of choice” in public school education to satisfy the desegregation ruling and to end a dual school system. The plaintiff is Charles C. Green who filed an injunction against the school

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board of New Kent County in rural Virginia. In particular, African Americans in New Kent County attended the school designated for blacks, and whites attended the school designated for whites; buses were provided to transport students to their designated schools by way of an overlapping bus route. Black students were driven past the white schools, and white students were driven past the black schools. Likewise, the Pupil Placement Act was established giving the State Public Placement Board the primary decision of where to place Virginia's students. In opposition to the school desegregation, the county contended that none of the students, black or white, had requested to be placed in a school differently. After plaintiff Green filed his opposition to Virginia's dual school systems, the Virginia District Court sought relief of the dual school system. Out of fear of losing federal funding, Virginia's school board developed the “freedom of choice” plan for students. In essence, students had to declare a choice for school assignment. Those who did not declare a school assignment remained at their present schools. The Placement Board was disbanded after the amended plan was accepted by the District Court.

The Green v. County School Board of New Kent County case was eventually presented to the Supreme Court. While the Virginia school board argued that the Virginia plan was in compliance with the requirements of Brown II because black and white students could attend any school they requested, the high court, however, ruled differently. The Supreme Court ruled that to use “freedom of choice” to end a dual system was unconstitutional and could not be considered as the end outcome for abolishing segregated school systems.

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971) The city of Charlotte and the school district of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina upheld the position that schools could be grouped and divided according to election districts. Plaintiff James E. Swann filed a motion in District Court requesting the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education move beyond placing students according to their election districts. On a map it may have appeared that such a plan addressed equalization of educational opportunities, but this was inaccurate. For example, there were 107 schools in the North Carolina school district. Based on a court approved desegregation plan, the school districts were divided by election districts. However, 86 percent of the 24,000 black students attended schools in Charlotte, and 66 percent were in twenty-one

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schools composed of 99 percent to 100 percent black. Following Plaintiff Swann's motion, the District Court ordered the school boards to produce a plan to desegregate teachers and students. After numerous versions of redistricting plans, the state court and school board more or less elected three plans: the Finger Plan, which focused on reassigning faculty and students in high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools; the HEW Plan, which focused on grouping schools in adjoining areas; and a plan developed by four board members which would (1) close seven black schools and reassign the students, (2) revamp attendance areas, (3) unify the athletic program, (4) no longer use school transportation to maintain race division, (5) desegregate teachers and administrators, and (6) begin a school transfer system of majority-to-minority, sending majority students to minority schools. A ruling from the Supreme Court provided an interpretation of the Finger Plan, HEW Plan, and the plan developed by board members that was just as complicated: (1) Racial quotas are not blank actions; they are carried out for the sole purpose of ending segregation in schools; (2) The majority-to-minority transfer program is acceptable; if some schools remain one race, their school boards must show it is not occurring as a dual system and make every effort to desegregate. (3) Dividing schools according to election districts is not acceptable; however, each school district should determine the grouping of schools within close proximity of the students to prevent attendance issues; (4) Public school busing has been around since 1969 and is still acceptable, but school boards must consider the age of students and the length of travel time.

San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) Demetrio P. Rodriguez was part of a Hispanic couple that lived in an economically disadvantaged area with a low property tax base and whose child attended an urban school in the Texas area. When the Texas Minimum Foundation School Program was found, it was used to equalize the funding of public schools in Texas. Funding was distributed based on the income that the state received for each county. As the urbanization of Texas progressed over the years, the disparity in distribution of the people and the property grew. In 1968, Rodriguez filed a lawsuit against various educational entities citing Texas Board of Education, the Texas Attorney General, the Commissioner of Education, and The Bexar County Board of Trustees. The District Court decided that Texas’s school system did discriminate based on wealth, but Texas appealed the motion to the U.S.

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Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled stated that disproportion of funding schools could exist, but the court would not state that the imbalance existed as a result of preconceived discrimination.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) The Bakke case addressed the legality of the admissions programs for people of color and introduced the concept of “reverse discrimination” in higher education. The University of California was a medical school that opened in 1968. The only three people of color who were admitted during the inauguration year were Asian. As a result, the medical school developed a special admissions program to increase the number of minorities (Blacks, Chicano, Asian, and American Indian) and disadvantaged students. The special admissions committee reviewed applicants for unfavorable economic and educational conditions; only onefifth of the applicants were interviewed and rated, and a specific proportion of slots were to be allocated each year based on the potential overall class size. The special admissions process resembled regular admissions, but admits did not have to meet the minimum 2.5 GPA requirement. Allan Bakke, a white male, applied twice for regular admissions to The University of California, and twice he was denied, yet minorities with lower GPAs, Medical College Admissions Test scores, and committee rating scores than Bakke were admitted through the special program. Bakke sued the university, claiming that racial discrimination was the cause of his denial and that such actions violated his equal protection under the law. The University filed a cross claim, arguing that its procedures were legal. The Superior Court found the special program at The University of California was based on racial quota, and the university could not take race into consideration for admissions. The Superior Court, however, did not require Bakke to be admitted because he could not prove he would have been admitted in the absence of the special program. The case was appealed by both parties to the California Supreme Court, and the Court ruled that no applicant could be denied admissions because of race, even when in favor of another person who might have been less qualified by measured standards. The court ordered Bakke to be admitted, but the order was stopped when the case went to The U.S. Supreme Court. The university argued that white males were not a minority and did not require special protection from the “majoritarian political process.” The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed part of the California Supreme Court’s decision, yet reversed part of it. Bakke was ordered admittance into the university because it could not be proven that he would have been denied

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had the special program not existed. In spite of its controversy, the special admissions program at The University of California was allowed to continue.

Freeman v. Pitts (1992) The DeKalb County School System (DCSS) of the State of Georgia wanted to be removed from its court ordered desegregation judgment. In 1968, African Americans filed a suit against DCSS in District Court. One final desegregation plan was placed before the court and accepted, yet the courts maintained its jurisdiction. The “freedom of choice” plan was no longer applicable but accepted the use of the "neighborhood plan" which assisted in closing all of the segregated black schools; African Americans were placed in schools in other neighborhoods. Over the next few years, blacks asked the court to mediate the implementation of the DeKalb County desegregation plan. In 1986, DeKalb County School System petitioned to be removed from under the court’s jurisdiction and to be declared a unified school district. The District Court noted that DCSS was successful in establishing a unified system in the areas of students’ school assignments, transportation, physical facilities, and extracurricular activities; however, the court retained jurisdiction in the areas of teacher and principal assignments, resource allocation, and quality of education. The Court of Appeals ruled that all facets of a unified system had to be met before the District Court could relinquish jurisdiction, but the Supreme Court superseded the Court of Appeal’s decision, concluding that the supervising court could determine what areas it needed to continue to supervise.

United States v. Fordice (1992) The policies and practices of the Mississippi university system in its entirety was brought about from this case. Beginning in 1848, Mississippi maintained a dual higher education system by forming five historically white institutions and three historically black institutions. In 1969, Mississippi failed to develop an approved plan that would dismantle the dual system. In 1975, Black citizens of Mississippi filed a law suit stating the dual system violated several amendments and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Subsequently, the United States also filed suit stating that Mississippi had not met the requirements of the equal protection law nor the requirements of Title VI. In 1981, the board submitted mission statements for the eight post-secondary institutions; however, such action

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did not change the racial percentage of students at each of the institutions. In 1987, the case went to District Court for trial. The state of Mississippi insisted it tried to abolish the dual system by establishing race neutral policies and practices in student admissions, faculty hiring, and procedures; however, students should be able to choose the institution they want to attend based on the goal and mission of the institution. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed that the policies and procedures were racially neutral and identified the following four areas of Mississippi’s plan that were traceable to the dual system: (1) Admissions in the use of the American College Testing (ACT) Program—the score of fifteen or higher landed students in the white institutions; however, only 30 percent of blacks scored 15 or higher. (2) Duplication of programs—if two or more institutions offered the same programs that are not core programs, the court considered the duplicated programs unnecessary. (3) Institutional Mission Statements—the court argued that the mission statements maintained racially identifiable postsecondary institutions and gave the HBCUs limited educational arena. (4) Eliminating Institutions—the court noted that Mississippi had eight institutions that opened to provide separate facilities for minority groups and that removal of duplicate programs and modification of admissions policies could eliminate some institutions. The court had to consider: (1) whether retaining the eight institutions would affect student choice and continue the segregated higher education system; (2) whether maintaining each of the universities was educationally justifiable; and (3) whether one or more could be merged or closed. Mississippi has eight institutions because of de jure segregation.

Other Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, 1965) Under the Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a response to the slow pace of desegregation in the school districts in America In particular, the ESEA provided money to urban schools with the goal of seeking equality of educational opportunity for millions of poor children. Allocated to Title I, the vast majority of ESEA funding subsidized compensatory education programs that included remedial instruction, socialization skills, parent training, libraries, cultural enrichment, speech therapy, and medical services.

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Little Rock School District, et. al. v. Pulaski County Special School District (1982) In Arkansas, the county of Pulaski encompasses three autonomous school districts: Little Rock (LRSD), North Little Rock (NLSD), and Pulaski County Special School District (PCSSD). All three districts operated under a court ordered desegregation mandate, but by 1982, none of the districts had achieved unitary status. The Little Rock school district sued the state, the Arkansas Department of Education, the Pulaski County Special School District, and the North Little Rock School District on the ground that there were practices which hindered desegregation. The suit asked that all three districts be consolidated to address Little Rock schools’ declining white population. The claim was rejected by the court, but the LRSD’s borders were expanded to match the city limits and boost the district’s white population. Consequently, inter-district constitutional violations were found to have occurred. As a result, the court ordered several remedial steps to be taken by each district. During the 1980s, other parties got involved, namely the Joshua interveners who represented the district’s "all current, past and future LRSD, PCSSD, and NLRSD black students, their parents , and next friends. In 1989, a settlement in the case recognized that Little Rock was unitary in terms of student assignment, staff hiring and similar issues. From that point, the court redirected the case’s focus on “secondary” desegregation issues—such as improving the academic achievement of black students whose standardized test scores repeatedly showed gaps behind white students. In 2014 Little Rock and North Little Rock School Districts were officially dismissed from the lawsuit, but Pulaski County Special School District remained under court ordered supervision to complete the final goals to achieve unitary or desegregated status. Emerging from the settlement was the Dr. Charles W. Donaldson Summer Academy held at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Philander Smith College which sought to improve the academic achievement of African American students by ensuring students placed out of developmental coursework prior to the freshman year of college.

No Child Left Behind Act (2001) Strategies of standards, assessments, and accountability mark the signature education program of President George W. Bush. Historically other education reform programs preceded NCLB— e.g., America 2000, Goals 2000, and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1994. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush convened a summit of the nation's governors in Charlottesville, Virginia. The focus of the summit was to discuss and to agree on setting

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national education goals which already had been called for in the earlier commissioned report, Nation at Risk (1981) and hinted to following interpretations of the educational achievements of America's students by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) which oversaw the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the testing arm for national assessment. In response to the growing interest in school reform, the governors who convened in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with the White House, pledged six goals for education reform, known also as Goals 2000: 1) the "State of the Union became the "State of to learn." Other pledges included 1) high school graduation rates would rise to "at least 90 percent"; 2) students would leave grades four, eight, and twelve "having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter," including English, mathematics, history, geography, and science; 3) American students would lead the world in mathematics and science; 4) American adults would be literate and prepared for work and citizenship; and 5) "every school in America" would be safe and free of drugs. Endorsed in Congress' House by a vote of 381-41 and in the Senate by a vote of 87-10, the No Child Left Behind bill required states, as had the 1994 authorization of ESEA, to be held accountable for the progress of every child. In particular, NCLB was designed to set standards, conduct assessments, and use the information derived from the assessments to hold schools accountable for student performance. Unlike the 1994 reauthorization of ESEA, the NCLB required states, seeking to maintain funding, to disaggregate the academic achievement of students by their race, gender, ethnicity, special education status, and if they were proficient English-speaking. Last, NCLB forced public attention on achievement gaps (by race, ethnicity, gender, etc) which indirectly forced states to improve student performances, especially among the disadvantaged and under-represented.

INTELLECTUAL PERSPECTIVES

The Quest for ‘Book Learning’: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom Christopher M. Span and James D. Anderson The history of education and the African American experience is one of unremitting struggle and perseverance. . . .This chapter traces [an] educational history. It highlights how… law and societal conditions shaped some of the earliest educational opportunities of African Americans, how historians have chronicled and analyzed this history, and how African Americans—freeborn, manumitted, enslaved, fugitive, freed, and otherwise—attempted to obtain an education before and after the Civil War . . . The descendants of both slaves and free persons of color inherited a distinctive orientation toward learning that made education inseparable from the struggle for freedom. This heritage is expressed in the struggle of each generation since the postemancipation period and has persisted into our own present. Education has always been a core value in the African American experience. As an ideal, it has historically been equated with freedom and empowerment, and has served as a strategy to combat discrimination, exclusion, slavery, segregation, and other systemic forms of oppression. The history of education in the African American experience is one of unremitting struggle and perseverance; it is a history that details the determination of a people to use schools and knowledge for liberation and inclusion in the American social order. The collective strivings and educational history of African Americans in the South before and after enslavement epitomize this contention. Their guest for book learning is arguably one of the better illustrations of their long struggle to affirm their humanity and to persevere amid overtly oppressive and dehumanizing conditions. This chapter traces that educational history. It highlights how the law and societal conditions shaped some of the earliest educational opportunities of African Americans, how historians have chronicled and analyzed this history, and how African Americans—freeborn, manumitted, enslaved, fugitive, freed, and otherwise—attempted to obtain an education before and after the Civil War. [I]n the African American experience, the quest to acquire book learning for liberation began the day the first Africans were brought to Virginia in 1619…. One classic example of the importance of understanding the written word was Anthony Johnson, an enslaved African brought to Virginia in 1621. According to ship records, Johnson’s name upon arrival on Virginia’s eastern shore was “Antonio the Negro,”

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and historians who have studied his life agree that he arrived not as an indentured servant, but as a slave. Even so, within the next twenty years Johnson would purchase his own freedom and become a significant landowner. He would frequently use the court in colonial Virginia to protect his property and insure that his wife and daughters were not classified as titheable—that is, obliged to pay taxes. In addition, Johnson would have all his children baptized because he was aware of a Virginia statute that did not allow Christians to be enslaved. Whether Johnson became literate—meaning he could read and write in the English language—is not apparent from the historical record. What is obvious, however, is Johnson’s recognition of the importance of learning and self-improvement for the protection of his family, understanding the system of taxation, acquiring and protecting his property and investments, and ultimately for his freedom. Such knowledge and respect for literacy as a way of liberation and protection—in a society that was increasingly enslaving and segregating people on the basis of skin color—was passed down generation to generation, and became a widespread cultural value among African Americans by the American Revolution. Notwithstanding this cultural appreciation for learning arose concomitantly with a series of anti-literacy laws aimed to deny African Americans—enslaved or free—access to an education. Nearly every American colony, and later state, prohibited or stridently restricted teaching free and enslaved African Americans in the South to read or write. South Carolina was the first. As early as 1740, the colony enacted a law that prohibited any person from teaching or causing a slave to be taught to read or write. Arguably, this statute was in response to the increased teaching of slaves by Christian ministers. The first school established for enslaved African Americans by South Carolina parishioners was in 1695 at Goose Creek Parish in Charleston. Believing that all children of God should be baptized and believing that literacy was a prerequisite to baptism, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel trained thousands of enslaved African Americans in the rudiments of Christian principles and literacy, not just in South Carolina, but in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland as well. Fearing baptism equated manumission, and that time spent learning catechism meant time away from plantation work, South Carolina slaveholders pressured the colony’s governing body to pass a law that made it a crime to teach slaves to read and write. Thirty years later, colonial Georgia followed South Carolina’s precedent and enacted similar legislation that forbade the teaching of slaves to read or write.

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Restrictions on African American literacy grew worse during the antebellum era. As noted by one historian, “local ordinances supplemented state laws, and in some places it became a crime merely to sell writing materials” to enslaved African Americans or even establish a school for free blacks. The laws against teaching enslaved African Americans to read and write during the antebellum era grew out of a variety of fears and concerns, the most straightforward being the use of literacy as a means to freedom (such as the forging of passes for escape). By 1830, the state of Georgia imposed fines, public whippings, and/or imprisonments to anyone caught teaching enslaved or free African Americans. In that same year, North Carolina and Louisiana also enforced such punishments on persons willing to teach the rudiments of literacy to enslaved African Americans. In its 1830-1 legislative sessions, Virginia provided penalties for teaching enslaved blacks to read or write. In 1832, Alabama’s Digest of Laws prohibited under fine the teaching of enslaved African Americans; its legislation arose from the panic following the Nat Turner revolt in Southampton, Virginia. In 1834, South Carolina responded similarly, and revised its 1740 statute to penalize all persons who taught African Americans, even freeborn blacks, how to read and write. Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee never legally forbade the teaching of enslaved African Americans, but public opinion against African American literacy had so hardened that the actual opportunities for enslaved blacks and free persons of color to learn decreased as much as in states where illiteracy was legally mandated. Correspondingly, Mississippi, Missouri, and Maryland never statutorily penalized anyone associated with teaching African Americans. Rather they barred public assemblages of African Americans for educational purposes and strongly discouraged whites from assisting blacks in learning the written word. Local sentiment served as an additional impediment to becoming literate during the antebellum era. Proslavery ideologues assumed only “madmen would risk having their slaves read” or mingle with literate free blacks. Most believed that slaves should receive instruction only in that which would qualify them for their “particular station” in life. These sentiments were ingrained points of view by the 1840s, and they complemented the growing number of laws banning or restricting African American literacy in the antebellum South. Similarly, these views served as a rationale for the continued maintenance of hereditary slavery and the denial of civil and political rights to free African Americans in a democratic society. They also became a “self-fulfilling prophecy” for the pseudo-science of the day, which saw African Americans as genetically inferior and by their nature incapable of learning.

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Testimony by antebellum African Americans themselves shows that the law, while restrictive, was less of a problem than local sentiment and opposition. To slaves and slaveholders alike, literacy was equated with empowerment and freedom. Enslaved black Charles Ball was certain that slaveholders were always “careful to prevent the slaves from learning to read, because “They fear that they [the slaves] may be imbibed with the notions of equality and liberty” from such teaching. After he escaped from slavery, Frederick Douglass offered a similar assessment. He reasoned thus: It is perfectly well understood at the south, that to educate a slave is to make him discontented with slavery, and to invest him with a power which shall open to him the treasures of freedom; and since the object of the slaveholder is to maintain complete authority over his slave, his constant vigilance is exercised to prevent everything which militates against, or endangers, the stability of his authority. Education being among the menacing influences, and, perhaps, the most dangerous, is, therefore, the most cautiously guarded against.

Many enslaved African Americans knew firsthand the horrors that awaited a slave able to obtain some book learning. As a child during slavery, William Heard personally witnessed the punishment inflicted on a slave who secretly learned the rudiments of literacy. Heard starkly remembered that “any slave caught writing suffered the penalty of having his forefinger cut from his right hand.” Disfigurement was to ensure that a literate slave never wrote again, because a slave able to write could literally write his or her own pass to freedom. Former slave Lucindy Jurdon had similar recollections. “Ef us tried to learn to read or write,” she recalled, “dey would cut your forefingers off.” Correspondingly, Arnold Gragston of Macon County, Kentucky remembered when his master suspected his slaves of learning to read and write he would call them to the big house. He continued, “if we told him we have been learnin’ to read, he would beat the daylights out of us.” Still, as historian Janet Duitsman Cornelius states, “despite the dangers and difficulties, thousands of slaves learned to read and write in the antebellum South.” Free blacks in the South desiring a formal education also faced challenges. Their very existence proved to be an anomaly in a nation premised upon a white supremacist ideology and the hereditary and lifelong enslavement of people of African descent. In some locales, free blacks barely maintained a quasi-free status and, consequently, fared little better than their enslaved brethren. Such fate was all too familiar to the Reverend William Troy, who left his birth state for Canada when he and his family could no longer endure life in the United States. Born free in

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Essex County, Virginia, Troy recalled the immense difficulty he had in procuring an education for himself and his family because of the strict legal and customary proscriptions against free persons of color. “Personally, I have suffered on account of my color in regard to education. I was not allowed to go to school publicly, had to learn privately…. Further, I could not educate my children there [Virginia], and make them feel as women and men ought—for, under those oppressive laws, they would feel a degradation not intended by Him who made of one blood all the people of the earth.” Though they never met, Thomas Hedgebeth, a freeborn black from Halifax County, North Carolina, could easily understand Troy’s frustration and his migration to Canada. He wrote: “The law there does not favor colored people…. A free-born man in North Carolina is as much oppressed, in one sense, as the slave. I was not allowed to go to school…and I think it an outrageous sin and shame, that a free colored man could not be taught.”

A Review of the Historiography of African American Education before and after the Civil War Historians who have studied the specifics of the mass movement for book learning and schooling in the South before and after the Civil War agree that African Americans everywhere considered education a paramount and invaluable acquisition. The standard histories on African American education document educational norms and values among antebellum and postbellum southern blacks that are complex, adaptive and extremely supportive of learning and self-improvement. Still, historians debate the extent of learning African Americans actually received during these eras and what it was that motivated both free and enslaved (soon thereafter, freed) blacks to seek out book learning in a society that aimed to keep them illiterate. This is especially true of historical analysis concerning slave literacy. For nearly a century historians have debated the approximate percentage of literate slaves in the antebellum era. Carter G. Woodson initiated the debate in 1916. He figured that at least 10 percent of enslaved African Americans “had the rudiments of education in 1860.” “But the proportion,” he concluded “was much less than it was near the close of the era of better beginnings about 1825.” Woodson estimated that slave literacy rates declined by almost half after the 1820s, given the series of strict legal measures aimed at deterring the teaching of enslaved African Americans. Nearly two decades after Woodson, W. E. B. Du Bois estimated that only 5 percent of enslaved African Americans in the South were literate prior to emancipation. Du Bois’ assessment was

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drawn primarily from his considerations of the educational and governmental activities of literate freedmen in the first decade after the Civil War. Eugene Genovese in his seminal publication, Roll Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, took the middle ground on the debate. While he agreed that Du Bois’s 5 percent estimate was “entirely plausible,” he was also quick to comment that this approximation “may even be too low.” What was apparent to Genovese from the historical record was the fact that throughout the South “slaveholders, travelers, and ex-slaves agreed that many plantations had one or more literate slaves.” This fact alone served as the foundation for Genovese’s claim that literacy was an ever-present feature in the antebellum slave community. Historian Janet Duitsman Cornelius offered her own assessment on the extent of slave literacy during the antebellum era, and she supported Woodson’s higher estimate. Cornelius reviewed the testimony of ex-slaves interviewed between 1936 and 1938 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and over 200 autobiographical narratives of formerly enslaved African Americans. In her book, When I Can Read My Title Clear, Cornelius concluded that more enslaved African Americans learned to read and/to write after 1825 than Woodson or Du Bois could have known . At least 5 percent of the ex-slaves interviewed by the WPA explicitly stated that they learned to read and/or write during enslavement. Given the fact that these interviews were conducted approximately 65 years after slavery’s abolition, virtually every ex-slave professing their ability to read and/or write had to have attained these skills post-1825. Notwithstanding, Cornelius is correct in forewarning her readers that as in other cultures “there can never be exact measurements of the extent of literacy among enslaved African Americans.” One of the primary reasons for the uncertainty has already been alluded to throughout this essay: “Neither slaves nor those slaveholders and others who taught them could proclaim their activities safely” or publicly without the possibility of punishment. Still, historians tend to agree on the motivations of slaves to become literate. Enslaved African Americans who learned to read and / or write “gained privacy, leisure time, and mobility. A few wrote their own passes and escaped from slavery. Literate slaves also taught others and served as a conduit for information within a slave communication network. Some were even able to capitalize on their skills in literacy as a starting point for leadership careers after slavery ended.” Most historians are of the same opinion that learning to read and write reinforced an image of self-worth and community empowerment among enslaved African Americans and that literacy in itself was the first step to freedom. As one historian inferred, the acquisition of literacy in the slave community was “a

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communal act” and “a political demonstration of resistance to oppression and of self-determination for the black community…through literacy the slave could obtain skills valuable in the white world…and could use those skills for special privileges or to gain freedom.” Thomas Webber’s classic, Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community, 18311865, which documented the cultural and informal education of slaves during the antebellum era, offered an equally interesting perspective. Webber reasoned that a slave who could read was a very important person in the slave community. Webber adamantly stressed: “Not only could such persons keep other slaves abreast of the news, write them passes, and read to them straight from the Bible, but they disproved the racist notion promulgated by whites that blacks were incapable of such learning.” James Olney argued that enslaved African Americans viewed literacy as a “mechanism for forming an identity;” its acquisition confirmed their humanity and gave hope to the possibility of slaves obtaining freedom, even citizenship in American society, through the written word. To historian V. P. Franklin, literacy signified an additional skill to protect and assist enslaved African Americans in surviving the immeasurable vices of American slavery. “Education and literacy,” stated Franklin, “were greatly valued among Afro-Americans enslaved in the United States because they saw in their day-to-day experiences—from one generation to the next— that knowledge and information helped one to survive in a hostile environment.” Accordingly, enslaved African Americans considered reading and writing as necessary skills for enduring and possibly escaping enslavement. Research by Ivan McDougle on runaway slaves strongly supports the contention that enslaved African Americans attempted to use their secretly-gained understanding of the written word to earn their freedom. McDougle documented that 71 of the 350 advertised runaways in antebellum Kentucky, 20.2 percent, were listed as being able to read, and 37 or 10.5 percent were also reported as being able to write . Arguably, the high percentage of literate runaway slaves in Kentucky may have existed because there was not a law in Kentucky prohibiting the teaching of slaves. Similarly, almost 9 percent of the 625 runaway slaves interviewed in William Still’s The Underground Railroad (approximately 56 escapees) were recorded as learning how to read and / or write enslaved. While these figures may be perceived as low or insignificant in the greater analysis, they serve as excellent examples of literate African Americans in the antebellum slave community. Moreover, they illustrate that enslaved African Americans desired—and sometimes used—these skills to resist enslavement and earn their freedom. To reiterate a previous contention,

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such ambitions for literacy—whether gained or not—were passed down for generations until freedom universally came in 1865. Perhaps the most dramatic expression of enslaved African Americans’ great longing for education came after emancipation. For freedpeople, as for slaves, literacy and schools were equated with empowerment and freedom: they “represented the Keys of the Kingdom.” Historian James D. Anderson was correct in asserting that freedpeople in general “emerged from slavery with a strong belief in the desirability of learning to read and write”: “This belief was expressed in the pride in which they talked of other ex-slaves who learned to read and write in slavery and in the esteem in which they held literate blacks.” The historiography of African American education following the Civil War strongly supports these arguments. Historians James D. Anderson, Henry Bullock, Ronald Butchart, W. E. B. Du Bois, Herbert Gutman, Jacqueline Jones, James L. Leloudis, Robert C. Morris, Christopher M. Span, and Heather Williams have all documented through their research the connections that freed African Americans made between education and citizenship. Further, they have demonstrated how the efforts and educational enthusiasm of former slaves served as the catalyst to the South’s first comprehensive public school system. For both individual and collective reasons, freed blacks sought an education because it represented a previously prohibited means of control, empowerment, and autonomy, as well as a practical means of personal and professional improvement. Moreover, in freedom, as in slavery, the quest for learning was part and parcel of the larger struggle for real freedom and equality. It is difficult to overemphasize the enthusiasm of formerly enslaved African Americans and the expectations they had of education and its usefulness in emancipation. Practically every contemporary, friend or foe, of the ex-slave witnessed their determination in acquiring an education for themselves and their children. “In its universality and intensity,” one New England Freedmen Aid Society missionary recounted, “they [formerly enslaved African Americans] believe that reading and writing are to bring with them inestimable advantages.” As in slavery, education was perceived as a means to progress and societal uplift: exslaves perceived book learning as an investment, a passageway to a better day for themselves and their children. It was considered a priority, a necessary investment for citizenship and the overall advancement of the emergent ex-slave community. As mentioned, such aspiration for learning was a deeply entrenched cultural value in the African American experience and was virtually universal in the ex-slave community. It sharply differed from the

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expectations that poor southern whites had of education and the emphasis they placed on it. Where poor whites, according to W. E. B. Du Bois, viewed schooling as a “luxury connected to wealth” and did not demand an opportunity to acquire it, African Americans—both during and after slavery—demanded it connecting education with freedom, social mobility, and self-sufficiency. Du Bois concluded that formerly enslaved African Americans firmly “believed that education was a stepping-stone to wealth and respect, and that wealth without education, crippled” a person’s prospects of attaining equality, self-reliance, landownership, the vote, and full citizenship. Had he been aware of Du Bois’s contention, Charles Whiteside most likely would have agreed. The very day Whiteside’s owner informed him that he was free, he also informed him that his freedom was “essentially meaningless” and that he “would always remain a slave” because he had “no education.” “Education,” the former slaveowner decreed, was “what makes a man free.” Impressed but not discouraged, by the words of the man who had hitherto held him in bondage, Whiteside made up his mind, then and there, to insure that his children received the type of education he was systematically denied. He sent each of his 13 children to school, determined, as he said, “to make them free.” How enslaved African Americans acquired the skills of reading and writing, with minimal guidance and under the constraints of American slavery, truly characterized ability and determination to learn despite the odds against them. With few options for instruction, minimal resources— pencils, paper, books, and the like—and under the most constraining circumstances, numerous enslaved African Americans haphazardly and defiantly learned to read and write. No matter how discouraging these conditions seemed, the situation was not entirely hopeless. As Carter G. Woodson pointed out: The ways in which slaves acquired knowledge are significant. Many picked it up here and there, some followed occupations which were in themselves enlightening, and others learned from slaves whose attainments were unknown to their masters. Often influential White men taught Negroes not only the rudiments of education but almost anything they wanted to learn. Not a few slaves were instructed by the White children whom they accompanied to school. While attending ministers and officials whose work often lay open to their servants, many of the race learned by contact and observation. Shrewd Negroes sometimes slipped stealthily into back streets, where they studied under a private teacher, or attended a school hidden from the zealous execution of the law.

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How the notable Frederick Douglass learned to read and write as a slave during his childhood is an excellent illustration. At about the age of 10 he was taught by his mistress how to read and “in an incredibly short time” Douglass “had mastered the alphabet and could spell words of three or four letters.” Soon thereafter, his master discovered the activities of his wife and Douglass, and brought them to a halt. Before Douglass, he scolded his wife stating, “if you give a nigger an inch he will take an ell. Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. If he learns to read the Bible it will forever unfit him to be a slave. He should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it.” This outburst had a profound effect on Douglass. He remarked: His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed…he underrated my comprehension, and had little idea of the use to which I was capable of putting the impressive lesson he was giving to his wife. He wanted me to be a slave; I had already voted against that on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd. That which he most loved I most hated; and the very determination which he expressed to keep me in ignorance only rendered me the more resolute to seek intelligence. In learning to read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as much to the opposition of my master as to the kindly assistance of my amiable mistress.

Thenceforth, attempting to learn how to read and later write became an obsession for young Douglass. Filled with the determination to become literate at any cost, and unable to rely anymore on his mistress as a potential resource, Douglass sought out differing avenues to develop his new ability. One opportunity that repeatedly seemed available involved the support of his white plantation playmates. “I used to carry almost constantly a copy of Webster’s spelling-book in my pocket,” Douglass recalled, “and when sent on errands, or when play-time was allowed me, I would step aside with my young friends and take a lesson in spelling”: Douglass would learn to write in much the same manner. While at work on the docks, Douglass secretly sketched the various words he identified on the barrels he loaded and in the evenings or on Sundays he would coax his unsuspecting white playmates into competitive games involving the alphabet and writing. “With play-mates for my teachers, fences and pavements for my copy-books, and chalk for my pen and ink,” Douglass proudly recollected, “I learned to write.” Douglass’ informal educational attainment typified the earliest learning opportunities for the majority of enslaved African Americans who obtained some degree of literacy. Most accounts indicate that enslaved African Americans learned to read before the age of 12, usually with some

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assistance from whites, and well before they learned—if at all—to write. Learning to read before writing should not come as a surprise since writing required the mastery and acquisition of special equipment. As Cornelius deduced, “writing was harder to learn than reading, and presented the challenge of finding or making materials in a mostly rural society which had little use for these tools.” Nonetheless, enslaved African Americans made the most of their chances to learn to read or write when such opportunities arose, whether at work or home, publicly or secretly. Future congressional senator Blanche K. Bruce was a great example. While enslaved, Bruce educated himself when he was at work at a printer’s trade shop in Brunswick, Missouri. Another was Benjamin Holmes. As an apprentice tailor in Charleston, South Carolina, Holmes “studied all the signs and names on the doors” of his employment. Thereafter, he would ask people to tell him—one or two at a time—the words he observed on the signs and /or doors. By the age of 12 he discovered that he could read newspapers. Another common characteristic associated with slave literacy was the exchanging of goods for instructional lessons. Many slave children, for example, bartered trinkets, fruits, and other goods to their white peers to secure a rudimentary education. Young Richard Parker, for example, exchanged marbles to any youth willing to teach him the alphabet. James W. Sumler of Norfolk, Virginia, obtained an elementary education this way as well. Tabb Gross learned to read by promising his eight-year-old master an orange every time he taught him the alphabet. Uncle Cepahs, “a slave of Parson Winslow of Tennessee,” recalled how white children secretly taught him to read in exchange for food cooked for them by Dinah, Winslow’s cook. Robert Adams acquired his first reading lessons in similar fashion. As a child “he would get all the nice fruit he could and bartered it off in the evening and on Sundays to any white child willing to teach him from a book he secretly possessed.” His brother John Quincy Adams recalled that that was “the way many poor slaves learned to read and write” before emancipation. Virginia-born Louis Hughes was somewhat of an exception. Like Douglass, Hughes also recalled “learning off the wall;” however, he was not a child, but a young adult when he obtained his first reading lessons. Moreover, a fellow adult slave, Tom, who was the coachman for the plantation, taught him his first lessons. Tom secretly acquired his learning from some neighboring plasterers and workmen. According to Hughes, “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.” Hughes was also anxious to learn, but being a house servant could not get away as easily.

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Tom recognized Hughes’ inconvenience and ambitions. He secretly taught Hughes by writing numerals and the alphabet on the side of a barn for him to copy. These lessons lasted for months before the plantation overseers finally discovered and put an end to them. By this time, Hughes had already obtained the rudiments of book learning. The ingenious methods used by ambitious enslaved African Americans to acquire some degree of literacy are recognizable in other ways as well. In his autobiography Lucius Holsey recalled selling old rags for books, so many that he was able to buy five books: two Webster’s blue-back spellers, a school dictionary, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the Bible. These books “constituted his full stock of literary possessions;” a library, boasted Holsey, “more precious than gold” to him. Like many others, Holsey acknowledged that some white children and an African American man taught him the alphabet, after which: I fought my way unaided through the depths of my ponderous library. Day by day I took a leaf from one of the spelling books, and so folded it that one or two of the lessons were on the outside as if printed on a card. This I put in the pocket of my vest or coat, and when I was sitting on the carriage, walking the yard or streets, or using hoe or spade, or in the dining room, I would take out my spelling leaf, catch a word and commit it to memory. When one side of the spelling leaf was finished by this process, I would refold it again with a new lesson on the outside. When night came, I went to my little room, and with chips of fat pine, and pine roots…I would kindle a little blaze in the fire-place and turn my head toward it while lying flat on my back so as to get the most of the light on the leaves of the book…I reviewed the lessons of the day from the unmaimed [sic] book. By these means I learned to read and write a little in six months. Besides, I would catch words from the white people and retain them in memory until I could get to my dictionary. Then I would spell and define the words, until they became perfectly impressed upon my memory.

Holsey was fortunate that it only took him six months to master the art of reading. For most literate enslaved African Americans, given their restricted circumstances, such attainment was a laborious, extremely dangerous, and time-consuming process. For even the most determined slave, oftentimes it took years of clandestine self-instruction in order to comprehend the English written language well enough to claim the right of knowing how to read. The determination and raw intellectual abilities of Holsey and others, to acquire the rudiments of even an elementary education with so little time and guidance and under the stresses and penalties of slave life, demonstrated incontestably their impressive individual accomplishments. As one historian commented, “with fragmented

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time, few teacher guides, and limited vocabulary…[it is] no wonder it could take even a determined slave years to read. Add the physical threats to other obstacles and the process becomes heroic.” Some enslaved African Americans, however, did not have to go through the trouble of self-education in secrecy or in fear of severe punishment. According to historian John Hope Franklin, schools for enslaved blacks are known to have existed—despite the law or public sentiment—throughout the South. For example, the enslaved black “Patrick Snead of Savannah, Georgia was sent to a private institution until he could spell quite well and then to a Sunday-school for colored children.” On some estates, slave owners actually helped African Americans to learn the written word. Reasons varied. W. S. Scarborough, the future president of Wilberforce College, remembered in his slave childhood receiving permission to attend a school in Bibb County, Georgia. I. T. Montgomery, later the founder of Mound Bayou, Mississippi—the first black settlement established in the state—was instructed by his owner, Joseph Davis, in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Joseph and his brother Jefferson Davis attempted to train their slaves to be the accountants of the plantation. Aaron Robinson recalled how his owner actually required his own children to teach Robinson how to read, so that he could avoid taking them rabbit hunting. Mississippi native Smart Walker learned to read from his master’s son, who had asked his father if he could teach Walker his school lessons. Frederick Law Olmsted, while touring Mississippi in 1852, found a group of literate enslaved African Americans, all owned by a person entirely illiterate. The slave owner, according to Olmsted, took great pride in possessing such “loyal, capable, and intelligent Negroes.” All the same, the most impressive history of African Americans attempting to educate themselves came after emancipation. Between 1863 and 1870, countless former slaves would rush to the schoolhouse in hopes of learning how to read and write. Booker T. Washington, a part of this movement himself, described most vividly his people’s struggle for education: “Few people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed my education….It was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn.” Most attended what were called freedmen schools, started by northern teachers who moved south to assist freedpeople in their transition from slaves to citizens. By 1870, more than 9,500 teachers, with the assistance of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—a governmental

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agency commonly referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau—taught nearly 250,000 pupils in over 4,300 schools. Another type of grassroots school that arose in the earliest emancipation years was what the late historian Herbert Gutman called “schools of freedom.” “Freedom schools” were established, financed, and maintained by former slaves, with only the minimal assistance of others. These virtually self-sufficient schools arose in every locale following the Civil War and historians are finally giving them the attention they deserve. They began in the South’s most prominent cities—Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, New Orleans, Savannah, and Little Rock—as well as in the backwoods and on the most secluded cotton and tobacco plantations, and the first opened well before the outcome of the Civil War was determined. One of the first schools for the benefit of southern black freedmen opened in Alexandria, Virginia, during the Civil War. On September 1, 1861, Mary Chase and another freedwoman opened a pay school for wartime runaways. Less than a month later, “one of them joined Mrs. Mary Smith Peake, daughter of an English father and a free black woman who had taught at an antebellum Hampton, Virginia school.” Together they opened a second school for contrabands at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. The actions of these three black women preceded those of northern white missionaries by nearly a year. In fact, by the time northern white teachers started teaching freedpeople in Virginia, there were already three more schools in Alexandria opened by African Americans. The Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, an agency established by President Lincoln to investigate the needs of former slaves, was quick to note the pro-activities of freed blacks in Alexandria. “One of the first acts of the negroes when they found themselves free,” the commission declared, “was to establish schools at their own expense.” Union Army Lieutenant C. B. Wilder was astonished at the pace at which former slaves and their children learned in these grassroots Virginia schools. “Scarcely one could be found who could read as they came in,” Wilder reported. “Now very few but can read some, and all are getting books and with or without teachers are striving to learn themselves and one another.” By 1867, two years after the Civil War, the push for schooling among freedpeople in Virginia was truly a spectacle. One white Virginian promptly recognized this upon his visit to a school attended by free and freed black children in Norfolk. “We cannot express,” he said, “our satisfaction more fully than by saying that we were literally astonished at the display of intelligence by the pupils. Abstruse questions in arithmetic were promptly answered, difficult problems solved, the reading beautifully rhetorical, and the singing charming.” Given the pace of learning among former slave children, the onlooker concluded: “more

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encouragement must be given by our city council to our public schools to prevent white children from being outstripped in the race for intelligence by their sable competitors.” Around the time that missionary schools for freedpeople arose in Virginia in 1862, it was reported by Union Army officials that free and contraband blacks in Nashville, Tennessee, had already independently established a number of schools for more than 800 children. The primary impetus for this educational push in Nashville came from ex-slaves themselves and from Daniel Watkins, an antebellum free black who had maintained, for nearly a decade, a school for the children of free blacks. By summer’s end 1864, several schools managed and taught by African Americans in Nashville had “sprung up,” and black children outnumbered white children in school attendance. By 1869, freed African Americans in Tennessee had established a total of 22 private schools throughout the state and were financially assisting northern teachers and the Freedmen’s Bureau in maintaining 59 other schools. As the superintendent of education for Tennessee’s freedpeople C. E. Compton observed, the private schools established were “wholly supported by the freedmen without any aid from the bureau, State, or from benevolent societies.” Equally impressive efforts were seen elsewhere, particularly in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Little Rock, Arkansas. By winter 1865, the Society of Friends—based in Philadelphia—and the New York-based American Missionary Association (AMA), in collaboration with Baltimore blacks, had established 16 schools with nearly 2,000 pupils. The city’s black population, however, promoted the push for schools even further and independently established and managed seven more schools for freedpeople. A capstone to these efforts came in January 1866, when freeborn and formerly enslaved African Americans in Maryland hosted a state convention in Baltimore to assess and address their overall needs. An Advisory board convened and urged each and every Maryland black to “use every exertion to contradict the predictions of [their] enemies, which were uttered previous to the emancipation of the States that if the slaves were freed they would become a pest to society.” They advised formerly enslaved African Americans to feel and act as if they were free and independent, to be industrious, to purchase land, and to acquire an education. Specifically, the assembly advised black Marylanders to educate their children for equality, self-sufficiency, and citizenship. “Educate your children and give them trades, thereby making them equal for any position in life, for it ever we are raised to the elevated summit in life for which we strive, it must be done by our own industry and exertion….No one can do it for us,” they concluded.

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Several schools in and around Washington DC were established with similar vigor by newly emancipated blacks. For example, the African Civilization Society of New York, founded in 1858 to promote colonization by African Americans in Africa, reconstituted itself during the Civil War as a freedmen’s aid society. Between 1864 and 1867, with the help of former slaves, the organization opened six schools for African Americans. Freeborn African American Catholics of the Blessed Martin de Porres parish in the nation’s capital also founded five schools for freedpeople; and 22 African Americans individually started private schools for former slaves and other blacks during the 1860s. In Little Rock, Arkansas, freed African Americans—in addition to establishing private schools for their children—formed the Freedmen’s School Society in March 1865, in order to collect monies for educational purposes. “By their own exertions,” as reported by one Union Army official, freedpeople in Arkansas “made the city schools free for the rest of the year,” an astonishing feat considering the relative impoverishment of a people just removed from enslavement. By November 1865, many of these same freed blacks and others reconvened in Little Rock to demand that state legislators acknowledge them as citizens. They also appealed to elected representatives to provide a system of schools for their children. “We do most earnestly desire and pray,” their request began: That you clothe us with the power of self protection, by giving us our equality before the law and the right of suffrage, so we may become bona fide citizens of the State in which we live….Believing, as we do, that we are destined in the future, as in the past, to cultivate your cotton fields, we claim for Arkansas the first to deal justly and equitably for her laborers…That we are the substrata, the foundation on which the future power and wealth of the State of Arkansas must be built…we respectfully ask the Legislature to provide for the education of our children.

Amid this mass movement for literacy and schools, following the end of slavery, few missionary or military personalities from the North recognized and appreciated the educational zeal of the South’s freedpeople better than the superintendent of education for the Freedmen’s Bureau, John W. Alvord. Alvord was appointed to this commission in July 1865 and made it his first priority to tour the region to assess its needs. He observed firsthand the strides and sacrifices former slaves had made to acquire an education, even if it was only rudimentary instruction. Everywhere Alvord traveled he discovered, with surprise, “a class of schools” that he identified as “native schools.” These independent or selfsustaining schools were managed and “taught by colored people, rude and imperfect, but still groups of peoples, old and young, trying to learn.” In

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his first to ten semi-annual reports, Alvord estimated that at least 500 of these independent black schools existed in the South, the vast majority never before visited by a white person. Flabbergasted by the educational motivation and pro-activities of the South’s freedpeople, Alvord made it a point to pen his observations. He wrote, “throughout the entire south an effort is being made by the colored people to educate themselves…[and] in the absence of other teachings they are determined to be self-taught.” What should be apparent in this overview of the history of African American education before and after slavery is the resilience and determination of a people to become literate, as part of a long historical struggle against slavery and racism, in pursuit of freedom and equality. The desire for literacy was in itself an act of resistance. During slavery, the quest for book learning was a direct challenge to the repressive law and social customs that strove to keep African Americans—enslaved or free— illiterate, for literacy was equated with empowerment and freedom from enslavement. Such appreciation for the written word was passed down for generations in the slave community until slavery’s abolition. After slavery, this cultural appreciation for book learning among freed southern blacks flourished and took on new forms. As an ideal, literacy was still equated with freedom, but now it related to the extension of personal freedoms as citizens in a democracy and it served as the foundation for citizenship, and individual and collective improvement. The value that African Americans placed on learning and selfimprovement, distinctive as it was, did not necessarily have a natural or “instinctive” cause. However, in the context of slavery and racism, literacy—and the way they acquired it—inevitably developed the way they thought about education. That experience for slaves and free persons of color was vastly different in most respects from all other classes of American citizens, both “native” whites and immigrants. During the decades before the Civil War, slaves and free blacks in the South lived in a society in which literacy was forbidden to them by law and custom; but literacy symbolized freedom and it contradicted the condition of slavery and servitude. At the dawn of the Civil War about four million enslaved African Americans lived in a society where they could be whipped, maimed, or killed for the pursuit of learning. This repression is recorded vividly in the autobiographies and narratives of slaves. Slaves everywhere understood the penalties and extreme difficulties in the pursuit of education as further forms of oppression. “There is one sin that slavery committed against me,” professed one former slave, “which I will never forgive. It robbed me of my education.” Emancipation released an ex-slave class whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents viewed reading

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and writing as both a challenge to oppression and an expression of freedom. One of the first schools founded by slaves at the onset of the Civil War was established in New Orleans in 1860. They named it the “Pioneer School of Freedom.” The very naming of this school epitomized African Americans’ belief in education as a means to liberation. The descendants of both slaves and free persons of color inherited a distinctive orientation toward learning that made education inseparable from the struggle for freedom. This heritage is expressed in the struggle of each generation since the post-emancipation period and has persisted into our own present. The symbolic continuity between the “Pioneer School of Freedom” of 1860 and the “Mississippi Freedom Schools” of the 1960s represents a long-standing and indivisible relationship between the quest for book learning and the quest for freedom in the African American experience. In vital respects, education was viewed as the first act of resistance. “Get an education, boy,” African American grandmothers often said, “because that’s the one thing that whites can’t take away from you.”

Epilogue: Black Education in Southern History from The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 James D. Anderson [I]t is ironic that in time a body of historical and social science literature was built up which tended to interpret blacks’ relatively lower levels of educational attainment in the twentieth century as the product of initial differences in attitude or cultural orientation toward learning and self-improvement. Even recent studies argue that black dialect, oral traditions, and cultural separatism prevented blacks from being more successful in school during the Reconstruction era. Further, it is maintained that the difference in historic patterns of school achievement between blacks and immigrant groups is mainly the result of long-standing attitudes toward learning and selfimprovement. A careful examination of blacks’ enduring beliefs in education and their historic struggle to acquire decent educational opportunities against almost overwhelming odds leaves "little room" to attribute their relatively low levels of educational attainment to uncongenial cultural values or educational norms. Blacks’ motivation for intellectual achievement, which lay deep in the slave and ex-slave past, persisted into the twentieth century and into [the] present. THE EDUCATIONAL sphere in the postbellum South was, among other things, an ideological medium through which northerners and southerners posed and apprehended fundamental questions of class, culture, race, and democracy. Black education was one of the central arenas for that struggle to define social reality and shape the future direction of southern society. Without question, it was not as important as economics or politics, but, perhaps, it was a better lens through which to comprehend the separate and distinct social visions of a New South. For it was through differing forms of training the young that each class and race tried to shape its own future and translate its particular experiences, ideas, values, and norms into a legitimate projection of broader social relations. Inherent in the idea of universal education was the opportunity to engage in long-term, systemic, public discourse to make particular forms of experience and projections of social life dominant. The postbellum crusade for control over the educational process was indissolubly linked to the struggle to weld the separate elements of southern life into a single vision of the South’s future. Hence not only questions involving the status and future of black southerners but also those involving relations among

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classes of northern and southern whites were drawn into the arena of black education. Because each group believed that it was critical to educate the young in the values, norms, perceptions, sentiments, and customs that supported and defined the emergent New South, campaigns to control education often revealed complexities and differences that were less conspicuous in other areas. For instance, whites all over the South and many in the North supported efforts to disfranchise black voters. White consensus in these campaigns suggests a unity of belief in white supremacy that combined different classes of whites into a single ideology. The educational arena, however, revealed important ideological differences based on the social position, cultural beliefs, political strategies, and perceived common interests of their proponents. White planters who dominated local governments in the rural South generally resisted universal public education, particularly when it applied to rural blacks. White urban industrialists believed that blacks should be disfranchised and remain permanently in a lower-class status, but they also believed that a proper system of universal education would improve the economic productivity of rising generations. Moreover, they believed that universal schooling would socialize the young to the disciplines and values needed for efficient service within social roles prescribed along race and class lines. Thus one set of dominant-class white southerners believed that formal schooling inappropriately tended to raise blacks’ aspirations and to ruin them as plantation laborers, while another group of dominant-class white southerners thought that education, when properly controlled, could make blacks as asset instead of a burden to the South. Behind these different beliefs about ways of training the young lay discrete social visions of the character and order of the New South. Similarly, basic agreement on some questions did not succeed in uniting white northerners around any common conception of black education. Neither the antislavery legacy nor the Civil War-born sentiment of justice could transcend basic questions of political dominance, economic order, and race relations. To be sure, northerners favored universal public education, but they did not agree on the purpose and function of schooling among the freedpeople. Northern white industrialists, beginning with the establishment of the Peabody Education Fund in 1867, saw universal schooling in much the same way as did southern white industrialists—as a means to make black southerners an efficient laboring force of the South and to prepare them for a fairly definite caste system. It was mainly through their differences with the southern white planters that northern white industrialists gained their

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reputations as liberal reformers and were perceived as promoting in the South more than just race relations. The Yankee missionaries, despite their paternalism, were guided in significant part by a sense of democratic idealism. They held that poor and racially subjugated children had a right to the finest quality of public education and to political and civil equality. Class, ideology, race, and region all intersected in complex and conflicting ways to present the former slaves with contending conceptions of the meaning and purpose of education in the new social order. Southern planters, urban industrialists, Yankee missionaries, and northern industrialists sought to gain black consent to their respective social and educational ideologies, even when a particular social vision, as in the case of the planters, meant virtually no schooling at all for black children. The long struggle over the developments of education in the postbellum South occurred in large part because no dominant class could convince the freedpeople that its conception of education reflected a natural and proper social order. There was nothing inevitable about the former slaves’ ability to resist these competing ideologies of education and society and pursue their own course. They had spent much time preparing themselves for the moment when they could act in ways more consonant with beliefs sacred to them that could not be expressed before emancipation. Initially, all of the dominant white groups suspected that the exslaves were a docile and tractable people. But the actions of the freedmen during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods convinced all parties that blacks had their own ideas about learning and selfimprovement. Blacks soon made it apparent that they were committed to training their young for futures that prefigured full equality and autonomy. Consequently, the assumption that blacks had no ideas about the meaning and purpose of education in a free society was quickly replaced with the belief that they held the wrong ideas about how and for what purpose they should be educated. The ex-slaves split with their closest allies, Yankee missionaries, over the question of who should control the educational institutions for black children. Black southerners entered emancipation with an alternative culture, a history that they could draw upon, one that contained enduring beliefs in learning and self-improvement. They convinced their compatriots that a perceived common interest in literacy and schooling did not depend for its existence upon dominant-class culture. There developed in the slave community a fundamental belief in learning and self-improvement and a shared belief in universal education as a necessary basis for freedom and citizenship. The freedpeople carried with them into emancipation the distinctive orientation toward learning

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that developed in slave quarters during the decades preceding the Civil War. “On Sundays,” recalled ex-slave Charity Bowery, “I have seen the negroes up in the country going away under large oaks, and in secret places, sitting in the woods with spelling books.” The testimony of former slaves reveals their strong motivation for literacy and book learning. According to one description of a secret school of slaves, “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.” Yet the typical slave never attended school or a secret literacy session a day in his or her life. As one former slave remembered, “Why, we were no more than dogs! If they caught us with a piece of paper in our pockets, they’d whip us. They were afraid we’d learn to read and write, but I never got a chance.” But their lack of a chance to learn did not mean that they had no desire for learning and self-improvement. Even the slavemasters’ legal and customary repression of literacy among slaves betrayed the masters’ respect for their slaves’ capacity and desire for book learning. As the masters increased efforts to stifle the slaves’ desire for literacy, the slaves seemed more convinced that education was fundamentally linked to freedom and dignity. This distinctive orientation toward learning was transmitted over time. This legacy helps us to understood in large part why the choices exslaves made during the war and Reconstruction included the building of a free school system. A large number of blacks who held leadership positions in the ministry, government, and education during the immediate postwar period had learned to read and write as slaves. They took the lead in shaping the various elements of black culture into a vision of education and social order at variance with the South’s traditional view of public education. The slaves’ educational values, nourished but often barely articulated before the Civil War, found expression during and especially after that conflict. Northern observers during these time noted that the former slaves considered book learning almost a sacred act. The Union army officers were the first to be shocked by black soldiers’ desire to read and write. A chaplain of a Louisiana black regimen wrote: “I am sure I never witnessed greater eagerness for study; and all who have examined the writing books and listened to the recitations in the schools, have expressed their astonishment and admiration. A majority of the men seem to regard their books as an indispensable portion of their equipment, and the cartridge box and spelling book are attached to the same belt.” Such behavior caused friends and foes to reexamine their preconceived notions

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about black cultural beliefs on learning and self-improvement. The Warrenton, North Carolina, Gazette observed in 1882 that “relatively speaking” the Negroes were “taken more interest in education and surpassing us [whites] in gaining the rudiments of an education. They go to school every chance they get and shell out their money freely to pay the teachers.” A survey of North Carolina white landlords, tenants, and laborers in 1886-87 found similar opinions. A Vance Country white man proclaimed: “The colored take more interest in education than the whites.” Whether southern blacks took more interest in education than southern whites was not the meaningful point of his observation. Most important was that white land lords, tenants, and laborers, who tended to attribute negative values to black people, were forced to recognize blacks’ deeprooted belief in education. These beliefs spread over time and space and were expressed in even the most backward little rural communities. In the summer of 1886, at age eighteen, W. E. B. DuBois taught school in the hills of Tennessee. He was a Fisk University student then, and it was common for “Fisk men to venture into rural Tennessee during summer vacations to gain practical experience in teaching. In a rural black community that seemed least removed from slavery DuBois found a school. He was informed that but once since the Civil War had a teacher been there. The school, as DuBois described it, was not worthy of the name: The schoolhouse was a log hut, where Colonel Wheeler used to shelter his corn. It sat in a lot behind a rail fence and thorn bushes, near the sweetest of springs. There was an entrance where a door once was, and within, a massive rickety fireplace; great chinks between the logs served as windows. Furniture was scarce. A pale blackboard crouched in the corner. My desk was made of three boards, reinforced at critical points, and my chair, borrowed from the landlady, had to be returned every night. Seats for the children—these puzzled me much. I was haunted by a New England vision of neat little desks and chairs, but alas! The reality was rough plank benches without backs, and at times without legs.

Yet, undaunted by their poverty and sustained by a distinctive orientation toward learning, the parents saw to it when school opened in late July that their children attended. In the early morning, Du Bois heard “the patter of little feet down the dusty road,” and soon he faced a “room of dark solemn faces and bright eager eyes.” “There they sat,” DuBois recalled, “nearly thirty of them, on the rough benches, their faces shading from a pale cream to a deep brown, the little feet bare and swinging, the eyes full of mischief, and the hands grasping Webster’s blue-back spelling book.” Those children were not in school because of compulsory school

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attendance laws; there were none in Tennessee at this time. Nor were they there because of any external stimuli from missionaries, industrialists, or planters. Instead they remind us of their ancestors who sat in the woods in secret places with spelling books. They further illuminate the cumulative [African]-American beliefs in learning and self-improvements that were transmitted from the slaves to the freedpeople. Blacks’ motivation for intellectual achievement, which lay deep in the slave and ex-slave past, persisted into the twentieth century and into our own present. Observers of blacks’ educational development have been virtually uniform in their recognition of this enduring cultural belief. In his early twentieth-century classic, Following the Color Line, Ray Stannard Baker wrote: “The eagerness of the coloured people for a chance to send their children to schools is something astonishing and pathetic. They will submit to all sorts of inconveniences in order that their children may get an education.” Clearly, his observation was borne out by blacks’ contributions to the development of a common school system in the rural South during the first third of the twentieth century. In 1941, reflecting on blacks’ precious regard for education in his seminal folk history of [African]-America, Twelve Million Black Voices, Richard Wright wrote: “Any black man who can read a book is a hero to us. And we are joyful when we hear a black man speak like a book.” Only several years had elapsed when Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish social scientist, published his monumental book on the condition of blacks in America, entitled An American Dilemma. Unable to appreciate fully the culmination of blacks’ educational values that had started decades before the Civil War, Myrdal concluded that they possessed “a naïve, almost religious faith in education.” But there was nothing naïve about a belief in learning and selfimprovement as a means to individual and collective dignity. It was not the end of their struggle for freedom and justice; only a means toward that end.” Thus it is ironic that in time a body of historical and social science literature was built up which tended to interpret blacks’ relatively lower levels of educational attainment in the twentieth century as the product of initial differences in attitude or cultural orientation toward learning and self-improvement. Even recent studies argue that black dialect, oral traditions, and cultural separatism prevented blacks from being more successful in school during the Reconstruction era. Further, it is maintained that the difference in historic patterns of school achievement between blacks and immigrant groups is mainly the result of long-standing attitudes toward learning and self-improvement. A careful examination of blacks’ enduring beliefs in education and their historic struggle to acquire

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decent educational opportunities against almost overwhelming odds leaves little room to attribute their relatively low levels of educational attainment to uncongenial cultural values or educational norms. That more was not achieved means little, for the conditions have been appallingly difficult. Cultural values were hardly relevant in a society in which opportunities for education were unavailable. The slaves understood this reality, and so did their descendants. For the majority of black children in the South during most of the period under study (1860 to 1935), not even public elementary schools were available. High schools were virtually nonexistent, and the general unavailability of secondary education precluded even the opportunity to prepare for college. The education of blacks in the South reveals that various contending forces sought either to repress the development of black education or to shape it in ways that contradicted blacks’ interests in intellectual development. The educational outcomes demonstrate that blacks got some but not much of what they wanted. They entered emancipation with fairly definite ideas about how to integrate education into their broader struggle for freedom and prosperity, but they were largely unable to shape their future in accordance with their social vision.”

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The Practical Value of Higher Education Kelly Miller There are two wide apart theories of education. The one claims that man should be educated for his worth, the other that he should be trained for his work. The one aims to produce a man working, the other a working man. The highest expression of the former is in terms of manhood, of the other of mechanism.... To educate the head, the hand and the heart is but to educate the man in spots. The wiser policy is to educate the man, of whom hand and head and heart are but component faculties. That education is of most worth which enlightens the nature in all of its parts and powers. .

[B]ertram Russell, the mathematical sociologist or the sociological mathematician, has an informing article on “Freedom in Education: A Protest Against Mechanism.” We read, “machines are admirable servants, but until we have made them mere servants we shall not reap the benefit of their service.” There are two wide apart theories of education. The one claims that man should be educated for his worth, the other that he should be trained for his work. The one aims to produce a man working, the other a working man. The highest expression of the former is in terms of manhood, of the other of mechanism. One contends that the metal should be toughened and tempered regardless of the end to which it is to be put, the other maintains that the crude material should at once be shaped into the desired implement of service. One school believes that acquired discipline and culture can be translated into any mode of service, the other denies that formal discipline and culture have any value. To educate the head, the hand and the heart is but to educate the man in spots. The wiser policy is to educate the man, of whom hand and head and heart are but component faculties. That education is of most worth which enlightens the nature in all of its parts and powers. In this practical age there is little tolerance for abstract doctrine and fruitless theory that do not immediately translate themselves into the actualities of things. The whole world has been profoundly influenced by this tendency. The stress of educational emphasis has been shifted from the passive to the active voice. To be somebody is less praiseworthy than to do something. It is meaningless to be a man unless the manhood is manifested in practical workmanship. This tendency towards the practical aim in education is greatly accentuated when applied to the colored race. The higher educational

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institutions for the Negro are still on an altruistic foundation. During the last forty years the trend of Negro philanthropy has been running towards the concrete and the practical. The supporting race is reverting to the old belief in the mechanical function of the Negro in the white man’s scheme of things. The Negro was regarded as a good hand, just as one speaks of a good ox or a good ax. His highest value and virtue consisted, not in his quality as a man, but in his utility as a tool. The World War has shattered most of our revered ideals, and substituted no others in their place. Some one has said that the only thing that America gained from the war was prohibition and the “flu”; if we add the Ku Klux Klan the quota of gain will be complete. How shall we reshape our shattered educational ideals? still remains an unanswered query. No educator or educationalist has yet successfully essayed to restate these older aims in terms of the new conditions. To restate the case in terms of the peculiar and especial needs of the Negro is hardest of all. Any discipline that purifies and ennobles the nature and imparts the right impulse towards the issues of life should be considered of the highest form of practicability. When the test is applied to the Negro, however, it usually resolves itself into what he shall eat, what he shall drink and wherewithal he shall be clothed. I will make my own definition of a practical education, to operate within the limits of the present discourse. That education is practical which makes the Negro a better man and a better citizen, and renders him a more effective instrument of service to his race. I will not waste while attempting to differentiate between the several types of education. The futility of such contention is demonstrated by the fruitless controversy of the last half generation. Any form of education whether it pushes up from the bottom or pulls up from the top is working towards the same objective of race uplift and reclamation. The chief aim of what I constrained to call the higher education is to produce an efficient leadership. Any segregated or semi-segregated group is doomed unless it develops and sustains its own leadership and wise selfdirection. The Catholic priesthood with its high standards of intelligence and consecration is the salvation of the non-Protestant foreigners who flock to our shores. The Jewish Rabbi with his high cultural and ethical aims is the light of Jewry in all parts of the earth. The laboring world struggled in vain against the overlordism of capital until it began to raise up a set of instructed leaders who understood the intricate issues of capital and labor as well as the adversary against whom they contend. The red Indian has gone the way of all weak peoples who fail to develop an enlightened leadership. Unless the Negro falls under wise and instructed

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guidance out of his own group he will be doomed to a like fate. No white man can guide him within the limits of the area of his circumscribed life and opportunity. The present temper of the American people assigns the Negro to separate social areas and segregated limits. How permanent these limits are to be is largely a matter of abstract speculation. They exist today and will continue for the time with which we are now concerned. The decision of the Supreme Court upholding the validity of the Fifteenth Amendment will not give a single additional vote to the Negro in the state of Mississippi. The nullification of the segregation ordinances has no perceptible effect upon the growth of Harlem. The Negro of the immediate generation with which we are concerned must qualify to exploit racial and segregated opportunities. The segregation of the Negro makes it necessary that his professional and higher needs be met by professional men of his own race. The Negro teacher, preacher, doctor, lawyer, editor, writer and social worker become a social necessity. Hence the importance of the Negro college and University to train men and women of this blood for the high offices to which they are assigned by our social scheme. Just in proportion as the spirit of segregation increases the demand for internal leadership becomes intensified. All will agree that professional workers should have about the same degree of education regardless of the social advantages or disadvantages of the field to which they may be called to labor. The arrogant and exclusive attitude of the white race effectually bars the white worker from this field regardless of his personal disposition. No race, even through its most sacrificing members, can furnish intimate guidance for a despised people where existing regulations make it obligatory for them to eat at separate tables, to ride in separate coaches and to walk the streets apart. The function of the Negro college is to prepare the choice men and women of the race to fill the high places of intellectual, moral and spiritual authority as guide philosopher and friend of their less fortunate brethren. The people perish for want of vision as well as for want of provision. The blind cannot lead the blind less they both fall into the ditch. To give concrete illustrations of the practical value of the higher education of the Negro, I would mention: 1. To prepare Negro youth for the sacred office of the Christian ministry. The great religious estates have already been prepared by those who have gone before. There exist religious denominations with over four million members demanding fifteen thousand highly educated and consecrated men to command the pulpit. Our colleges

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2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

today are lamentably failing in their highest practical function, in that they are not inspiring the young with the moral and spiritual ardor for this high and holy task. If the pulpits of the race might be manned and commanded in the next half generation by the best mind and heart and conscience of the race, all of our complex problems would be well on the way to solution. If on the other hand our churches are to fall into the hands and under the manipulation of the poorly equipped and ill-prepared, the general life will sink to a lower level, whatever our achievements in other directions. We need thirty thousand teachers to enlighten the youth according to the standard of modern pedagogic requirements. The field calls for ten thousand physicians to take the place of those now in practice as they may be eliminated by time and to meet the growing demands of the healing profession. The standards of schools of medicine have been formulated so that no one can become a licensed practitioner who has met at least one half of the requirements of a college degree. There is need for several thousand lawyers to protect the life and property of their people. There are fundamental principles of human rights and legal interpretation which the lawyer must fathom and unfold. The white jurist lacks the stimulus of actual and acute needs of his constituents for such insistence. The rights of no people or group will be long vouchsafed unless they develop out of their own midst jurists with the interest and learning to safeguard them. Hundreds of editors, writers, scholars and thinkers are required by the needs of the masses whom they are to lead and enlighten, guide and direct. There is springing up a new profession of social service calling for increasing numbers of men and women of the requisite impulse and motive, and with the specific training for this new field of service. Collegiate education furnished the necessary stimulus for the higher aims of industrial and mechanical pursuits. Engineers, agriculturalists, architects, and leaders in the practical arts can be prepared for their function only thru the agency of the higher education.

These as well as other lines of endeavor, not here enumerated, impose upon the Negro college as responsible a burden as that borne by any portion of the educational world. No one of these callings can be

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adequately or efficiently fulfilled without a goodly measure of the training and equipment which the higher education is calculated to impart. Our higher educational institutions today are in a sad pathological condition. The power of the philanthropic impulse imparted by the good missionaries from the North has all but dried away. The old knife has grown dull and needs newness of blade and keenness of edge. The technical letter increases while the quickening spirit grows feebler. Our intelligentsia does not effectually grasp the actualities of racial life and uplift as the founders of our colleges hoped they would do. How to reinvigorate our collegians with the sense of racial responsibility and the quickening power of racial motive is the great task that devolves upon us. There is no problem that is more practical and pressing than this.

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The Talented Tenth W. E. B. Du Bois Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort and examples...of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human progress. The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools—intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it— this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life. If this be true—and who can deny it—three tasks lay before me; first to show from the past that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among American Negroes have been worthy of leadership; secondly, to show how these men may be educated and developed; and thirdly, to show their relation to the Negro program.... You misjudge us because you do not know us. From the very first it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of natural internal leadership? Negro leadership, therefore, sought from the first to rid the race of this awful incubus that it might make way for natural selection and the survival of the fittest….

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Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort and examples of this aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human progress; and two historic mistakes which have hindered that progress were the thinking first that no more could ever rise save the few already risen; or second, that it would better the unrisen to pull the risen down. How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few be strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and universities of the land. ...We will not quarrel as to just what the university of the Negro should teach or how it should teach it—I willingly admit that each soul and each race-soul needs it own peculiar curriculum. But this is true: A university is a human invention for the transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to generation, through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no other human invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools. All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold. This is true training, and thus in the beginning were the favored sons of the freedmen trained. Out of the colleges of the North came, Cravath, Chase, Andrews, Bumstead and Spence to build the foundations of knowledge and civilization in the black South. Where ought they to have begun build? At the bottom, of course, quibbles the mole with his eyes in the earth. Aye! Truly at the bottom, at the very bottom; at the bottom of knowledge, down in the very depths of knowledge there where the roots of justice strike into the lowest soil of Truth. And so they did begin; they founded colleges, and up from the colleges shot normal schools, and out from the normal schools went teachers, and around the normal teachers clustered other teachers to teach the public schools; the colleges trained in Greek and Latin and mathematics…; and these men trained full …others in morals and manners and they in turn taught thrift and the alphabet to …millions of men, who today hold … property. It was a miracle—the most wonderful peace-battle of the nineteenth century, and yet today men smile at it, and in fine superiority tell us that it was all a strange mistake; that a proper way to

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found a system of education is first to gather the children and buy them spelling books and hoes; afterward men may look about for teachers, if haply they find them; or again they would teach men Work, but as for Life—why, what has Work to do with Life, they ask vacantly.... [The college-bred Negro] is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social movements. It need hardly be argued that the Negro people need social leadership more than most groups; that they have no traditions to fall back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well-defined social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully evolved. The preacher was, even before the war, the group leader of the Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution.... Both by direct work and by direct influence on other preachers, and on congregations, the college-bred preacher has an opportunity for reformatory work and moral inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated. It has, however, been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college has found its peculiar function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how mighty a revolution has been thus accomplished. To furnish five million and more of ignorant people with teachers of their own race and blood, in one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but a very important one, in that, it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro child an attainable ideal. It brought the masses of the blacks in contact with modern civilization, made black men the leaders of their communities and trainers of the new generation. In this work college-bred Negroes were first teachers, and then teachers of teachers. And here it is that the broad culture of college work has been of peculiar value. Knowledge of life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro’s deepest ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been simply for bread winning, but also for human culture, has been of inestimable value in the training of these men. The problem of training the Negro is to-day immensely complicated by the fact that the whole question of the efficiency and appropriateness of our present systems of education, for any kind of child, is a matter of active debate, in which final settlement seems still afar off. Consequently, it often happens that persons arguing for or against certain systems of education for Negroes have these controversies in mind and miss the real question at issue. The main question, so far as the Southern Negro is concerned is: What under the present circumstances, must a system of education do in to raise the Negro as quickly as possible in the scale of civilization? The answer to this question seems to me clear: It must

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strengthen the Negro’s character, increase his knowledge and teach him to earn a living. Now it goes without saying, that it is hard to do all these things simultaneously or suddenly, and that at the same time it will not do to give all the attention to one and neglect the others; we could give black boys trades, but that alone will not civilize a race of ex-slaves; we might simply increase their knowledge of the world, but this would not necessarily make them wish to use this knowledge honestly; we might seek to strengthen character and purpose, but to what end if this people have nothing to eat or to wear? A system of education is not one thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men. If then we start out to train an ignorant and unskilled people with a heritage of bad habits, our system of training must set before itself two great aims—the one dealing with knowledge and character, the other part seeking to give the child the technical knowledge necessary for him to earn a living under the present circumstances. These objects are accomplished in part by the opening of the common schools on the one, and of the industrial schools on the other. But only in part, for there must also be trained those who are to teach these schools—men and women of knowledge and culture and technical skill who understand modern civilization, and having the training and aptitude to impart it to the children under them. There must be teachers, and teachers of teachers, and to attempt to establish any sort of system of common and industrial school training, without first (and I say first advisedly) without first providing for the higher training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds. School houses do not teach themselves—piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American….. I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of teaching the Negro to work, and to work steadily and skillfully; or seem to depreciate in the slightest degree the important part industrial schools must play in the accomplishments of these ends, but I do say, and insist upon it, that it is industrialism drunk with it its vision of success, to imagine that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its own teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public schools. But I have already said that human education is not simply a matter of schools; it is much more a matter of family and group life—the training of

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one’s home, of one’s daily companions, of one’s social class. Now the black boy of the South moves in a black world—a world with its own leaders, its own thoughts, its own ideals. In this world he gets by far the larger part of his life training, and through the eyes of this dark world he peers into the veiled world beyond. Who guides and determines the education which he receives in his world? His teachers here are the group-leaders of the Negro people—the physicians and clergymen, the trained fathers and mothers, the influential and forceful men about him of all kinds; here it is, if at all, that the culture of the surrounding world trickles through and is handed on by the graduates of the higher schools. Can such culture training of group-leaders be neglected? Can we afford to ignore it? Do you think that if the leaders of thought among Negroes are not trained and educated thinkers, that they will have no leaders? On the contrary a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold the places they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you must help furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained leadership, or you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless misguided rabble. I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education…has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there are two means of making the carpenter a man, each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family what life means; the second is to give him sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman; the first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men—not a quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good system of common schools, welltaught, conveniently located and properly equipped. [A] really efficient workman must be to-day an intelligent man who has had good technical training in addition to thorough common school, and perhaps even higher training. To meet this situation the industrial schools began a further development; they established distinct Trade Schools for the thorough training of better class artisans, and at the same time they sought to preserve for the purpose of general education, such of the simpler processes of the elementary trade learning as were best suited

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therefore. In this differentiation of the Trade School and manual training, the best of the industrial schools simply followed the plain trend of the present educational epoch. A prominent educator tells us that, in Sweden, “In the beginning the economic conception was generally adopted, and everywhere manual training was looked upon as a means of preparing the children of the common people to earn their living. But gradually it came to be recognized than manual training has a more elevated purpose, and one, indeed, more useful in the deeper meaning of the term. It came to be considered as an educative process for the complete moral, physical and intellectual development of the child.” ……. Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work will not go it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work—it must teach life. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and the Negro college must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

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Book Reviews (Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) (Jacqueline Jordan Irvine and Michele Foster, Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools. New York: Teachers College Press, 1996) Michael Fultz ...to remember segregated schools largely by recalling only their poor resources present a historically incorrect picture. ... Although Black schools were indeed commonly lacking in facilities and funding, some evidence suggests that the environment of the segregated school had affective traits, institutional policies, and community support that helped Black children learn in spite of the neglect their schools received from White school boards. “Caring” is not often a focal or explicit analytic category mentioned by educational policy analysts in their discussions of improving the academic achievement and school experiences of low-income and minority children. But it is no coincidence that in her thoughtful overview of the “Lessons Learned” from the analysis and personal reflections presented in Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine cites an earlier work by Vanessa Siddle Walker that recognizes the importance of “interpersonal caring” in sustaining a learning environment in which African American children flourish. Interestingly enough, it is the affective aspects of education, “caring” and unshakable expectations particularly, both undergirded by a supportive community and supplemented by a high-quality curriculum, which provide the connecting links between these two impressive volumes. Of the two works, Walker’s Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South will probably be of more interest to educational historians. Walker has crafted an interesting argument: namely, that “to remember segregated schools largely by recalling only their poor resources present a historically incorrect picture.” Yes, she notes, black schools in the de jure segregated South were unconscionably underfunded such that their physical facilities were frequently inadequate, their classrooms cramped and overcrowded, their supplies meager. But, she adds, “Although Black schools were indeed

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commonly lacking in facilities and funding, some evidence suggests that the environment of the segregated school had affective traits, institutional policies, and community support that helped Black children learn in spite of the neglect their schools received from White school boards.” To investigate this perspective, Walker has constructed a thorough and comprehensive case study of the Caswell County Training School (CCTS) in Yanceyville, North Carolina, focusing on the period from 1933 to 1969, the years the institution served as a high school for the local African American community in this rural, piedmont farming area. A native of this locale, Walker discovered that the African American community remembered CCTS fondly, staunchly maintained that it was a “good” school. “Did the memories have any external confirmation?” she asked. Although there have been a few other examinations of exemplary African American educational institutions during the de jure segregation period, most notably Faustine Jones’s A Traditional Model of Educational Excellence, (1981) profile of Dunbar High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, Walker’s study is unique insofar as it takes an “emic perspective” and does not impose external criteria on its central definition; Their Highest Potential “accepts the community’s evaluation of its school as ‘good’ and seeks to understand and describe what environmental factors the community valued.” Thus, as a “historical ethnography,” the study relied on extensive interviews, combined with archival research. Walker finds that “institutional caring” was a fundamental feature in the CCTS experience, a concept which includes both interpersonal relationships and supportive school policies and structures. “Caring was thus personal, relational, and situational, and was additionally supported by the structured response of the institution to the needs of the students.” “You can succeed, and we will help you succeed’: this was the dominant message of the school.” Pushing, prodding, developing, and nurturing all students to reach “their highest potential” was a phrase that CCTS teachers consistently used to describe their high expectations and their commitment to serve the “whole child.” As Walker comments, this philosophy “was the basis of good teaching and of a good school program.” “More than any particular pedagogical style or curricular content,” Walker states, “this sense that they [students] were cared about is the component of school relationships most explicitly linked to their motivation to excel.” Of course, schools are deeply embedded institutions, and the “institutional caring” that characterized this “good” school applies to the students’ parents as well. The book’s subtitle refers to an African American “school community,” and throughout Walker records the importance of both parental advocacy and expectations as important

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aspects of the CCTS legacy. Thoughtfully, she identifies role differentiations—teachers and the principal serving as daytime “parents” of the children, familial parents acting as “parents” of the school—as important attributes. “Uniformity of expectations” within a “cultural community,” Walker remarks, “created a climate in which individuals worked together on a common task with distinct responsibilities to facilitate the working of the whole.” As several of the discerning and insightful reminiscences in Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools note, however, the “uniformity” between home and school need not be as congruent as it seemingly was in the CCTS case. It must, however, be present to some degree if black children and others are to have positive school experiences and certainly at a fairly strong level with regard to certain issues. Jacqueline Jordan Irvine concurs with Mary Dilworth’s contention that home-school congruence between African American families and Catholic schools “is not a perfect fit by any measure,” and in both her personal account and in the concluding overview she remarks upon the numerous examples of cultural incongruity and marginalization recalled by the contributors. But, she perceptively adds, if culture encompasses values, beliefs, and norms, in her experience in Catholic schools there was more “match” than “mismatch” and that the conflicts tended to center on issues of norms— perceptions of how things are to be done—rather than on values and beliefs. One of the issues the authors are virtually unanimous about is that their teachers were “unrelenting in their expectation that all students would and could achieve” and that parental expectations duplicated or often exceeded the exacting presumptions experienced in school. Thus, just as Portia Shields’s analysis of Holy Angels School in Chicago—the largest allblack Roman Catholic school in the nation—indicates that significant family involvement and responsive teaching contribute to a climate that does not tolerate low standards and “demands excellence, expects excellence,” so too does Lisa Deplit recount the lingering memory that she and other classmates have of their experiences in St. Francis Xavier in New Orleans, an appreciation “that our teachers held high expectations that we could—and would—learn.” But again, as Their Highest Potential makes clear and as the historical and sociological analysis as well as the seven personal reflections that make up Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools reiterate, high expectations do not exist in a vacuum. Running through both works are notions: of the importance of demanding curriculum and demanding, “mission-oriented” teachers; parents and families and administrators and

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staff supporting each other “in ways that are mutually agreed upon and negotiated”; children whose racial and cultural identity is not destructively compromised either by the curriculum, the institution, or the society at large because, at the very least, other aspects of who they are and what they can become are so vigilantly affirmed. If “caring” is a link between these works, so too are memories, memories of the past that carry potent implications for the present. Irvine’s personal memory in Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools comments at one point that “the stories of African American oppression in the segregated South should continue to be passionately and frequently taught to both African American and White educators, and their students.” Yes, without question. But as Irvine and her co-contributors also discuss, and Walker’s analysis of her community’s collective memory in Their Highest Potential attests, this lesson must necessarily include descriptions of African American communities’ “dogged determination” to provide the best education possible, marvelous, proud “human resources” marshaled in the cause of “building men and women” in “good” schools.

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Book Review (Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.) Valinda W. Littlefield Along with documenting African American teachers’ voices, [painted is] a vivid picture of traits, policies, and support that allowed the personal, intellectual, and social development of [African American] students. In 1907 the North Carolina Legislature authorized the establishment of rural high schools. Most of the state’s rural African American citizens, however, did not benefit from such an act until almost three decades later. The history of southern African Americans within American education is a painful, relentless, and sometime triumphant pursuit for access to an adequate education. Vanessa Siddle Walker provides us with a model— Caswell County Training School (CCTS) and its community located in the Piedmont area of North Carolina—to advance our understanding of a complex, tiered educational system that emerged during the Jim Crow era. Using the conceptual framework of Henry Bullock, Walker seeks to shed light on the “unintended consequences of the intentional school board neglect”: Evidence suggests that the “environment of the segregated school had affective traits, institutional policies, and community support that helped black children learn” in spite of inequalities in resources, buildings, etc. Along with documenting African American teachers’ voices, Walker paints a vivid picture of traits, policies, and support that allowed the personal, intellectual, and social development of students. For example, teachers were active community members. They attended their students’ churches, and many taught Sunday school, provided transportation for students to extracurricular activities, and offered classes for community members. CCTS also rotated freshmen homeroom teachers with a single class until graduation. This arrangement permitted the development of personal relationships between student and teacher. In addition, availability of teachers and principals to students provided students with powerful and positive role models. Walker provides information on the school from its forerunner, Yanceyville Colored School established in 1897. She places African Americans at the center of her examination of the social, political, and

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economic relationships of the community and the educational system in building and maintaining a school. In doing so, she adds to the primary thesis of James D. Anderson’s work (The Education of Blacks in the South (Chapel Hill, 1988) that the struggle for education by blacks was far more complex than many historians have previously recognized. Community members and teachers worked diligently to establish the first school, and such a pattern continued with the struggle to build a high school. When the newly built high school opened for its first class in 1951, the process of negotiation for this educational opportunity had taken principal N. L. Dillard, teachers, and community members fourteen years. They worked with the school board when possible and circumvented it when necessary. Skillfully and innovatively, they raised funds within their community. Community members donated land, provided lumber, and made cash donations. And teachers and parents organized and coordinated fundraising events. Once the building was secured, community and educators worked conscientiously to provide the best possible education for students. Walker’s work is impressive and painstaking. Her use of oral interviews (100) to supplement her documentation places CCTS within the historical context of southern education. Her critical study moves beyond a predominantly negative historical analysis of the inequality between southern black and white educational systems. She documents and provides an interpretation of the internal operations of a black segregated school and community to allow children to reach “Their Highest Potential.”

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American Values, Social Goals, and the Desegregated School: A Historical Perspective V. P. Franklin Is school desegregation an end in itself, or a means to an end? Is this educational policy related to other social goals, or is school desegregation contrary to certain basic American values and beliefs? In this essay the relationship between American values and social goals, and the historical development of American public education will be discussed. The adequacy of the social goal of “equality of educational opportunity” will be evaluated in light of the recent suggestion that “equality of condition” between majority and minority groups should be the new social goal for American society.... It is fairly clear that blacks and other historically oppressed minority groups must mobilize their social and political resources and demand greater participation in the desegregated public school and increased access to the economic and social rewards of the entire society. To do otherwise would probably mean the continued deterioration of the social position of these oppressed minorities in American society. The increasing efforts to bring about the desegregation of American public education have generated a voluminous literature which focuses on many aspects of this important educational policy. There have been analysis of the politics of the desegregated process; the effects of the desegregation upon race relations, academic achievement, and self concepts of black and white children in desegregated schools; the plight of the black teacher in the desegregated system; and many other aspects of the process. Moreover, several essays and books have recently appeared which attempted to address the broader issues raised by public school desegregation, by asking, “Is School Desegregation Still a Good Idea?” In answering this question, the writers examined a number of issues including the role of social science research in determining the positive and negative effects of desegregation, their personal involvements in the process, and most importantly, the actions of school boards, administrators, and public officials to try and thwart the implementation of desegregation plans. Despite widespread opposition and minor setbacks, these writers ultimately conclude that “Yes, school desegregation is indeed a good idea,” and it should continue to be supported by the society at large.

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The basic reason given for the need to pursue public school desegregation was the fact that it had really not been given a viable chance to work. It was argued that if the process was allowed to continue, the desegregation of the public schools has great potential for improving interracial and majority-minority group relations in this country. Stiff opposition to school desegregation in general, and busing in particular, however, have slowed and sometimes blocked the implementation of desegregation orders. In addition, school officials and educators who openly opposed forced or court-ordered desegregation were supported by many sophisticated and unsophisticated anti-busing tracts. But the lack of significant negative effects upon the self-concepts and achievement levels of black and white children in desegregated schools led these writers to conclude that there is no good reason to abandon desegregation as a national educational policy. This line of argument in support of public school desegregation, however, did not really address the more important social issues this policy raised. Is school desegregation a viable and important social and educational policy? Is school desegregation an end in itself, or a means to an end? Is this educational policy related to other social goals, or is school desegregation contrary to certain basic American values and beliefs? In this essay the relationship between American values and social goals, and the historical development of American public education will be discussed. The social goals to be achieved by “segregated” public schooling will be examined in order to make clear the historical background of the contemporary opposition to public school “desegregation.” The adequacy of the social goal of “equality of educational opportunity” will be evaluated in light of the recent suggestion that “equality of condition” between majority and minority groups should be the new social goal for American society.

Values, Goals, and American Public Education The basic values and social goals of the American people as articulated by its leaders were mirrored in the overall social purposes of American public education. During the Revolutionary era, Thomas Jefferson argued for the extension of educational opportunity for both humanitarian and societal objectives. In his famous, “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” Jefferson posited the need for an “enlightened citizenry” in order to allow democracy to flourish. Educated and able leadership is chosen only by a knowledgeable citizenry informed about its own best interests. With Noah Webster and Jedidiah Morse the goal of creating a

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genuine “American nationalism” was paramount, and in 1788 Webster admonished Americans for their dependence on “foreign books and education,” and sounded the challenge: “Americans, unshackle your minds . . . . You have now an interest of your own to augment and defend—you have an empire to raise and support by your exertions—and a national character to establish by your wisdom and virtues. To effect these great objects, it is necessary to frame a liberal plan of policy, and to build it on a broad system of education.” Jedidiah Morse in publishing his famous American Geography (1791) hoped to instill in the American an awareness of himself as well as a knowledge of his country. Nationalistic values underpinned Morse’s belief that the new United States of America ought to present to the rest of the world “authentic information” about its physical boundaries. Early state constitutions often acknowledged the need for education, if for no other reason than to stem “vice and immorality.” The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1800 went beyond many others by calling for the establishment of a system of public schools for the education of the poor. But public charity schools only served to whet the appetites of those who hungered for free, universal, common schools. The Common School campaign of the 1830s and 1840s produced many statements and arguments which juxtaposed American values and social goals, and the need for public schools. Horace Mann, for example, argued for the support of the schools for the economic development of the entire community. The common schools would allow all to contribute to the “general” prosperity and guarantee the dissemination of democratic and egalitarian values. “Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the greater equalizer of the conditions of men,” wrote Mann in 1848, “the balance wheel of the social machinery.” I do not here mean that it so elevates the moral nature as to make men disdain and abhor the oppression of their fellow-men. This idea pertains to another of its attributes. But I mean that it gives each man the independence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of other men. It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility towards the rich; it prevents being poor.

During the same years that Mann, the Superintendent of Public Schools in Massachusetts, was arguing that the common schools should be the “great equalizer”: the State Supreme Court, reflecting other “American values” was placing limitations upon how much “equality” would be legally allowed in the new public schools. In the famous case of Roberts v. City of Boston (1849), the father of a black child who was being forced to

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attend a badly run-down segregated school sued the School Committee of Boston. Charles Sumner, the lawyer for the plaintiff, argued that the exclusion of black children from public schools open to whites, in effect, meant that “the black and white are not equal before law . . . . The separation of children in the Public Schools of Boston, on account of color or race, is in the nature of Caste, and is a violation of equality. . . .” Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Lemuel Shaw, in ruling against the plaintiff, however, pointed out that “the broad, general principle of equality before the law” is perfectly sound in the abstract. But, when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion, that men and women are legally clothed with the same civil and political powers, and that children and adults are legally to have the same functions and be subject to the same treatment; but only that the rights of all, as they are settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the paternal consideration and protection of the law for their maintenance and security. What those rights are, to which individuals, in the infinite variety of circumstances by which they are surrounded in society, are entitled, must depend on laws adapted to their respective relations and conditions.

With regard to the segregated schools, Shaw acknowledged the plaintiff’s argument that they were the results of “a deep-rooted prejudice in public opinion,” but concluded that “this prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law, and probably cannot be changed by law.” Shaw believed that the opening of separate schools for black children “is a fair and proper question for the [school] committee to consider and decide upon . . . .” The Roberts decision served as an important legal precedent for many subsequent cases involving legal segregation. But it was even more significant because it demonstrated that from this early era the establishment of the universal, free, public school system would not be used to challenge the more basic value of white supremacy in American society in general. And black Americans were alerted that the public schools would not be the means through which they would attain full social, economic, and political equality in this country. In the South in the post-Civil War era the common school ideal gradually came to be accepted by the white population. Whereas the newly-emancipated blacks actively sought schooling and supported the establishment of the public schools, the upper and lower class whites were reluctant to introduce the “northern institution” into their region. When public schools were established, however, the various southern states also adopted the northern practice of separating blacks and whites. The small black populations in most northern cities and states in the last quarter of

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the nineteenth century required merely the opening of a few “colored schools.” The large black population in the South, however, making up half of the citizens in some states, led the southern legislatures to establish two separate public school systems in each state. “Jim Crow” or the legal segregation of blacks and whites was spreading throughout the South after the Civil War and Reconstruction and blacks continually challenged the practice in the courts. This legislation, in effect, codified the white supremacist values of the dominant white majority. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the law,” and in a series of court cases in the 1870s and 1880s blacks tried to get the state and federal courts to uphold their civil rights. The Louisiana legislature in 1890 passed a law which called for the segregation of blacks and whites on railway coaches within the state. On June 7, 1892 Homer A. Plessy was arrested for refusing to vacate a New Orleans railway coach which was designated “for whites only.” Judge John Ferguson of the Criminal District Court ruled against Plessy’s argument that the segregation law violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equality before the law. The ruling by Ferguson was appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court which granted Plessy’s petition to take his case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The majority and dissenting opinions of the Supreme Court in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1890) are replete with statements about American values and social goals. In the majority opinion, for example, the limitations on the Fourteenth Amendment were spelled out. The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.

The beliefs and values which inspired court decisions and legislation for the establishment of separate black public schools were discussed and found acceptable for sanctioning the correctness of Jim Crow legislation. Justice Henry Billings Brown who authored the majority opinion believed that the only real point at issue was the “reasonableness” of the Louisiana regulation. In determining the question of reasonableness in [the Supreme Court] is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we cannot say that a law which authorizes or even requires the

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separation of the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment than the acts of congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state legislatures.

In the last few paragraphs of the opinion, however, Justice Brown added a few words about the black interpretation of segregation laws. We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has more than once been the case, and not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power in the state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it would relegate the white race to an inferior position.

Brown was alluding to the movements in the contemporary political struggle between blacks and whites in some southern states. The violence and terrorism of southern whites was ultimately successful in pushing most blacks from the political arena by the end of the 1890s, so that Brown could confidently add that “we imagine that the white race, at least, would not acquiesce to this assumption” of black political power. Justice Brown also wrote of the “natural antipathy” between the black and white races which could not be eliminated by laws. Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civility or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane.

Thus the often-enunciated social goal of “equality” was construed to be trinitarian, with political, civil, and social components. The Constitution and laws of the country views citizens as either “political” or “civil” individuals. Whereas the law can adjudicate instances of political or civil inequalities between and among individuals, the natural social or physical inequality of the races could not be changed. Separation of blacks and whites was in accord with certain “instincts,” and as long as civil and political equality obtains, according to Justice Brown, the courts really have no jurisdiction.

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In his dissent from the majority opinion, however, Justice John Harlan made very clear the real values and goals in question in the Plessy case. “Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied or assigned to white persons. . . .” The thing to accomplish this was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. . . . The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievement, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage; and holds fast to the principle of constitutional liberty. But in the view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. Harlan also agreed with the black viewpoint on the purposes of the segregation laws. “The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway,” wrote Harlan, “is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the constitution. It cannot be justified upon legal grounds.” The dissent by Harlan would not become the majority opinion of the Supreme Court for another sixty years, and the “separate, but equal” doctrine having been sanctioned, was promulgated through legislative actions throughout the South. Almost as soon as the Plessy decision was handed down, the issue arose as to who would determine when public facilities, such as public schools, were equal. In the case of Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899), blacks in Augusta, Georgia sued the local School Board to close the white high school, after the high school for black children was closed. According to the opinion of Plessy, the county was supposed to provide “equal” facilities for blacks and whites. The Supreme Court ruled, however, that the School Board did not have to maintain a high school for blacks. While all admit that the benefits and burdens of public taxation must be shared by the citizens without discrimination against any class on account of their race, the education of people in schools maintained by state taxation is a matter belonging to the respective states, and any interference

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on the part of Federal authority with the management of such schools cannot be justified except in the case of a clear and unmistakable disregard of rights secured by the supreme law of the land.

This unanimous decision was written by Justice John Harlan, and had the effect of sanctioning the unequal distribution of public school funds between blacks and whites in many states. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the values and beliefs of the white majority not only determined how much schooling black children were to receive, but also influenced the type of schooling which was made available. While the social and political position of blacks was being defined by the courts and state legislatures, many educators and southern leaders were determining the most appropriate form of education for blacks, given their inferior social position. At the end of the Civil War, many newly-emancipated blacks actively sought to try and improve their status in southern society. General Samuel Armstrong, who became Principal of Hampton Institute in 1868, believed that blacks should learn “respect for labor. . . for the sake of character”; and supported industrial education as the most appropriate form of schooling for the “uplifting” of an “inferior race.” The idea that the white race was superior in cultural and biological development to the “darker races” became a generally accepted belief among whites in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Therefore, when General Armstrong suggested that blacks could not benefit from or appreciate “higher” or “classical” education, but needed “to replace stupid drudgery with skilled hands. . . ,” he received support from many “friends of the Negro” throughout the nation… Ex-president Rutherford B. Hayes, J. L. M Curry of the Slater Fund, Railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, Philanthropists William H. Baldwin and George Foster Peabody, and the indomitable Andrew Carnegie were only a few of the northern industrialists and financiers who supported the introduction of basic industrial training for the masses of blacks throughout the South. It should be noted, however, that Armstrong did not provide training in the “skilled trades” for blacks attending Hampton in order to insure that they did not compete with skilled white tradesmen and craftsmen in the South. Manual labor and basic reading and writing skills were about all students could count on after three or four years at Hampton. But these were considered by Armstrong to be the only skills needed by black teachers and leaders. Some supporters of industrial education, such as Rutherford B. Hayes, believed that blacks should have advanced industrial skills to become “good mechanics and good businessmen . . .architects, civil engineers and the like.” But during the 1870s and 1880s the curriculum and instruction at Hampton, and later Tuskegee Institute and

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the various other industrial schools supported by the northern foundations, merely prepared black students to teach others the “joys of manual labor.” By the 1890s throughout the South, industrial education had become almost synonymous with “Negro education.” Booker T. Washington, the leading Negro disciple of Armstrong, rose to fame as a result of his accommodating political stances and support for industrial education. Washington received a great deal of financial support from northern philanthropists to travel throughout the United States spreading the “gospel of uplift through industry.” White southerners, who already had a bias in favor of “classical” education, came to think of industrial education as being only for the Negroes. Although the Progressive reformers were able to convince many lower class and foreign-born whites in the North that industrial and vocation education would prepare them for many “higher industrial pursuits,” southern whites were very slow in jumping on the “industrial education bandwagon.” The beliefs and values of the dominant white majority determined the social goals of American society, and the role of the public schools in achieving these goals. Since most whites believed that blacks were inferior mentally and culturally, and white leaders controlled the public expenditures for schooling, it is not surprising that public schools for blacks primarily consisted of the elementary grades and emphasized manual labor and industrial training. Though the official policies and laws in the southern states called for “separate, but equal,” the reality between 1896 and 1954 was “separate and unequal.” Studies sponsored by Atlanta University in 1901 and 1911, Horace Mann Bond’s famous examination of the Education of the Negro in the American Social Order, published in 1934, and the numerous investigations conducted by the black and white lawyers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1930s and 1940s documented the fact that the public educational facilities provided for black children in most southern states were far from equal to those provided for white children in the same states. In its campaign for school desegregation, the NAACP first attacked those states which provided graduate and professional education at public expense for whites, and nothing for blacks. After winning several favorable Supreme Court decisions in the 1930s and 1940s which opened Law and other professional schools to blacks in Maryland, Virginia, and several other states, the NAACP lawyers believed there were enough legal precedents for the Court to overturn the “separate, but equal” doctrine. In May 1954, in the case of Brown v. Topeka Board of Public Education, the

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United States Supreme Court declared that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. In that opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren acknowledged the fact that in some states attempts had recently been made to “equalize” the public educational facilities between blacks and whites, but these were only the more “tangible factors”: “Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved . . . . We must look to the effect of segregation itself on public education.” Then Warren described the social purposes of the public schools “in our democratic society.” It is required in the performance of our basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation and good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the State has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

Equality of Opportunity, Pluralism, and the Desegregated School In the Brown decision the Supreme Court sanctioned the basic social goal of “equality of educational opportunity” and called for the desegregation of American public education “with all deliberate speed.” Problems arose, however, in the implementation of school desegregation because although this important social goal was restated, it did not rest on values held by a majority of Americans. Whereas opposition to the establishment of the free, universal, common schools was unsustained, most school boards continually exercised their prerogative to open separate public schools for black children. Whereas few whites opposed the introduction of a special industrial curriculum into predominantly black schools, the mandate for school desegregation in order to achieve equality of educational opportunity met with a great deal of white resistance. Legal suits often were brought to stall the desegregation of the local public schools. State legislatures enacted laws which attempted to “nullify” the enforcement of the Court’s decision. In Georgia, Alabama, and Virginia, for example, legislation was passed which forbade the desegregation of the public schools, while the Texas legislature tried to withhold funds from school districts which attempted to desegregate.

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Eventually mobs of white citizens in cities and towns in the North and the South tried to thwart school desegregation by protest and violence. In addition, several attempts were made to undercut the goal of equality of educational opportunity by questioning whether or not desegregation will bring “equality” between blacks and whites given the “innate mental inferiority of the Negro” as measured by “intelligence tests.” Arthur Jensen, for example, in a series of books and articles suggested that the fifteen point difference in “intelligence quotient” (IQ) scores between blacks and whites was due to the superior intellectual ability of whites. Jensen believes that environmental and cultural factors would not account for the difference, and that improvements in the environment of blacks would not be reflected in the intelligence test scores. Although a few other social scientists, and one famous non-social scientist, William Shockley, supported Jensen’s thesis, many others questioned Jensen’s manipulation of the evidence and grandiose statements about the heritability of intellectual abilities. In any case, those who opposed the social goal of equality of educational opportunity found comfort in the “findings” of Arthur Jensen. It has also been suggested that some of the attempts to bring about the goal of equality of opportunity for blacks and other minorities in the United States led to the creation of “special benefits” for these groups. Legislation calling for equal opportunities for minorities led to attempts to bring about “statistical parity” in employment and other areas. According to several writers, Affirmative Action guidelines have resulted in the establishment of a virtual “quota system” in many areas of employment. Thus, in the attempts to end discrimination against blacks and other minorities, white males became the victims of discrimination. In his recent book, Affirmative Discrimination, Nathan Glazer summarized many of the arguments opposing the further extension of the goal of equality of opportunity to blacks and other minority groups. He believes that the efforts to redress the inequalities between blacks and whites provided a special benefit to blacks as a group, which in turn led to demands for special benefits by “all deprive groups.” This new emphasis on racial and cultural groups, however, was contrary to what Glazer believes is the “American orientation to ethnic difference and diversity . . . .” With regard to ethnic groups Glazer claims that the United States government historically has followed a policy of “salutary neglect.” While the “entire world” was allowed to enter this country, no separate ethnic group was to be allowed to establish an “independent polity.” At the same time, Glazer argued that these racial and cultural groups were not forced to give up

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their own “character and distinctiveness” and become fully assimilated into American culture and society, During the 1960s as a result of the attempts to correct the inequalities between blacks and whites, there was an overemphasis on racial and ethnic groups and a general drift away from the traditional American concern for the rights of the individual. Glazer believed that Americans have “abandon[ed] the first principle of the liberal society, that the individual and the individual’s interests and good and welfare are the test of a good society, for we now attach benefits and penalties to individuals simply on the basis of their race, color, and national origin.” He argued that Americans should “work with the intellectual, judicial, and political institutions of the country to reestablish the simple and clear understanding that rights attach to the individual, not the group, and that public policy must be exercised without distinction of race, color, or national origin.” Nathan Glazer’s statements coincide very closely with what has been termed “liberal pluralism” by sociologist Milton Gordon. According to Gordon, liberal pluralism “is characterized by the absence, even prohibition, of any legal or governmental recognition of racial, religious, language, or national origins groups as corporate entities with a standing in the legal or governmental process, and a prohibition of the use of ethnic criteria of any type for discrimination purposes, or conversely for special or favored treatment.” Many members of such groups would, of course, receive benefits provided by legislation aimed at the general population in connection with problems produced by lack of effective economic participation in the society; for example, anti-poverty measures, housing, education and welfare measures, and so on. Members of disadvantaged ethnic groups would thus benefit as individuals under social programs in relation to their individual eligibility, but not in a corporate sense as a function of their ethnic background.

In contrast to liberal pluralism, Gordon posited the ideal of “corporate pluralism,” in which “racial and ethnic groups are formerly recognized as legally constituted entities with official standing in the society. Economic and political rewards, whether in the public or private sector, are allocated on the basis of numerical strength in the population or on some other formula emanating from the political process. Egalitarian emphasis is on equality of condition rather than equality of opportunity, and universalistic criteria of reward operate only in restricted spheres . . . .” Nathan Glazer argued against “corporate pluralism,” but his defense of “liberal pluralism” is severely flawed due to his selective use of historical and empirical data, and his suggestions that certain issues were settled when, in reality, they are still being hotly debated by social scientists and political theorists.

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Acceptance of “liberal pluralism” and the social goal of equality of opportunity in education, employment, and other areas, and thus the rejection of the goals of “corporate pluralism” and “equality of condition” among groups must rest on solid historical evidence and reasonably reliable economic and sociological data. Glazer stated that the “American ethnic pattern” was “to allow all to enter.” But he also points out that crucial distinctions among potential immigrants on the basis of race and national origin did not end until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Thus between 1924 and 1965 the “pattern” of American immigration had been to recognize racial and ethnic backgrounds, and individuals were discriminated against on the basis of their group membership or national origin. Moreover, in states with large numbers of Chinese and Japanese, there were laws specifically addressed at limiting the rights and privileges of these groups. Native and Mexican Americans were the victims of discriminatory legislation in many of the southwestern states. These laws defined the social position of these racial and ethnic groups in those areas, just as the Supreme Court’s Plessy decision defined the social position of blacks with respect to whites throughout the country. The “pattern” of defining the status of racial and cultural minorities extended into the area of public schooling. Thus we find numerous laws for segregated public schools for Mexican-Americans, Native Americans as well as blacks in various states. To accept Glazer’s view that the United States did not define groups on the basis of race or ethnicity would, in effect, deny the historical reality which underpins the pattern of analysis developed by historians and sociologists over the last three decades. Although Glazer presents a rather novel interpretation of the history and sociology of racial and ethnic groups in the United States, most American social historians would find it difficult to accept without further documentation. The notion that “no separate ethnic group was allowed to establish an independent polity in the United States,” has validity in that it accounts for the lack of political parties based entirely on racial or ethnic origin in various cities or states. But there is evidence that from the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth, many trades, trade unions, municipal departments, and political machines were dominated in many cities by one or another white ethnic group. Italians would control the municipal sanitation department, while the Irish commanded the police force. The local Democratic or Republican political machine may have been in the hands of either the Italians or the Irish, while the Jews might control teaching positions in the public school system. Although these groups may

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not be considered “independent polities,” they were active in the political arena, and supported or opposed issues and candidates on the basis of their own ethnic interests. Glazer appears concerned about the possibility that blacks will begin to function as a political and cultural interest group as do the Jews, Irish, and Italians in many areas. This would lead, according to Glazer, to a situation of “heightened ethnic conflict” in many cities and various sectors of the economy. But according to tradition the American political system is supposed to thrive on competition. Many white ethnic groups have used politics and political maneuvers to gain social and economic concessions from those in power. When several new “corporate entities” begin to make demands on the political process, it is suggested that there is a need to place more emphasis on the “individual” rather than racial or cultural “groups.” In this instance, Glazer’s liberal argument supports the more conservative objective of maintaining the status quo. With regard to assimilation, though Glazer would have us believe that there was little or no pressure brought to bear on European immigrants to become “Americanized,” there is too much historical evidence which suggests the contrary. The Americanization campaigns have been well documented by educational and social historians. Some American industries penalized immigrant workers who did not learn to read and write English. Voluntary associations and social centers were active in sponsoring special “Americanization classes.” And public school systems with large immigrant and ethnic populations provided special Americanization textbooks and curricula for immigrant children in the elementary grades. Even the foreign-language newspapers which circulated in immigrant neighborhoods often supported the learning of English for advancement in American society. At the same time, the influx of large numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants into this country during the “new immigration,” 1880 to 1924, did not seriously challenge the prevailing Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony in this country. The dominant cultural motif was sustained by both the political and economic power of the AngloAmericans, and the lack of sustained opposition to the existing cultural values and traditions by the southern and eastern European immigrant groups. Although it would be unfair to say that all members of the white immigrant groups accepted Anglo-American culture and “Americanization,” especially in light of the large numbers of immigrants who returned to their native lands after only a few years of working in the United States, many white immigrants did submit to the “ordeal of assimilation.” It was only very recently that many second and third generation white ethnics

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began to “rediscover their ethnicity” and to demand greater recognition of their cultural background and traditions in the United States. The issue of cultural assimilation brings us back to our earlier discussion of the desegregated school in American society. The numerous researchers who have analyzed various aspects of the school desegregation process not only ignored the more important social and political reasons why it should be supported, but they also were extremely ethnocentric in their suggestions of how the new desegregated public school should look and function. One of the reasons why many minority parents and educators have had difficulty supporting the new desegregated school was because it resembles too closely the old white segregated school in many important areas. With respect to curricular content, teaching, administrative, and counseling staff, and cultural orientation, most desegregated public schools reflect the values, traditions, and political power of the dominant white majority in this society. However, the minority group students who have been “integrated” into previously segregated public schools also possess cultures, but the new “desegregated” school either denies or merely pays lip-service to the cultural background of the new minority student population. The contemporary bias of the desegregated school toward the AngloAmerican culture and heritage has its origins in the earlier campaigns to “Americanize” and assimilate the southern and eastern European immigrant groups during the first three decades of this century. These groups were not just “assimilated,” they were assimilated into the dominant Anglo-American cultural milieu. The goal was the obliteration of the “foreign-ness” of the new immigrants, and the elimination of competing cultural values and traditions on the American social scene. Thus in many areas there was opposition to the recognition of racial and cultural “corporate entities” but most scholars in the area would probably agree that ethnicity was significant in the evolution of social, economic, and political ideas and practices in many parts of the United States. One important result of the non-recognition of minority cultures in this country, especially in the area of artistic expression, has been the lack of public support for the maintenance and expansion of minority cultural forms and traditions. Whereas the federal, state, and local governments through support of cultural centers and institutions of higher learning guaranteed the development of Anglo-American cultural traditions, the various minority cultural groups have had to support both Anglo-American culture through taxes, and their own cultural traditions through contributions to social organizations involved in the maintenance of their cultural heritage in this country.

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The social goal put forth by the Supreme Court in the Brown decision was equality of opportunity in public education. Spokespersons for liberal pluralism continue to support the goal of equality of opportunity for individuals in social, political, and economic areas, and Nathan Glazer and other liberals oppose any further recognition of racial or cultural groups in American society believing that prohibiting discrimination against “individuals” in education, employment, housing, and other areas is a satisfactory societal objective. However, continued acceptance of the goal of equality of opportunity must hinge upon evidence that sufficient numbers of individuals from the various racial and cultural minority groups are able to take advantage of opportunities and compete for the limited social and economic resources of the society. Although there is some historical evidence that individuals from various European backgrounds were able to take advantage of opportunities for advancement in various areas, social and economic data on blacks and other historically oppressed racial and cultural minorities suggest that laws and court decisions guaranteeing equality of opportunity have not succeeded in greatly improving their social and economic conditions. In fact, in the case of black Americans, there is evidence that they were “losing ground” in several occupational pursuits and educational attainment in the 1970s. A recent thorough study of the educational, employment, health care, income, and housing conditions among blacks in this country from 1960 to 1975 conducted by the Center for Manpower Policy concluded that the possibility of blacks attaining parity with whites in these areas in the near future was “Still A Dream.” The goal of equality of opportunity does not insure the proportionate representation of racial and cultural minority groups in the more important sectors of the national economy. Thus when oppressed minorities begin to lose ground in areas where gains had previously been made, the advocates of liberal pluralism are not overly concerned because nothing was promised to these groups. The fluctuations in the national economy and political power to a very large extent determines economic conditions among the various racial and cultural groups, and the federal government has generally been reluctant to intervene unless the economic downturn has begun to affect the middle classes among the dominate ethnic groups. During the late 1960s, rioting broke out in many large cities among blacks who perceived that they were not participating in the social and economic rewards of the wartime economy. During the 1970s, black Americans and others see the minor advances made in the 1960s in education and employment being eroded away by the postwar economic recession. At the same time that blacks, Chicanos, Puerto-Ricans, and

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other traditionally oppressed minorities are finding that the decrease in economic and educational opportunities is greatly limiting the possibility of individual or group advancement, liberals are calling for less emphasis on racial and cultural background in the allocation of the social, economic, and political resources of the society. The oppressed condition of these minority groups historically was determined for the most part by the values and beliefs of the dominant white society. Institutional practices and contractions in the national economy often prohibit the improvement of the conditions of these groups. The rejection of the ideals and goals of corporate pluralism very likely will mean that these oppressed racial and cultural minorities will have to resort to alternative strategies, especially political mobilization, in order to focus attention on their deteriorating social and economic condition in American society. Some researchers have projected the desegregated school as an important vehicle for the attainment of a desegregated society. But when one examines the curriculum, staffing, and cultural orientation of the desegregated school, one finds that there is really no reason to believe that it is preparing children for participation in a “desegregated American society.” At the same time, with regard to the participation of minorities in higher education and various sectors of the national economy, there seems to be very little likelihood that the country as a whole is moving toward greater desegregation. Historically the values and beliefs of the dominant white majority have determined the social and economic position of minority groups in the United States, and the amount and type of public schooling to be received by minority children. Until that majority believes it is in their best interest to truly desegregate the public schools and the entire society, we can expect little progress in these areas. It is fairly clear that blacks and other historically oppressed minority groups must mobilize their social and political resources and demand greater participation in the desegregated public school and increased access to the economic and social rewards of the entire society. To do otherwise would probably mean the continued deterioration of the social position of these oppressed minorities in American society.

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The African American High School Experience in Perspective Charles V. Willie, Antoine M. Garibaldi and Wornie L. Reed Prior to World War II, secondary education was scarce for African American youth, especially the majority who did not live in cities. Forty years later, it was practically universal in availability, although uneven in quality from one setting to another. The intervening decades were marked by conflict and struggle as African Americans fought, both figuratively and literally, to improve their educational prospects….Given the importance of formal education in today’s world, and the well-documented significance of families and communities in supporting the educational process, reclaiming that legacy may well be our best hope for posterity....We believe that the experience of the past can inform future efforts to improve attainment levels. The integration struggles of the 1970s, along with the rapid proliferation of Black history and literature courses and widespread demands for more African American educators, provide a telling point of contrast to the condition of Black high schools in 1940. Prior to World War II, secondary education was scarce for African American youth, especially the majority who did not live in cities. Forty years later, it was practically universal in availability, although uneven in quality from one setting to another. The intervening decades were marked by conflict and struggle as African Americans fought, both figuratively and literally to improve their educational prospects. They strived to realize ever higher standards of accomplishment, given the resources at hand. Their success was plainly evident in rising graduation rates, greater college enrollments, and the development of a substantial Black middle class. In this chapter, we review our principal findings and place them in a larger historical and conceptual context. In doing this, we try to demonstrate some of the ways in which the major developments in this story were manifest in the lives of individual African Americans at different points of time. We also discuss some of the knottier questions …, and speculate about changing perceptions of Black high schools of the past. Finally, we reflect on changes in African American education during the 30 or so years following the end point of this study. Much of the forward momentum that marked the decades prior to 1980, it turns out, was not sustained afterward (editors’ emphasis). This is a point of

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understandable frustration for many African Americans, particularly those who came of age in an earlier time, as well as other observers. Looking back on the past record of expansion and progress, of course, can help to put more recent development into a somewhat broader perspective, and perhaps help chart steps for the future.

The High School in the History of Black Education Education has long been held as a key to success in American society by Black leaders, families, and civic organizations, but the years between the 1940s and the 1970s were little short of revolutionary in fostering attainment among African Americans. The high school had stood as a critical hurdle in the quest for education for many years. Black schooling, largely at the elementary level, existed before the Civil War, grew in the latter 1800s, and began to blossom in the early decades of the 20th century. But African American secondary schools remained scarce and, where they existed, they were underfunded and offered limited instruction. The “separate but equal doctrine” of Plessy v. Ferguson heightened racial inequalities in education. In 1940, more than three-quarters of African Americans lived in the South, most of them in rural communities where secondary schooling was sparse or nonexistent. This was a decisive stumbling block for youth intent upon escaping the oppressive political economy of the region. Still, Blacks eagerly took advantage of the opportunities available to them, while seeking ever-greater equity in educational resources. [D]uring the 1940s, the gap in high school attainment between White and Black students narrowed appreciably and it continued to do so in the ensuing decades. This accomplishment was largely the result of intrepid and persistent efforts by African American parents, communities, and organizations to expand schooling opportunities for Black youth. In earlier decades of the 20th century, they demanded more resources, raised funds to build schools and pay teachers, and insisted that states comply with the “separate but equal” mandate by supporting Black institutions. To preserve segregation, Southern states responded by expanding funds for African Americans schools. Impressive institutions such as Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington, Baltimore’s Dunbar, and Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks were established and eventually attracted students from far and wide. But these schools existed mostly in the cities and, especially with substantial Black migration into such areas, could not keep up with the spiraling Black demand for schooling. Consequently, they became overcrowded and the quality of education suffered. Indeed, enrollment beyond capacity in these

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institutions is testimony to the value that African American families and youth attached to education. The failure of states to meet this growing demand for secondary education among Black students and the widening gap in quality between Black and Whites schools exposed the myth that racially segregated schools could be made equal, and demands for racial integration eventually took center stage in the battle for educational equality. As indicated, the Southern equalization campaigns of the latter 1940s and 1950s provided a significant boost to Black secondary attainment. It was a major step in closing the racial attainment gap. This substantial investment in African American education was a consequence of legal battles at the local level, along with persistent agitation by Black Communities for better facilities and higher standards. Even if White willingness to provide this level of support was born of fear about integration, the impact was immense. The limits of White largess and readiness to change soon became apparent, but Black high school enrollments climbed to new heights nevertheless. In this respect, “equalization” represented a transformative moment in the history of African American education. This was a major accomplishment, but it must also be viewed in context. Although the success of these struggles was due largely to African American initiative, it occurred amid a larger process of change. The expansion of high schools, often described as the “second transformation in American education,” emerged in the milieu of mounting public interest in educational attainment. Southern states lagged on schooling, struggling to restructure an economy that historically relied heavily on Black agricultural labor. As noted, in 1940 only 46% of White teenagers there graduated from high school, and 14% of Black youth. These rates of attainment, however, were poised for change. Equalization and school consolidation helped, but there were additional factors at play. African American migration to urban areas, searching for employment and social mobility, proved especially advantageous. Millions participated, bringing their children to cities where secondary schooling was readily available. The changing Southern economy and employment uncertainty during the immediate postwar era made attending high school, often in search of marketable skills, more desirable. In subsequent years, widespread campaigns focused on the cities urging youth to stay in school, eventually enrolling thousands in alternative programs. This benefited Blacks and Whites alike, particularly in the South. White attainment climbed for all American youth, these developments were especially important for African Americans.

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This process of social change and educational expansion encouraged efforts to improve the schools. Civil rights organizations, community leaders, parents, and students all demanded more resources for Black institutions, employing tactics that ranged from boycotts and walkouts to legal challenges in the courts. It was an era of rising expectations, in employment and civil rights as well as education. As a result, enrollments surged and Black high schools appeared across the country, either as new institutions or as Whites abandoned older schools. As we have noted, these institutions often became points of identification for African American communities and drew families into cities and neighborhoods. Black high schools eventually were able to offer a curriculum comparable to White schools, and they made strides in obtaining accreditation and hiring talented teachers. Former students have spoken glowingly of their experiences in segregated schools, often noting the demanding but caring teachers and the strong sense of community in their neighborhoods. In our own research, Irene Wilson shared a photograph of Eureka High in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, built in 1921 to end the practice of sending Black youth away for secondary school. She boasted of the high standards at Eureka and its many well-known graduates, recounting the learning experiences she enjoyed there. Her recollections were similar to dozens of others we encountered and many more in other studies. This has become an important theme in research on African American education in the 20th century. Our oral history research did not encounter much avowed desire for racial integration, but as in Wilson’s account, it often featured fond memories of what has been called the “good Black high school.” The existence of such institutions, of course, has been documented in other studies describing the schools’ many virtues, but it is also important to acknowledge their limitations. Although some Black secondary schools may have equaled or even surpassed local White institutions, most did not. Some states, particularly North Carolina, were better than others in supporting African American education. As we have shown, great variation existed across the region, a point difficult to capture in case studies. Given the pride and apparent satisfaction reported with segregated Black high schools, however, it is an open question as to what ultimately prompted the push for racial integration. It is likely that the “good Black high schools” found in many locales have become somewhat sentimentalized, especially in light of educational changes that unfolded in subsequent decades. Although we in no way undervalue the lived experiences of the many people who recall such institutions, it is also necessary to situate their experiences within a wider

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context. As noted above, for instance, the vast majority of Black high schools in the South were required to operate with meager resources, severely restricting the quality of education they could provide. There was also the question of accessibility. Census data highlight the often neglected social class distinctions among African Americans, and high schools were more readily available to relatively affluent Blacks. Those who were poor or tenant farmers—which in 1940, included a substantial majority of the Black population—often had little access to schooling. And even when they were able to attend school, vast racial disparities in the quality of education continued to exist and were clearly documented by contemporaries. Exposing these deficiencies in African American schools underscored demands for racial integration, even after so-called equalization campaigns. All of this must be taken into view when considering the contributions of segregated Black high schools in the past.

High Schools and Social Status By 1960, about half of African American teenagers in the South were enrolled in high school but, as we have shown, they hailed disproportionately from non-farm, property-owning families. Our interview subjects Irene Wilson and Gloria Chambers lived in Southern cities but were born into middle-class households with educated parents, which helps explain why they were able to earn high school diplomas. African American youth in less affluent households were less likely to attend or complete high school. Considering social class also helps to situate successful Black high schools in a broader context by highlighting the experiences of those who lacked opportunities for schooling. Indeed, living in poverty was a norm for African Americans prior to the civil rights era, and the majority, especially those who were tenant farmers, spent most of their time eking out a living. For many thousands, especially in rural areas, high schools simply did not exist and productive labor took priority over schooling, even more for sons than daughters. Recall, for example, the Angleton Colored High School in Texas that Jack Jenkins described in the 1940s, a poorly equipped fourroom “jumpstart” institution that he attended sporadically. Similarly, Princeton Elroy attended a Skene, Mississippi, school that held class 3 months a year, taught by one teacher with an 8th-grade education. Such institutions were common in the South, even during the 1950s. In 1951, 977 of the 1,152 Georgia schools with only one or two teachers were designated “colored” institutions, and even if many were soon consolidated, others persisted for years. Like Jenkins and Elroy, whose grandparents lived during slavery and later became sharecroppers, many

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Blacks were lucky to achieve the basic literacy skills that would help them to migrate out of the region. Cities with high schools for African American teens proved attractive to those in search of better opportunities, although these institutions often became overcrowded and less effective as a consequence. Achieving a superior education in Black communities was often difficult even where schools existed, and this became linked to institutional status. Irene Wilson said that Eureka High School, impressive in size and once the center of the Black community, had gradually become a place for everyone seeking an education, from elementary students to war veterans, typical of the so-called “union schools” discussed earlier. By the late 1950s, it was severely overcrowded and underfunded years after “equalization.” Joseph Williams, an interviewee who attended Atlanta’s Washington High, said the school drew students from all over Georgia, many moving in with relatives or friends in order to attend the school. By the time he arrived, Washington High was surrounded with portable edifices to accommodate the steady stream of students. As they struggled to accommodate growing numbers of students, Black high schools soon became highly congested and widely viewed as substandard. The Black youth attending such schools scored lower on standardized tests than Whites, by the 1960s, they were being described as “culturally deprived” and were targets of “compensatory” or “remedial” programs. Regardless of the middle-class standing of many successful students, Black high schools continued to be seen as inferior to their White counterparts. Despite these problems, secondary education opened the door to opportunity, and completing high school was a major step on the road to social mobility. Most of our interview respondents who graduated sought additional education and some obtained college degrees. Their educational attainment, of course, reflects the tendency of better-educated individuals to participate in such research, but it also corroborated historical trends. Nationally, Black college-going picked up dramatically during the 1960s, as rising numbers of secondary graduates looked to further educational attainment. As mentioned, employment opportunities were opening in professional, service, and managerial fields in the latter 1950s and 1960s; educational credentials could be helpful and increasingly were required. Females were more likely to finish high school, and teaching was often a career goal. Males dropped out more often, as did our interview respondent Roland Brown, who attended Washington High in the 1940s. Brown recalled enjoying high school but said that his parents, neither of whom had a high school education, emphasized business ownership as the key to success. In general, however, students with such middle-class

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attributes as home ownership and parents in non-manual occupations exhibited higher levels of success in school. The relationship of Black educational attainment to social class has been a consistent theme …. By and large, status distinctions within Black communities paralleled those in the larger society, especially after secondary schools became widely available. Parents with higher levels of education and social standing were more likely to see their children graduate from high school. As we have seen, patterns of variation along these lines became more similar to those among Whites and other groups as Black attainment increased. Indeed, by the later 1970s, the major distinctions with respect to secondary attainment appear to have been linked to social class indicators rather than race per se. By this time, of course, integrated education was approaching its highest point and secondary education was more or less universally available to Blacks. It was at this point that it would be reasonable to expect purely racial distinctions in attainment to virtually disappear. There is considerable evidence that this, in fact, is what occurred…. It employs logistic regression to consider three successive models, . . . The first simply measures differences between African American students and all others, and subsequent models consider additional variables by simply adding them. The second model examines geographic (or geospatial) factors such as living in the South (compared with non-South) or in a central city (compared to the suburbs), and the third introduces a range of individual social and economic characteristics, ranging from gender to household and parental characteristics to whether or not the individual was employed. These variables have been defined in the same manner. By controlling for these factors, it is possible to estimate a hypothetically independent effect of being African American on the likelihood of success in school. This analysis demonstrates how racial differences in educational attainment at the end of this period were affected by factors associated with social and economic status. As indicated . . . raw racial distinctions in school success were very substantial without controls for geographic or geospatial (GS) and socioeconomic status (SES) factors. Basically, African American students were little more than half as likely as others to be enrolled in their junior year of high school or higher by age 17. But when GS and SES variables were introduced . . . the negative effect of being African American is diminished. Indeed, the effect of being Black is positive, representing a 31% greater likelihood of success in school, after controlling for other factors. This indicates that the negative association between being Black and succeeding in school was principally a function

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of poverty, differences in family structure, and other factors associated with the relatively low social status endured by many African Americans. The direct or isolated effect of race on attainment measured in this way had been generally overcome, at least in the metropolitan settings where most Americans lived at the time. Put somewhat differently, African Americans students who were not poor or living in single parent households or central city settings were at least as likely—if not more—to succeed in school as other students. This is additional evidence of the distance that African American education had come in the year since 1940. Not all problems were resolved, of course. The geospatial and social and economic status factors . . . . point to the manifold challenges facing many Black youth as they sought to complete their schooling at the end of this period. Living in a central city, in a single-parent household, and in poverty were associated with considerably lower odds of success in school. Rates of poverty and single-parent family structure remained much higher among African Americans in 1980 than among Whites and other Americans. Home ownership levels were better, but many fewer Black youth had parents working in high-status white-collar jobs. Members of the Black middle class had grown in numbers, but there were still significant gaps in wealth and influence when compared with their White counterparts. Perhaps most disturbing, the rapid growth of suburban communities had left many Black households in destitute central city neighborhoods, where the concentration of poverty posed great risk to families and other institutions. In this sample, Black youth in central cities outnumbered those in suburbs by a three to one ratio. Although African Americans were moving to the suburbs in greater numbers, the vast majority remained confined to segregated urban neighborhoods, a situation that sociologists eventually came to describe as “American Apartheid.” In the years to follow, many of these problems would grow worse. We revisit these questions below, in turning to the period after 1980. Dilemmas of Integration Although African Americans were acutely aware of the strictures of racial segregation, most of our interviews emphasized achieving success within its boundaries rather than pressing for integration. Explaining his perspective on this, Roland Brown said “segregation was terrible, but it didn’t bother us at the time. My parents had a business, so I didn’t have to be involved. We had our own stores . . . own neighborhood.” Indeed, he was surprised that one student in his high school, Martin Luther King, Jr., went on to become a civil rights leader. Like Brown, most of our interview subjects seemed to accept segregation as normal; it was the only way of life they had known. But this did not mitigate their desire to obtain a good

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education and achieve socioeconomic mobility, so the absence of adequate educational resources for African American youth led parents, communities, and state and national organizations to demand more and better schooling. Access to education itself, moreover, helped fuel an evolving political consciousness that ultimately led to demands for integration. The more education African Americans attained, the more their aspirations grew, ambitions that were often thwarted by racial barriers. Awareness of such obstacles seemed more acute among those who attended high school, and even more if they went on to college. This was frequently illustrated in the narratives of our interview subjects. For example, during her high school years, Grace Strong won a national essay contest and became interested in journalism, but after graduating from college was repeatedly denied a job in the field. Gloria Chambers shared a similar story: After earning her bachelor’s degree from Spelman and teaching for a few years, she decided to specialize in speech language pathology. Chambers applied to the University of Southern Mississippi but was turned away because of race. Although she was admitted a litter later, she said the state historically had paid tuition for students to attend school elsewhere. Persistent problems such as these appear to have made Blacks more amenable to integration as a means to advancement. Years later, when Chambers had the opportunity to send her children to a previously allWhite school, she did so. Despite her own positive experiences at a racially segregated institution, she equated integration with greater opportunities, and was eager for her children to benefit from it. Her children were among five students to integrate Boyd Elementary School in Jackson, Mississippi, in a “freedom of choice” plan. She explained that her children would “get more exposure” there, and said, “We could see what was coming and we felt that you needed to be able to compete. . . you just need to compete and hold your own.” Voluntary integration programs in some Southern cities, especially those involving only a handful of Black students, often proceeded with few incidents. But as we have shown, integrating elementary school children, eventually a norm in many cities, often posed fewer challenges than it did in high schools. Moreover, research reveals significant regional variation in integration experiences, influenced by the history and extent of segregation, the racial composition of schools involved, and the nature of desegregation plans. Generally speaking, integration initially proceeded more smoothly in non-Southern communities, although there was controversy, and busing sparked protest in the late 1960s and 1970s. As a result of Black protest and legal challenges, by the 1940s, most states outside of the South had ended formal segregation policies, often allowing African American

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students to attend neighborhood schools. Conflict was more likely to erupt in schools where Blacks constituted a substantial minority, as in Gary’s Froebel High, where they numbered a third of the students in 1945. Still the North became known as a place where Blacks could be educated, and this helped to draw migrants from the South. In the 1940s, Nadine Meyers’s parents moved from Arkansas to Missouri, where Nadine and her siblings graduated from high school. Meyers recalled that her mother wanted to ensure that they could get a good education and did so by moving into a reputable school district, which for her family meant living in south Kansas City and attending the predominantly White Southeast High. Only about 15% of the student body was Black in the mid-1960s, but Myers recalled amiable relationships among students, even while disturbances were occurring in other parts of the city. As suggested earlier, small numbers of Blacks were not very threatening to most Whites; moreover, race-relations courses helped to temper conflict before it got out of hand. Kansas City’s East High was at least 30% Black when Kevin Dodge attended in the 1960s, making him feel like a “fish out of water,” but he reported fond memories of the school. He found White teachers to be fair and supportive, even more than at the predominantly Black school he had attended. According to Dodge, “East had the better instructors because . . . if they saw you needed help, if they saw you struggling, they would pull you aside and try to explain things to you . . . they didn’t mind taking time with you.” Amid the confusion and protest over desegregation, there were many quiet success stories of Black achievement and support from White teachers. Still efforts to integrate schools generated intense protest and disruptive changes in many communities, and most of the burden was endured by African Americans. As noted, Blacks were more likely than Whites to leave their schools and neighborhoods for purposes of integration, and thousands of Black teachers lost their jobs instead of being assigned to integrated or White schools. Black students forfeited many traditions that had defined their previous institutions, such as yearbooks, organizations, and culturally oriented activities. They often were seen as invaders in White schools, places where they were neither welcomed nor respected, and subjected to hostility or neglect. Thomas Smith, who was among Blacks admitted to the Chapel Hill-Carboro School System said, “It was a whole new world, going in, being called names, being spit on, hit . . . . I remember one time I was standing in the hall, confused on which way I was supposed to go and this kid walked up and punched me in the stomach, for no reason.” The advent of large-scale integration was accompanied by widespread conflict between students, escalating a

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longstanding practice of interracial violence in secondary schools. Unlike Smith, in the instance recounted above, African American students often defended themselves in such confrontations, giving as much or more than they got. But in many, perhaps most, such cases, they also bore the brunt of institutional responses, and their rates of suspensions and expulsions were more than double those of Whites. For the first generation of Black secondary students to attempt meaningful integration, the experience was fraught with dangers, and threats were posed by White students and educators alike. Black youth and their parents were willing to risk such hazards, however, if it meant a better education, Freda Jones was 12-years-old when integration came to her community, and her parents enrolled her in a previously all-White school, which they saw as providing a better education. Since no bus service was provided for Blacks, her parents joined with others in their neighborhood and paid for a taxi service. Describing her experience, Jones explained, “It was either benign neglect where they just kind of ignored us or just out and out said silly ridiculous things. I think there was definitely a failure to pay attention to the AfricanAmerican students.” In spite of her treatment, Jones went on to graduate, attended college, and became a university dean. Research has suggested that many Black students who attended integrated schools ultimately did better in subsequent schooling and in the labor market. Succeeding in these circumstances, however, rarely seems to have been easy. African American students were often assumed to be academically inferior and ill-prepared for success in White schools, and their experiences often served to reinforce such perceptions. They were not always able to meet the demands of the curriculum in White schools. As Ralph Naples said after being one of the Blacks to integrate a school in Raleigh, North Carolina. “We couldn’t live up to the expectations of the [White] teachers there. They were piling up a lot of homework on us that we didn’t have the resources and time to do. A lot of white kids, they had encyclopedias and dictionaries and stuff in the home…..[W]e had to go to the public library, which was quite a distance from the house.” By the 1960s, many African Americans in segregated institutions may have been exposed to somewhat less demanding academic standards than in White schools, and there were calls for a greater emphasis on vocational training. This, of course, was controversial, but even when such ideas met resistance, critical questions remained about the quality of predominantly Black schools. Consistently low test scores, especially for Black schools, belied the idea that these institutions had generally high standards.

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Much of the difficulty, of course, was due to the high rates of poverty endured by African American students and the growing number of singleparent households in their communities. But important changes had occurred in the schools as well. Desegregation signaled the end of the striving Southern Black high school and in many ways marked the start of new problems. Perhaps the most critical was the loss of dedicated teachers who had committed years to African American institutions. As suggested, the impact was especially dramatic in urban institutions that had relied upon such staff members. One longtime educator attributed many troubles to White teachers in the late 1960s and 1970s who could not discipline Black students or gain their respect. Jack Jenkins claimed that a handful of Whites came to Kansas City’s Summer High to teach so they could “pay off their school loans and get back to their own schools,” but were ineffective with the students: “You need to have a principal who knows how to discipline, and can handle it, or the kid will run over you. . They had three White teachers there, and the kids were just running over them.” The problem was compounded when teachers left the schools after a short time to teach elsewhere or pursue new careers. As suggested in our interviews, students often could sense when teachers were disengaged or intent upon leaving. It did little to encourage them to do well or to take their studies seriously. In the end, of course, growing numbers of African American youth did succeed in school, despite the ordeal of integration. The enrollment trend line continued upward a bit through the 1970s, even after attainment levels had largely flattened for Whites. A number of researchers showed that Black graduation rates from integrated schools exceeded those from segregated institutions, a pattern that continued to be evident beyond the period at hand. A part of the explanation for this may be the somewhat higher status of Black families in integrated neighborhoods that sent children to such schools, but even poor Black youth seem to have done better in integrated settings. Ultimately, the success of integration in high schools was a reflection of the resiliency and determination of African American students and their families and communities. Defeating segregation was a stage in the protracted and bitter campaign to achieve educational equity. The fact that this goal is still so distant is evidence of the depth of White intransigence in the face of inequities that continue to exist. Overcoming this remains one of the great challenges to the future of American education, and in recent years progress has been hard to see.

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A Legacy of Protest Schools are uniquely public institutions, sharing a moral commitment to human perfectibility and civic advancement. They also are open to scrutiny regarding what transpires in and around them. These factors make them particularly opposite sites for the politics of public demonstration. As race became such a volatile issue in the United States, and education was linked to status and security, it is not surprising that schools witnessed such bitter conflicts over these questions. It is hardly original to suggest that many of the grievances and anxieties of the age came to be expressed in these confrontations. And it was students who often were the principle combatants. [W]e have seen evidence of a political struggle for control of education waged by African Americans and by Whites in a variety of forms. It was manifest in the protest in Lumberton, North Carolina, and the Gary, Indiana, strike against integration, carried out practically at the same time in the fall of 1946. The Lumberton episode was an early step in a long line of such incidents, acts of collective opposition to highlight gross inequity and negligence in schooling. It was linked in spirit in Farmville 5 years later and to countless other protests against deplorable conditions throughout the period. As suggested, these actions were part and parcel of what has become known as the Long Civil Rights Movement, an extended campaign to overcome racial prejudice and exploitation, led by African Americans. For Black students in Lumberton, Farmville, and any number of similar sites, the struggle for better schools was a blow against one of the most palpable signs of oppression in their immediate experience. For the White strikers in Gary, along with their sympathizers in Chicago and innumerable other settings throughout this period, the stakes may have seemed nearly as high. As suggested, they perceived the struggle as vital to the preservation of their own status, which seemed threatened by the African American quest for equality. The fear of degradation by association was perhaps greatest among Whites with the least status to lose, immigrant members of the working class. It was their children who led the strike in Gary, even if many of the parents were union members who were ostensibly committed to cross-racial solidarity. In the South, White opposition to school integration was far more sweeping, and it was the social and economic elites who often organized the White Citizens Councils to coordinate resistance. But in all cases, White protest generally was defensive in nature, a matter of opposing change and upholding racial advantages in the face of challenges to

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segregation. This was the essential dynamic that governed the politics of racial protest in schools across the period in question. The postwar period, of course, witnessed the beginning of heightened activity in the civil rights movement, a sweeping and sustained mobilization of political resources to bring about change in the degraded status of African Americans. As we have argued, Black students were active participants in this crusade, much of which had little directly to do with schools. They were willing “foot soldiers” for campaigns related to voting rights, housing discrimination, open employment, and a range of other issues that principally concerned adults. For many, the movement was hardly an abstraction, something they read about or saw on television; they were spirited participants and contributors. It was a legacy that foretold greater activism in the schools. Most of the literature on youth involvement in the civil rights movement has focused on college students. They organized the famous sitin demonstrations at lunch counters and other segregated restaurants and stores, the “freedom rides” to desegregate bus stations and interstate transport, and strikes on campuses to gain approval of curricula and departments representing the field of Black studies. As noted earlier, rising African American high school graduation during the 1950s and 1960s provided impetus to college enrollment, adding force to the impact of these activities. But during the latter 1960s, African American secondary students also began to agitate for changes in their schools, echoing some of the themes evident in college protests. Of course, Black students had long engaged in dissent, but at middecade, the pace and magnitude of these activities increased dramatically, spreading rapidly across cities and even from one part of the country to another. This upsurge was inspired by the “Black Power” ideology that was then gaining national attention, and eventually by the community control movement, which advocated greater involvement in governance and authority over institutions that directly impacted Black communities. It also was undoubtedly influenced by college protests that occurred at about the same time. High school rebels demanded courses in Black history and literature, more Black teachers and administrators, and a host of other, more mundane changes in schools. They established Black Student Union organizations that continued to agitate for “Black pride” and celebrating milestones in African American history. New fashions and hairstyles appeared in high school yearbooks, reflecting a “Black is beautiful” turn in popular culture. While there was continued interest in desegregation, particularly in the South, it was tempered by a new selfawareness emphasizing the distinctiveness of Black experience.

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Between 1940 and 1980, the protest activities of Black high school students shifted from agitation for greater equity and integration to demands for specialized courses and recognition of African American heritage and the significance of Black culture. It does not appear that most Black students renounced integration, but a vocal minority wondered whether it was the best strategy for advancing the cause of Black education. Advocates of integration had realized considerable success as well, especially in the South. As these goals were realized, protest dropped off, and by the end of the period, African American student activism had quieted significantly. Black studies courses had been widely adopted in high schools, even outside of urban areas, and integration appeared to be advancing, or at least was being pursued through the courts. As a number of observers have noted, however, many of the gains made by student protestors proved to be transitory. As was often the case with student movements, their impact dissipated with graduation. Once, the major grievances seemed to be resolved, succeeding generations of students turned to different interests and concerns. A long era of Black high school student protest finally ended in the 1970s. The potent outburst of dissent that marked the latter 1960s and early 1970s marked an apogee to roughly 3 decades of Black student agitation around questions related to the high school. The timing was symptomatic, no doubt, of the decline of the larger civil rights movement. But it also was a portent of the future, a period to follow when secondary schooling would no longer be looked upon as an opportunity or a right denied and, hence, a cause for mobilization and conflict. In its place was a perspective that held the high school as a normative and commonplace experience, one possibly linked to success in the larger society but not necessarily to ideals such as freedom, equality, and justice. This was a turn, we believe, with possibly important implications for the future of African American education (editors’ emphasis).

The Elusive Goal of Equality Our research has documented a historic narrowing of the Black-White high school attainment gap, due in large part to resolute struggle by African American students and their families and communities. While it is a story of success, the ultimate achievement of racial parity in high school graduation is, unfortunately, not yet a part of it. Although tremendous gains were made in attainment between the 1940s and the 1970s, reflecting the struggle for equality, it appears that the gap in high school graduation rates has remained more or less constant in the decades hence. The civil

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rights movement offered the promise that extending equal opportunity would eventually result in racial educational and economic parity, but while there have been many gains, these goals have remained elusive. Several factors account for the persistent racial gap in high school attainment, including White flight, resurgent school segregation, the challenge of providing good education to low-income students, and the fact that some teenagers of all races do not seem to place great stock in a high school diploma. For many African Americans, the years following the 1970s led to more social and economic hardship, including high rates of violence, crime, unemployment, and single-parent families in communities that once exhibited greater stability and solidarity. As early expression of frustration with such problems was revealed in a poem entitled “Unite,” written by a student and published in the 1970 Falcon, Chicago’s Harlan High School yearbook: “Gangs fight gangs; Blacks killing blacks; And laughter rings in my ears—White laughter.” Such sentiments would become even more pertinent in the decades to follow. The study of high school graduation has become a matter of controversy, largely because of the rapid growth of General Equivalency Diploma (GED) programs since the 1970s. Although government statistics on secondary completion rates include GED holders, a growing body of research has cast doubt on the proposition that a GED is actually equivalent to a high school diploma. Considerable caution must be exercised in estimating graduation rates following the 1970s to utilize measures that are accurate reflections of high school graduation and not alternative credentials such as a the GED. The most authoritative and comprehensive treatment of this question to date has been performed by economists James J. Heckman and Paul A. La Fontaine, who argue that overall graduation rates have hovered around 76% since the 1970s. Regarding African American graduation, they estimate that “65 percent of blacks and Hispanics leave school with a high school diploma and minority graduation rates are still substantially below the rates for nonHispanic whites.” They also “find no evidence of convergence in minority-majority graduation rates over the past 35 years.” In short, progress in raising Black secondary attainment ceased sometime during the 1970s. Our own analysis of IPUMS data generally corresponds with Heckman and La Fontaine’s estimates. Examining the year 1980, we found a secondary graduation rate for Black 19-year-olds of 64%, a bit lower than the proportion of 17-year-old Black youth enrolled in the junior year or greater, at 69%. The graduation rate for non-Hispanic Whites was about 80%, similar to that found by Heckman and La Fontaine for later years.

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Judging by Heckman and La Fontaine’s calculations, progress in raising the level of African American secondary graduation had ended by 1980. Like other American youth, Black high school students did not increase their graduation rate in the closing decades of the 20th century. Large numbers of them completed GED and other alternative credential programs, especially in the prison population. Indeed, Heckman and La Fontaine suggest that the unusually high rate of African American GED completion after 1980 was largely due to individuals accomplishing it while incarcerated. But this was not the same as graduating from high school. The latter 1970s, with successful struggles to transform aspects of the curriculum and to realize the promise of integration, also marked a high point of Black secondary attainment. Regarding the years that followed, the question is why attainment growth stagnated. Something of a parallel process can be observed in the achievement results recorded by African American 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) during the 1970s and 1980s. As indicated in the book’s Introduction, African American reading and mathematics scores rose steadily between NAEP’s first administration in 1971 and the mid-1980s, when both indicators reached their highest point of convergence with White scores, which had remained largely unchanged. After that, improvement in Black scores basically ended, and they even declined during the next decade or so. In other words, a similar pattern of rising accomplishment, convergence with White performance, and eventual stagnation came to characterize Black academic achievement as well, at least at it was measured by this assessment. This halt in Black academic progress has received considerable attention in recent years. Explanations vary, extending from worsening social and economic conditions in Black communities, faltering desegregation, a failure of urban schools, and the rise of an African American youth culture glorifying antisocial behavior and denigrating academic accomplishment. Some also suggest that the rise of the GED as a substitute for graduation has led more youth to leave school, especially among Blacks and other minority groups. We believe that each of these factors may well have played a role in the story of African American academic shortcomings, but another contributing factor was the stagnation in educational attainment that began about a decade before the peak NAEP assessments among Black 17-year-olds. The young men and women who scored highest on the assessments, after all, were children of the generation of Blacks who had graduated during the 1960s, when going to high school was still a potentially political act of racial advancement. These were children who grew up in the 1970s, when secondary attainment and desegregation

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arguably reached their highest points. They entered high school in 1980s in a stronger academic position than any previous generation of African Americans. Given this, it is little wonder that they did so well. The question of educational progress after the mid-1980s concerns the generations that followed them. These were the offspring of the graduates of the 1970s, for whom going to high school was less a political statement and more a normative or everyday expectation. Although we believe that Black attainment continued to grow during the 1970s, its pace slowed somewhat, and the number of individuals receiving GEDs began to rise significantly. It is possible, in short, that the high school experience came to be viewed a bit differently. African American high school students of the latter 1980s and 1990s also grew up in a period of mounting social and economic problems in many of their communities. Sociologist William J. Wilson has offered an influential analysis of racial inequality by placing it within the context of economic restructuring, a decline in industrial employment that disproportionately affected the job prospects of African American males. Whereas manufacturing employment offered good opportunities for those with a high school education, and sometimes those with less, the postindustrial economy provided low-wage service jobs that called for a different set of capabilities. Wilson cites findings, for example, that employers often felt African American men lacked the non-cognitive “soft skills,” such as meeting and interacting with customers, required for service positions. He also argued that these structural changes were linked to an increase in drugs, crime, and violence in urban areas, contributing to a growing body of research on the “urban underclass.” The most contentious thesis advanced by Wilson was that social class had become more important than race in shaping the life chances of African Americans. While agreeing that historically rooted racism still affected Blacks, Wilson highlighted the growing pace of class polarization among African Americans. Millions were moving into or stabilizing their positions in the middle class, going from the inner-city to suburban communities, leaving behind their economically disadvantaged counterparts. Inner-city areas were stripped of resources, stability, and role models that existed when Blacks of different social classes lived in proximity. The impact of this extended to education. We have shown that the circumstances of family life have historically influenced rates of high school attendance; Black youth living in two-parent, property-owning families and a greater chance of reaching the 11th grade and graduating from high school. As middle-class African Americans left urban neighborhoods, problems in the schools mounted.

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Social class polarization is implicated in other trends that help explain educational decline among African Americans. These trends include the loss of racially homogeneous but social class-diverse Black neighborhoods, dramatic changes in the Black family and increasing urban crime, violence, and incarceration. A central theme in our interviews, and one highlighted in Wilson’s analysis, was the demise of the Black community and its ability to exert social control over children. For example, nearly all our interviews respondents spoke of a time when cohesive Black communities existed and were unified around the task of keeping children in school. Ruby Arnold graduated from Atlanta’s Washington High in 1952 with “high honors” and, like many others, said she simply did not recall many students dropping out of school because parents and the immediate community would not tolerate it. She said, “All your neighborhood encouraged you to go to school, and you couldn’t choose to stay out of school . . . your neighbors would not allow it, they would tell your parents …everybody was your mother and father.” Although such stories were common, our data reveal that dropping out of high school was far from uncommon and was strongly associated with social class. Still, Black neighborhoods were once more class-diverse and cohesive, and they often reinforced the value of education. Since then, class differences among African Americans have grown wider, and many who experienced class mobility have abandoned historic Black neighborhoods. This has resulted in not only a concentration of Black poverty and joblessness in inner-city areas, but the absence of middle-class role models, the demise of extended family networks of support, and a loss of people willing to invest in schools and other community institutions. Amid the protests of the civil rights era, D. Patrick Moynihan opined that the 40% of African American children then born to single mothers was a major factor in determining racial inequality. This sparked a 30-year controversy about the matriarchal structure of Black families and their functionality. Meanwhile, the percentage of Black children born to single mothers soared from about one-third to nearly 70%, compromising the traditional strength of Black families. The demise of Black marriage has since been a major focus of research. Much of this work has focused on male underemployment and joblessness, although there is also evidence of a cultural ethos of non-marriage, dating to slavery. And as we have noted, children from married, two-parent families exhibit better cognitive development and complete high school more often than those from singleparent households. There appears to be a growing consensus that this has been a key historical factor in the stagnation of Black attainment.

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A sense of the magnitude of this question can be gained from statistics . . . which show the changing properties of 17-year-olds living in singleparent, female-headed households between 1960 and 2000. These figures are a bit different from those for children of younger ages, but clearly demonstrate the historic decline of traditional two-parent families, especially among African Americans. By the end of the 20th century, a majority of Black youth lived in such households, with the number approaching two-thirds in central city settings. The corresponding figures for non-Blacks were considerably lower, although also at historic highs. The concentration of these single-parent households for all families, Black and other, was clearly greater in central city settings, where change occurred at a similar rate for all youth across the period. The extremely high proportion among urban African American youth, however, was an exceptional condition, unprecedented in magnitude. For the first time in recent history, living in a single-parent household of limited means was a preponderant norm for children in many Black communities. Wilson and other scholars have argued that high concentrations of poverty and single-parent households can have a significant impact on normative expectations in urban communities. These conditions are associated with youth leaving school and becoming involved in violence or gang behavior. Most of our interviewers maintained that fighting in or around the schools was practically unheard of when they grew up, and certainly did not involve guns or other weapons. But the school climate began to change in the 1960s. When Nadine Meyers started school at Southeast in the 1960s, misbehavior among students seldom went beyond occasionally setting a trash can on fire, but by the time she graduated in 1970, it was clear that the school and surrounding area were on the cusp of change. For example, while Black males at Southeast, mostly athletes, “absolutely would not fight,” an out-of-school group called the “51st street gang” had started to “terrorize” students. Asked about the cause of these changes, Meyers, like many interview subjects, saw the problem in changing Black families, especially the increase in single mothers. It seemed more difficult for parents to discipline their children, and community cohesion had diminished. Asked why schools had changed so much since he graduated in the 1956, Brandon Carter had a ready list to offer: One of the things that I think is that parents don’t have enough time to come to PTA meetings; it’s not a priority. Second, the laws on the books have dictated that this generation has rights—by this I mean parents/others can’t discipline. Third, kids raising kids, and they don’t have any home

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training. And sometimes parents want to assault teachers….For us, the teacher was always right and we were always wrong. Now that’s changed.

Nearly everyone we interviewed offered reasons why the children of subsequent generations seem less respectful, more aggressive, and less interested in school. As with many Americans, most saw single-parent families and weaker communities as the underlying problem, but rarely mentioned broader social forces. For example, structural changes in the economy and the loss of jobs were not mentioned. Neither was suburbanization or White flight, which has isolated Black communities in urban school districts with relatively meager resources. By the early 1990s, about 75% of African American children were attending segregated schools, and research indicates that these institutions have more lowincome children, lower scores on standardized tests, less qualified teachers, and fewer advanced courses. In many inner-city settings, allBlack high schools have been labeled “dropout factories,” with graduation rates of 50% or lower. These institutions have many problems, but their failings are largely a matter of context. As Richard Rothstein has recently argued, the obstacles facing inner-city children seeking success in school are manifold, and will require a substantial investment in resources to overcome. For those who are not interested in school, the obstacles to gaining a productive education are even greater. The conditions faced by today’s youth in many central city communities make the “urban crisis” of years past appear mild by comparison. With so many African Americans contending with circumstances such as these, the road to educational equality is uncertain at best. Yet relatively few Americans, including our Black middle-aged interview respondents, seem to recognize the scope of the problem. There were, of course, other factors that arguably contributed to the demise of Black educational progress. Reagan era cutbacks in college financial aid, for instance, hit African American students particularly hard, reducing incentives for them to focus on school. Budget cuts to urban school districts also send a message that Black education is not a priority, a stark contrast to the civil rights era. City school bureaucracies have historically been slow to respond to failing institutions in African American neighborhoods beset by poverty and crime, and this, too conveys a message that schooling is not important. In short, the past 30 years or so have not been a time of rising expectations regarding education or just about any other facet of life for many African Americans, particularly those living in inner-city neighborhoods. It may well require another mobilization of public sentiment on the scale of the civil rights movement to raise awareness of these questions, and to eventually bring about meaningful change.

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Although the challenges of today are different from those of the past, there may well be some lessons to draw from the era of progressively rising Black educational attainment.

The Imperative of Educational Change Despite the continuing racial gap in high school graduate rates between Blacks and Whites, the significance of the closing of the attainment gap that started in the 1940s cannot be overstated. In 1940, African Americans graduated from high school at a rate just one third that of White students, 14% compared to 46%, and an estimated 80% were employed in the three lowest tiers of the occupational hierarchy. Although social class position influenced the likelihood that African Americans in the 1940s and 1950s would have access to and graduate from high school, those who did graduate often went on to attend college and became professionals and community leaders, hastening the emergence of a Black middle class defined largely by educational credentials. Black organizations, parents, and communities fought for all Black children to have equal access to education, whether in segregated or integrated schools, and the high school revolution came to include the majority of African American youth. By 1970, the secondary attainment gap between Blacks and Whites had narrowed substantially, and Blacks were experiencing significant socioeconomic attainment. As Bart Landry has documented, the Black middle class more than doubled between 1960 an 1970, with education being the most important factor in social mobility. By the end of the 20th century, 25% of African Americans had managerial/professional jobs and another 25% had white-collar sale and clerical jobs. Whether these figures can be improved upon without additional improvements in Black education, however, is an open question. The importance of a high school diploma to socioeconomic success has grown, as today’s “post-industrial” economy offers limited opportunities for dropouts. At the same time, the demand for college-educated workers has grown, and the wage gap between dropouts and college graduates has substantially widened. In 2005, the median income of male dropouts was $19, 802 and $50,600 for those with a bachelor’s degree. But the value of attainment far exceeds monetary advantage; it also is related to other aspects of effective participation in society. Dropping out of school, recently the topic of a White House summit, has been described as the civil rights issue of the 21st century. We find it hard to disagree with this sentiment (editors’ emphasis). In light of the trends described above, the

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longstanding stagnation in Black educational attainment is a problem in desperate need of attention. We believe that the experience of the past can inform future efforts to improve attainment levels. Our research has highlighted some of the structural factors that were instrumental in affecting higher rates of graduation among African Americans, such as northward migration, the burgeoning industrial economy, and the growing number of Black high schools. There also was a massive outlay by Southern states for education during the so-called equalization campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s. This was unusual in American history, a concerted, sustained investment in African American schooling. As we have noted, it was often stymied by local school boards determined to maintain White advantages in education, and was accompanied by substantial increases in funding for White schools as well, but it did provide a critical boost to Black attainment at a time when it was becoming ever more important. Any improvements in African American education during these years had a measurable payoff in the job market, as we have noted. . . . Despite its shortcomings, the impact of “equalization” was historic in magnitude. We believe it can provide a useful reference point for policymakers interested in effecting change in today’s largely Black urban schools. For instance, perhaps it is time to consider an equalization campaign for the 21st century, focused on improving inner-city secondary institutions sometimes referred to as “dropout factories.” There were many other factors, of course, that contributed to improvement in Black attainment in the past that can be emulated in the future. As we have indicated, the impact of desegregation was quite positive, despite the often hostile or indifferent response that Black students received in predominantly White institutions. Insofar as integration can be sustained or advanced, it is likely to have beneficial effects in the future as well. The success of desegregation, however, hinges decisively on the willingness of Whites to permit or encourage their children to attend school with African Americans, and history has revealed that large numbers are unwilling to do so. Recent court decisions have indicated that the contemporary judicial and political climate is not encouraging for measures designed to induce or compel Whites to participate in desegregation plans. Because of this, we believe that school integration is likely to have a rather limited impact on improved Black attainment in the immediate future. As critical as it may well be in the long run, the current political context will have to change before large-scale desegregation can be considered a viable path to change. This is an

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unfortunate fact that must be considered in plans to address current problems in African American education. Throughout, we have emphasized the power of Black organizations, parents, and communities to inspire change and fight for equality, and the determination of students to pursue a high school education, even if it meant attending predominantly White schools where they were unwelcome and at times less prepared to succeed. As suggested above, however, the ability of many Black communities today to engage in such activities to support education has been crippled by structural changes in the economy, particularly the decline of industrial employment in the cities. Black students today may be less likely to see educational change as part of a larger process of social transformation, and consequently, may be less willing to endure the ordeal of integration in the same way as earlier generations did. For this reason, we believe that any effort at “equalization” to redress the educational deficiencies of African Americans in these settings should be linked to comprehensive community-restoration campaigns, to assist families in meeting the many challenges of inner-city life. As Jean Anyon, Richard Rothstein, and others have suggested, it will undoubtedly be necessary to restore the health and vitality of inner-city communities in order to achieve the goal of substantially improving the schools. And to do this will require political determination that probably must be born of a new movement for basic human rights and cross-racial solidarity. In undertaking this, it may be possible to raise expectations for the future once again, just as they were raised to new heights in the past. It may be the only way to harness the remarkable vigor and commitment to success that was so clearly evident during the heyday of African American educational expansion. Given the importance of formal education in today’s world, and the well-documented significance of families and communities in supporting the educational process, reclaiming that legacy may well be our best hope for posterity.

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Marva Collins, Her Way Toni O’Neal Mosley Marva Collins’ philosophy is summed up in her promise to her students: “I will not let you fail." [Furthermore, she purported], " If teachers believe that children can't learn, those students, of course, will not learn. If teachers believe that the kind of home a student comes from has anything to do with what that child can achieve, then, of course, the curriculum becomes watered down and it becomes an impossible feat for the child to learn. I take the position that the more fetid a home environment might be, the harder a teacher must work to break that self-perpetuating cycle..." How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! —Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes, “What a piece of work is a man!” Marva Collins, a recognized leader in education reform declares, “What a piece of work is a child!” “I believe, like Pygmalion, I have the ability to sculpt my students into what I would like them to be,” says Collins. “What a glorious and wonderful challenge! When I see the hesitant, problem students enter our school declaring to all: ‘Teach me if you dare,’ I think to myself: ‘Child, what joy awaits you!’ This student does not become a problem, but a challenge. My challenge is to show this child that his days of darkness, failure, and lowered self-esteem are now over. It now becomes my chance to show this child that somewhere there is someone who cared enough to keep polishing until a luster came shining through.”

A Teacher’s Odyssey For 35 years, Collins has been sculpting, polishing her pupils, many of whom are thought to be “unteachable” and “unreachable” by teachers or parents, into eager learners and high achievers. She has accomplished this admirable feat by applying a “back-to-basics” teaching method in open classrooms where students are grouped according to levels of achievement, rather than age.

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Collins began her teaching odyssey in the Chicago public school system. “When I worked in Chicago public schools,” she recalls, “I often heard teachers say, ‘I am so sick of these children.’ When one takes this kind of attitude, it, of course rubs off on the children. If [teachers] are not excited about what we do, children can sense this.” In 1975, after 14 years of service in Chicago’s schools, Collins was so dismayed with the teaching methods and teachers’ attitudes that she started her own school, Westside Preparatory School. She opened it in her home with $5,000 from her pension fund and only six students, including two of her own three children. Westside now has 120 students in grades K-8, five full-time teachers, and several assistants. Collins has since opened two more schools. In October 1990, a second school was opened in the Cincinnati area. Now in its third year, Marva Collins Preparatory School in Silverton, Ohio, has more than doubled its enrollment (from 43 to 116), tripled its teaching staff (from two to six teachers), and added seventh- and eighth-grade instruction and a science lab (provided through a grant from the Jergens Foundation) to its original preschool through sixth-grade program. The school, which has outgrown its temporary housing in Olivet Baptist Church, has an aggressive goal of raising $500,000 to buy a permanent home.* In January 1992, Collins’ third school was opened on Chicago’s south side. There are three classes for a maximum of 100 students at the elementary level and 20 ninth-rate students at Marva Collins Preparatory School. There are plans to open a fourth school in the University Park area of Chicago.

Basics vs. “Frills” Visitors to these schools are awed by first graders learning the metric system and geometry; second graders involved in astronomy; fourth graders reading flight schedules; fifth graders studying Latin; and sixth graders reading Nietzsche, Voltaire, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy. Reading is one of the basics in Collins’ approach. “Children today do not know what continent they live on and cannot name the five Great Lakes because we gave them more and more pictures in their textbooks and less text,” she says. “In other words, we have been labeled educationally ‘A Nation At Risk’ with 23 million illiterates and 35 million functional illiterates, and two million illiterates added to this dismal figure each year.” For that reason, Collins is strict about computer use in the classroom. Only those students who have mastered their basic skills are exposed to

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computer technology. Although Westside has several computers donated by IBM for office and classroom use, Collins contends, “On the kind of budget we have, and with our philosophy, we do not need what might be called ‘teaching frills’: things like film projectors, teaching machines, calculators for the children, and the like. We deal in the basics.” That includes helping the students develop communication and problem-solving skills. Though children are exposed to technology (a biology software program is used with four-and five-year olds, for instance), it is secondary to other lessons. “I think what most of us fail to understand is there are steps in life,” Collins explains. “We try to teach children that you cannot skip from Step 1 to Step 10. If children can’t think, read, write, and compute, they cannot adapt technologically. It is just plain common sense.” “Computers are tools to be used in the pursuit of knowledge and the processing of information. Nothing more, nothing less. If children have the wrong map of life, all of the technological skills in the world won’t do them any good. Computer skills do not guarantee one a job. For instance, if you can’t get to work on time, you aren’t going to stay there anyway, even if you are very good at what you do. And I think that’s where we have been misled.” According to recent data, schools in economically disadvantaged areas or with majority African-American student enrollment have fewer computers than other schools, which means these students are unlikely to have any meaningful training in computer skills. Although Collins admits students benefit from any and all exposure to advanced technology, she maintains that exposure without adequate instruction and basic curriculum is meaningless. “First of all, I think children should know how to spell ‘computers’,” she says. “They need to realize that somebody literate knew how to program that computer.” Collins is convinced that the trend toward moving students into more and more technologically advanced instruction also can do more harm than good. “If we have an illiterate population, we constantly become users, but we can’t be creators,” she explains. “If we can’t create, we can’t distribute. And if we cannot distribute, we are not going to be fulfilled. That’s what so ironic. I think that’s why a lot of major companies are struggling. Much of the work force is illiterate or functionally illiterate. How can [America] expect to keep up in a technologically advanced arena without being able to read?”

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In addition, Collins thinks that more emphasis on moral values and less on computers and other “teaching frills” in the classroom more likely will help students adapt and be successful in the real world. In a column published in the June 18, 1990 issue of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Collins calls for “a return to moral values” to regain and strengthen the integrity of education in America. She states, “There was a time in American schools when virtue occupied center stage. The large objective of schools was to train the moral character and nourish the souls of the students. Our textbooks and curricula allowed our children to develop their own feelings, their own ideas, their own morality.” In her article, Collins calls for a return to the use of syllogistic reasoning, which has all but been eliminated in U.S. schools. She believes that educated people can solve problems through their “perceptive, intelligent, sensitive responses,” and thus help their communities and the world become peaceful places. In fact, she says the goal of world peace, “is perhaps the most important and least acknowledged goal of education.”

Breaking the Cycle More important than what Collins teaches and why, is how she teaches. Again, her philosophy is simple and direct, “a positive learning environment reaps positive results; therefore, positive reinforcement is the backbone of her teaching method.” Our method is nothing less than the “Three Rs” mixed with a total program that teaches every child that he is unique, special, and bright and that we will not let him fail,” says Collins. “We have no monopoly on excellence. We simply do not buy into the idea that poor, inner-city children cannot achieve. We expect universal standards from our children. We teach them to read, write, compute, and to think critically and analytically.” Many of her students are from the inner-city and have economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Most have been problems for either their parents or their schools, usually both. Collins feels it’s not the children who are poor students because of their situations, but it is poor teachers who are keeping these students from realizing their fullest potential. “All across the country, poor teachers are screaming and yelling, and students are often screaming back or turning off. Good teachers have exciting classrooms where children are learning, the same kind of ambience we have in our classrooms. Good teachers are always looking for answers to problems; poor teachers make excuses for why children aren’t learning.” Marva Collins’ philosophy is summed up in her promise to her students: “I will not let you fail.”

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“If teachers believe that children can't learn, those students, of course, will not learn. If teachers believe that the kind of home a student comes from has anything to do with what that child can achieve, then, of course, the curriculum becomes watered down and it becomes an impossible feat for the child to learn. I take the position that the more fetid a home environment might be, the harder a teacher must work to break that selfperpetuating cycle.” Collins’ philosophy on breaking this cycle is the real key to her success with most students. By creating and reinforcing a totally positive learning environment, she manages to break down many of the barriers students carry with them that prevent them from learning. The words “fail” and “can’t” are strictly forbidden in her schools’ classrooms. “I tell the teachers that if a student does not sit still, the teacher is responsible for finding out why. Maybe the, ‘oven is too hot,’ and we need to make it more comfortable. Or, maybe we need to look at the way the teacher is presenting something. We wlll not accept failure; there is always a reason why a student is not succeeding.” Individual attention and positive reinforcement are the norm for every student. “We always find something positive or complimentary to say to each child every morning,” says Collins. “This is just as important as a curriculum.” She believes these methods are even more critical with her students because inner-city students traditionally have been the targets of harsh and unfair stereotypical labeling. They are considered troublemakers, with little ability or desire to learn. Collins sees in these children, particularly black males, what Michelangelo perceived in a piece of marble, “an angel trying to get out.” She says, “There is a lot of toughness and tough talk on the street and in the school, but inside is a child who wants to be accepted, a child who wants to succeed.” Even students who are considered to be potential problems are treated with respect and challenged with the same high expectations as all other students. Rather than ignore these children as some teachers might, Collins will stand right behind a misbehaving child, place her hand on his or her shoulder, and speak directly to the child. “Sometimes I will actually do their work for them, just to give them a taste of success,” she adds. Collins also says the pressure to “perform” for peer acknowledgment and acceptance is deflated when there is no audience. In her schools, students are expected to continue their work as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred when a child misbehaves.

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Parents and Teachers Getting parents to take a more active role in the day-to-day education of their children is a universal problem in the education community, but it is a challenge Collins takes in stride. Parents of enrolled students are encouraged to be active partners in their children’s education and are welcome as visitors and volunteers in the classroom. Collins also offers special classes and workshops to help parents adapt her teaching methods for home use. “Children are composites of their parents’ habits,” she says. “We tend to ignore that children learn habits, good and bad, from their parents. That’s why we try to work with parents, have classes and workshops. We encourage them to visit classes and volunteer their time. It doesn’t do any good to teach a child one thing here, and then they go home and see something else there. Parents are encouraged by the positive affirmations they witness at the school. But getting parents to change their habits, that is the biggest problem.” Adopting Collins’ techniques at home may prove easier than translating some of her techniques and philosophies to the classroom. She relies heavily on Bible passages, and her students wear uniforms. Some teachers and administrators still are not convinced that the cure for what ails the American public school system can be found in the form of such a simple philosophy. Collins believes there is a tendency to reject arbitrarily some methods of teaching, just because they are old-fashioned. “The fact is, a teacher can combine both progressive and traditional approaches to learning, each enhancing the other,” she says. “There is no reason why a teacher can’t be sensitive to a child’s needs and at the same time teach the child subject matter and skills. That blend has always been the basis of Westside Preparatory School.” Even in teacher training, the emphasis is on the basics’ positive reinforcement and motivation. Collins has trained more than 7,000 teachers across the country in her teaching methods, many through a program started in 1991 in the state of Oklahoma. Twenty-five Oklahoma public schools were chosen from a pool of 65 applicants by a six-member state Department of Education committee. Eight of the schools were considered “at risk” city schools, with student test scores in one or more grades in the bottom 25 percent on state-mandated achievement examinations. The schools participated in the pilot of an improvement program sponsored by Marva Collins and underwritten by a foundation established by Ponca City, Oklahoma, businessman Charles E. Hollar. The

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tuition for the program, called “Prepping for Power,” totaled $5,000 per enrolled teacher and was raised through private and corporate donations. For three weeks, more than 300 teachers were invited to watch as 37 students ages 6 to 11 years were exposed to Collins’ “back-to-basics” approach to teaching. Principals, administrators, and two teachers from each of the 25 schools took communications courses at Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma. Training continued in Chicago, where administrators had a two-day training session and teachers attended a fiveday training session with Collins at Westside. The training program culminated in a conference held in Oklahoma. Throughout the training period, teachers had access to Collins via conference calls, individual consultations, videotapes, and written materials. Jean Faulconer served as moderator of the opening session in Oklahoma. “Host parents, some of whom had been away from parenting and homework for a few years, felt the assignments were too much, too hard. Again, it must be remembered these kids had arrived for “Prepping for Power,” not [for] summer camp and beadwork,” Faulconer explains. “To some, [Collins’] methodology may have appeared harsh, overstressing competition, but no one faulted her philosophy. And the “Prepping for Power,” three-week session must be kept in proper perspective. It was a specially funded, first-time, extended education laboratory meant to teach other teachers the techniques proven successful by the master teacher “as well as awaken 37 children to a passion for learning.”

Positives, Negatives Through the years, Collins and her methods have been both praised and criticized. Despite features broadcast on several hundred radio and television programs, including “60 Minutes” and “Good Morning America,” and profiles published in national magazine like Time, Life, Newsweek, Forbes, Ebony, and Essence and in The Wall Street Journal, Collins has not been able to dodge the negative publicity that inevitably comes with being such a notable figure. In the early 1980s, following the airing of The Marva Collins Story, a made-for-television drama, allegations began to surface that she had handpicked her students and had manipulated their test scores. Her personality was under attack. She was questioned about accepting CETA funds, though she was an outspoken critic of federal aid, and was even accused of playing into the hands of politicians who supported school

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funding cuts. The same newspapers that once had called her a “superteacher” were asking her if she was a “sinister woman.” The Wall Street Journal saw the controversy surrounding Collins as “a story about the politics of education in this country, especially education in the inner city, where the public schools have failed miserably. Mrs. Collins’ private success invited reaction because it became a reproach to that failure.” The criticism, which came primarily from Chicago public school teachers, a few disgruntled parents, and one former Westside Preparatory teacher, lasted only a few weeks. Collins has never altered her path or philosophy because of it. Even today, some teachers find her an inspirational model, while others question her motives and methods. Perhaps Civia Tamarkin, coauthor with Collins of Marv Collins’ Way, states it best: “For all their attempts to tear down Marva’s image, her critics had never once questioned her commitment to teaching. And it was only through that commitment that she cared to be judged.” In an interview with The New York Times, Collins replies to her critics, “I’ve never said I was a superteacher, a miracle worker, all those names they gave me. It’s unfair to expect me to live up to it. I’m just a teacher.” As Tamarkin found in the year she spent observing the controversial educator, the 1957 graduate of Clark College is “neither an academic, a scholar, nor the perfect grammarian.” She is a teacher, all the time, not just in the classroom. Tamarkin also discovered that the single-mindedness of purpose and method some consider obsessive and self-centered actually endears students and neighborhood children to Collins. “They saw it as a sign of her implacable devotion to them,” Tamarkin explains. In the book’s prologue, Tamarkin writes that meeting Marva reminded her of something told to her by Dr. Ralph Tyler, a former dean of social sciences at the University of Chicago: “Teaching is not just a job. It is a human service, and it must be thought of as a mission.” “The one thing that can never be disputed,” Tamarkin declares, “is that Marva Collins motivates children and makes them want to learn and achieve.” That is a worthy mission for any educator.

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Twenty-Five Lessons for Life from The Measure of Our Success:A Letter to My Children and Your Marian Wright Edelman Each American adult and child must struggle to achieve and not think for a moment that America has got it made. Lesson 1: There is no free lunch. Don’t feel entitled to anything you don’t sweat and struggle for. And help our nation understand that it’s not entitled to world leadership based on the past or on what we say rather than how well we perform and meet changing world needs. Every African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American youth needs to remember that he or she never can take anything for granted in America— especially now as racial intolerance resurges all over our land. Some of it, like David Duke’s KKK brand of racism or the 1988 Bush campaign’s cynical manipulation of Willie Horton, is blatant. Although it may be wrapped up in new euphemisms and better etiquette, as Frederick Douglass warned, it’s the same old snake…. Each American adult and child must struggle to achieve and not think for a moment that America has got it made. Frederick Douglass reminded all of us that “men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get.” While a college degree today may get you in the door, it will not get you to the top of the career ladder or keep you there. You have got to work your way up—hard and continuously. So we need to teach our children— by example—not to be lazy, to do their homework, to pay attention to detail, to take care and pride in work, to be reliable, and not to wobble and jerk through life. Each of us must take the initiative to create our opportunities, not waiting around for favors. We must not assume a door is closed but must push on it. We must not assume if it was closed yesterday that it’s closed today. The rhetoric of the 1980s that told us we could have our cake and eat it too was a recipe for national disaster. A people unable or unwilling to share, to juggle difficult, competing demands, and to make hard choices and sacrifices may be incapable of taking courageous action to rebuild family and community and to prepare for the future. Many whites favor racial justice as long as things remain the same. Many voters have Congress, but love their own members of Congress as long as he or she takes care of their special interests. Many husbands are happier to share their wives’ added income than the housework and child care. Many Americans decry the growing gap between the rich and the poor and

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middle class, are outraged at escalating child suffering, and favor government action as long as somebody else’s taxes are raised and somebody else’s program is cut. Are we going to be able to rise above this national adolescence and deal as a mature people with problems we can solve with sustained personal, community, private sector, and governmental efforts? Lesson 2: Set goals and work quietly and systematically toward them. We must all try to resist quick-fix, simplistic answers and easy gains, which often disappear just as quickly as they come. Don’t feel compelled to talk if you don’t have anything to say that matters. It’s all right to feel important if it’s not at the expense of doing important deeds. But so many of us talk big and act small. T. S. Eliot, in his play The Cocktail Party, said that “half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.” You can achieve much in life if you don’t mind doing the work and giving others the credit. You know what you do and the Lord knows what you do and that’s all that matters. Lesson 3: Assign yourself. My Daddy used to ask us whether the teacher had given us any homework. If we said no, he’d say, “Well, assign yourself.” Don’t wait around for your boss or your co-worker or spouse to direct you to do what you are able to figure out and do for yourself. Don’t do just as little as you can to get by. If someone asks you to do A, and B and C obviously need to be done as well, do them without waiting to be asked or expecting a Nobel prize for doing what is needed. Too often today too many ordinary, thoughtful deeds are treated as extraordinary acts of valor. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Vote. And don’t hide behind the excuse that one vote doesn’t count. Don’t just complain about our political leaders: run for political office, especially school boards (editors’ emphasis). Those with a special commitment to children and families and the needy have a special role to play in public life. But please don’t think that your position or your re-election are the only point once you gain office. Children are. Results are. If you see a need, don’t ask, “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” Ask, “Why don’t I do something?” Don’t wait around to be told what to do. There is nothing more wearing than people who have to be asked or reminded to do things repeatedly. Hard work, initiative, and persistence are still the nonmagic carpets to success. Let’s each commit to help teach the rest of the country how to achieve again by our example. Lesson 4: Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or build a decent family or help you sleep at night. We are the richest nation on earth, yet our incarceration, drug addiction, and child poverty rates are among the highest in the industrialized world. Don’t

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condone or tolerate moral corruption whether it’s found in high or low places, whatever its color. It is not okay to push or use drugs even if every person in America is doing it. It is not okay to cheat or lie even if countless corporate or public officials and everybody you know do. Be honest. And demand that those who represent you be honest. Don’t confuse legality with morality. Lesson 5: Don’t be afraid of taking risks or of being criticized. An anonymous sage said, “If you don’t want to be criticized don’t say anything, do anything, or be anything.” Don’t be afraid of failing. It’s the way you learn to do things right. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall down. What matters is how many times you get up. And don’t wait for everybody else before you to do something. It’s always a few people who get things done and keep things going. The country needs more wise and courageous shepherds and fewer sheep…. Lesson 6: Take parenting and family life seriously and insist that those you work for who represent you do. [S]eventy nations provide medical care and financial assistance to all pregnant women; we aren’t one of them. Seventeen industrialized nations have paid maternity leave programs; we are not one of them…. [S]ince too many men in power still just don’t get how hard it is to juggle work and family burdens, it is time for the struggling, beleaguered mothers—and supportive fathers—of this nation to tell our leaders to get with it and stop the political hypocrisy so that all parents can have a real choice about whether to remain at home or work outside the home without worrying about the safety and well-being of their children. Lesson 7: Remember that your wife is not your mother or your maid, but your partner and friend. I hope you will raise your sons to be fair to your own and to other people’s daughters and to share—not just help with—parenting and household responsibilities. My parents did not have differing expectations for their girls and boys and always encouraged each of us to reach the limits of our capacities and put them to useful service…. Young men need to take the responsibility for seeing and figuring out what needs to be done at home—just as you do at your job. Lesson 8: Forming families is serious business. It requires a measure of thoughtful planning, economic stability, and commitment, particularly with the downward spiral of wages and job opportunities for young families of all races and with the rising costs of good child care and housing, which often require more than one employed parent…. Parenting is not only a big economic commitment—the cost of raising a child to age eighteen is more than $114,000, not including savings for

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college and ignoring future inflation—it is also an enormous emotional and personal commitment. Lesson 9: Be Honest. Struggle to live what you say and preach. Call things by their right names. Be moral examples for your children. If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won’t either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out. Teach your children good manners. “Please” and “thank you” are two of the most important words in the English language. Being considerate of others will take you and them further in life than any college or professional degree. I hope you will help strengthen the American tradition of family by stressing family rituals: prayers if you are religious, and if not, regular family meals and gatherings. All children need constructive alternatives to the streets and violence, to drugs—including alcohol, killer tobacco, and too-early sex as antidotes to boredom and drift. But parents alone are not responsible for the perversions of family and community values today. It’s harder to parent today and to control your children’s values when public figures and advertisers equate drinking with fun and relaxation and glamour; when many television programs and movies seed and feed an apparently insatiable American appetite for gratuitous violence; and when unmarried parents dot the covers of best-selling magazines. Telling our children to “just say no” is hypocritical and useless while parents and other adult role models send cultural messages and provide examples that “say yes.” And if millions of parents are children themselves, are single, and have to work because they don’t want the stigma of welfare, or are so poor that they have to worry first about food and shelter, where are the children to find the buffers and countersignals they need? Where are the religious leaders? Where are the grandparents? Where are the extended parents? Where are our children supposed to see and grasp a sense of the future? Lesson 10: Remember and help America remember that the fellowship of human beings is more important than the fellowship of race and class and gender in a democratic society. Be decent and fair and insist that others be so in your presence. Don’t tell, laugh at, or in any way acquiesce to racial, ethnic, religious, or gender jokes or to any practices intended to demean rather than enhance another human being. Walk away from them. Stare them down. Make them unacceptable in your homes, religious congregations, and clubs. Through daily moral consciousness counter the proliferating voices of racial and ethnic and religious division that are

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gaining respectability over the land, including on college campuses. Let’s face up to rather than ignore our growing racial problems, which are America’s historical and future Achilles’ heel. . . . Let’s not spend time pinning and denying blame rather than healing our divisions. Rabbi Abraham Heschel put it aptly: “We are not all equally guilty but we are all equally responsible” for building a decent and just America. After 600,000 American deaths in a civil war to preserve the union and to abolish slavery; 3,437 lynchings of Black Americans since reconstruction; and dozens of deaths during the nonviolent civil rights struggles of the 1960s to help our country live up to American ideals of equal justice under the law, every citizen should reject any political candidate . . . in any year who manipulates racial fears for political gain. I endorse strongly Iowa Republican Representative Jim Leach’s call for “a new political ethic” and for candidates to sign a pledge of tolerance and to make a compact with the electorate not to divide society on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, age, or place of national origin. “For American reality to match American ideals,” he said, “public officials have a special responsibility to uplift rather than tear down, to unify rather than divide.” So do you and I. Lesson 11: Sell the shadow for the substance. Don’t confuse style with substance; don’t confuse political charm or rhetoric with decency or sound policy…. Lesson 12: Never give up. Never think life if not worth living. I don’t care how hard it gets. An old proverb reminds: “When you get to your wit’s end, remember that God lives there.” Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that when you get into a “tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” Hang in with life. Hang in for what you believe is right even if every other soul is going a different way. Don’t give in to cynicism or despair or dismiss as unsolvable the great challenges of peace or nuclear survival, racial division, poverty, and environmental devastation. Sissela Bok, in her Alva Myrdal: A Life, quotes the Nobel Peace laureate: “I know only two things for certain. One is that we gain nothing by walking around the difficulties and merely indulging in wishful thinking. The other is that there is always something one can do oneself. In the most modest form, this means: to study, to try to sort our different proposals, and weigh the effect of proposed solutions—even if they are only partial solutions. Otherwise there would be nothing left but to give up. And it is not worthy of human beings to give up . . . . The greatness of being human . . . lies in not giving

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up, in not accepting one’s own limitations.” A little saying I picked up in a convent I visit sometimes echoes her feelings: “God never meant to make life easy, he meant to make men (and women) great”—like Alva Myrdal. Lesson 13: Be confident that you can make a difference. Don’t get overwhelmed. Sometimes when I get frantic about all I have to do and spin my wheels, I try to recall Carlyle’s advice: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” Try to take each day and each task as they come, breaking them down into manageable pieces for action while struggling to see the whole. And don’t think you have to “win” immediately or even at all to make a difference. Lesson 14: Don’t ever stop learning and improving your mind or you’re going to get left behind. The world is changing like a kaleidoscope right before our eyes. College pays and is a fine investment. It doubles your chance of getting a job over a high school graduate. But don’t think you can park there or relegate your mind’s and soul’s growth to what you have learned or will learn at school. Read. Not just what you have to read for class or work, but to learn from the wisdom and joys and mistakes of others. No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion. My Daddy valued reading almost as much as prayer, service, and work. After my older siblings left home, he used to make me sit with him each evening before the fireplace in his bedroom to read for a spell. When I was twelve or thirteen, I tried to trick him once by slipping a forbidden True Confessions magazine into the Life magazine I pretended to read. He caught me and asked me to read it aloud and comment on its value! I’ve not had any appetite for True Confessions since! We always had more books and magazines than clothes or luxuries in our home: the complete works of Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg’s multiple volumes on Abraham Lincoln, books about and by great world and American Black leaders. Names like Gandhi, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Benjamin Mays, Howard Thurman, W. E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, and Langston Hughes were etched into my consciousness from very early childhood. Pictures of great doers (of all colors) and clippings of great events (current and historical) dotted the walls of Daddy’s study where he withdrew each day to read and think – a father’s bulletin board on the big world beyond our small rural town. All of this was, I think, the reason why I always thought the whole world was mine to explore and why I resist anyone’s efforts to relegate only a part of it to me-or to any child. Daddy stretched us continuously and instilled a sense that all was possible with faith and hard work. He believed in learning by example, exposure, and osmosis. Any time a great Black man or woman came

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within 200 miles of our hometown, we children were piled in the car to hear them-singers Roland Hayes, Dorothy Maynor, Marian Anderson, and poet Langston Hughes. Great Black preachers and educators were special favorites. I remember sitting on (sometimes snoozing on) very hard seats as a young child through three- or four-hour lectures by Mordecai Johnson, former president of Howard University, who came on a number of occasions to the Columbia, South Carolina, auditorium about a hundred miles away from our hometown-and I still feel stiff. I can hear, as if yesterday, Mary McLeod Bethune’s stories over dinner at Benedict College (also in Columbia) – stories of how she challenged segregation, of going into segregated white stores and demanding to try on hats, brushing aside shocked white clerks’ refusals with: “Do you know who I am? I am Mary McLeod Bethune!” It was from her mouth that as a child I first heard the phrase “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” She basked with pride in her blackness and helped excise from my young Black female psyche the notion that racial and gender barriers should ever be more than momentary impediments to be knocked down by will and unwavering purpose. Just as my parents and extended parents imbedded in us children a sense of possibility that transcended the artificial boundaries of our segregated existence, all of today’s parents and community leaders must try to give the young bulletins of the great world, through books and great people, so that all children are provided a sense of life that transcends the artificial boundaries of race, gender, class, and things. Lesson 15: Don’t be afraid of hard work or of teaching your children to work. Work is dignity and caring and the foundation for a life with meaning. For all her great accomplishments, Mary McLeod Bethune never forgot the importance of practical work. When asked by a train conductor, “Auntie, do you know now to cook good biscuits?” she responded, “Sir, I am an advisor to presidents, the founder of an accredited four-year college, a nationally known leader of women, and founder of the National Council of Negro Women. And yes, I also cook good biscuits.” [T]oo many today are embracing an obsession with work to ensure their ability to engage in limitless consumption. But still more children of privilege, of the middle class, and of the poor are growing up without a strong work ethic, and too many are growing up without work at all. An important reason much of my generation stayed out of trouble is that we had to help out at home and in the community and did not have time—or energy—to get into trouble. Lesson 16: “Slow Down and Live” is an African song I sing inside my head when I begin flitting around like a hen with her head wrung off:

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“Brother slow down and live, brother slow down and live, brother slow down and live, you’re got a long way to go. Brothers love one another, you’ve got a long way to go.” Since my thoughts and actions and ideas tend to come in spurts and gushes, too often I create tidal waves in my wake, as my family and colleagues can attest. Then St. Francis de Sales reminds me that “rivers that flow gently through the plains carry along larger boats. Rains that fall gently and open fields make them fruitful in grass and grain. Torrents and rivers that spread over the land in great floods ruin the bordering country and are useless for commerce, just as in like manner heavy tempestuous rains ruin the fields and meadows. A job done too . . . hurriedly is never well done”…. Lesson 17: Choose your friends carefully. Stay out of the fast lane, and ignore the crowd. You were born God’s original. Try not to become someone’s copy. Dr. Benjamin Mays used to tell Morehouse and Spelman College students not to give into peer pressure, saying, “Nobody is wise enough, nobody is good enough, and nobody cares enough for you to turn over to them your future and your destiny.” You are the person you must compete with and be accountable for. Rabbi Susya said: “God will not ask me why I was not Moses, He will ask me why I was not Susya.” Dr. J. J. Starks, who served as president of two Black colleges in South Carolina—Morris and Benedict—and who mentored my father, listed six things that destroy students: “Bad company, keeping late hours, gaming as pastime, disregard for values, failure to discriminate between love and lust, and the drink habit.” Still sounds pretty good to me. Find your own niche in life and try to learn to do at least one thing uncommonly well. Follow the need. If you struggle to see and hear and understand and respond to the needs and longings of those all around you—asking how you can serve them rather than how they can serve you—you will not be tempted by fast-land friends and will never lack for purposeful work. It doesn’t have to be a big work. It just needs to be a helping work. Lesson 18: Be a can-do, will-try person. Focus on what you have and not what you don’t have, what you can do rather than what you cannot do. America is being paralyzed by can’t-doers with puny vision and punier will…. [S]hel Silverstein, the children’s author, said: “Listen to the mustn’ts, child, listen to the don’ts, listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossible, the won’ts, listen to the never haves, then listen close to me—- anything can happen, child, ANYTHING can be.” If you dream it, have faith in it, and struggle for it—as long as it takes.

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Lesson 19: Try to live in the present; don’t carry around unnecessary burdens from a yesterday you will not live again or a tomorrow that is not guaranteed. To escape Washington, Congress, and the child care battles… I went on a marvelous Outward Bound adventure. Participants were given a little book of quotes. One by Storm Jameson hit home: “I believe that only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend 59 minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening) or in a future which we either long for or dread . . . . There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable minute. Which is exactly what it is—a miracle and unrepeatable.” Lesson 20: Use your political and economic power for the community and others less fortunate. Vote and hold those you vote for accountable…. The days of thinking about service as something to occupy the time just of middle-class youths in the suburbs have passed. Indeed, poor and minority youths may profit the most from service activities and give the most in return, if we provide the resources in low-income communities to create such opportunities, and if we remove the barriers that sometimes keep them from participating in these programs. Leadership and service are by no means limited to visible public roles. Be a quiet servant-leader and example in your home, school, workplace, and community. You have a role to exercise either positively or negatively every minute of the day. Have you ever noticed how one example—good or bad—can prompt others to follow? How one illegally parked car can give permission for others to do likewise? How one racial joke can fuel another? How one sour person can dampen a meeting or one complainer sap positive energy? Well, the converse is also true. One or a few positive people can set the tone in an office or congregation or school. Just doing the right and decent thing can set the pace for others to follow in all kinds of settings. America is in urgent need of a band of moral guerrillas who simply decide to do what appears to be right heedless of the immediate consequences. As one anonymous leader said (better than I can): “The world needs more men [and women] who do not have a price at which they can be bought; who do not borrow from integrity to pay for expediency; whose handshake is an ironclad contract; who are not afraid of risk; who are honest in small matters as they are in large ones; whose ambitions are big enough to include others; who know how to win with grace and lose with dignity; who do not believe that shrewdness and cunning and ruthlessness are the three keys to success; who still have friends they made twenty years ago; who are not afraid to go against the

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grain of popular opinion and do not believe in ‘consensus’; who are occasionally wrong and always willing to admit it. In short, the world need leaders.” Lesson 21: Listen for “the sound of the genuine” within yourself and others. Meditate and learn to be alone without being lonely. “Small,” Einstein said, “is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.” Try to be one of them. “There is,” Howard Thurman told Spelman College students in 1981, “something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.” It is “the only true guide you’ll ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.” There are so many noises and pulls and completing demands in our lives that many of us never find out who we are. Learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in other people. It is as necessary as it is hard to practice a regular discipline of silence, solitude, or prayer. I have not fully succeeded but I cannot survive long without my moments. A few minutes every hour, a half hour or hour every day, a day a month, a week a year—in dedicated silence—is a goal to pursue. Even better is the attainment of an internal quiet space within yourself amidst never-ceasing external bedlam. It’s tempting to hide behind a too-busy life as an excuse to avoid solitude, and in this I am guiltier than most. But each of us can do what we really want to do. St. Francis de Sales recounted how, when St. Catherine of Siena’s parents deprived her of time and place to pray and mediate, she simply created a cell within her own heart to dwell in. Lesson 22: You are in charge of your own attitude—whatever others do or circumstances you face. The only person you can control is yourself. “As human beings,” Gandhi said, “our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world—that is the myth of the ‘Atomic Age’—as in being able to remake ourselves.” Worry more about your attitude than your aptitude or lineage. “We who lived in concentration camps,” wrote Viktor Frankl, “can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in numbers, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to [determine one’s] attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.”

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It is not what is done to us that matters, but how we take what is done to us, Archbishop Tutu reminds us. Booker T. Washington did not know his father’s name, but it did not keep him from becoming a great man. You didn’t have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do have a choice about the kind of parent you will be. You may not be able to clean up your neighborhood or street but you can clean up your own house or apartment or room. (Although there are circumstances—trying to parent in rat-infested, peeling, dark, dirty-slum apartments—that defy my or anyone else’s judgment.) Don’t let anything keep you from struggling and seeking to be a decent, striving human being. It is where you are headed not where you are from that will determine where you end up (editors’ emphasis). After watching the first day of Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, a friend called me to gripe laughingly about the emotional response of some senators to Thomas’s stories of his deprived childhood and how far he had come from the days his family lived in a house with no indoor plumbing. By the senators’ standard, my friend observed, half the Black folk of our generation must now be eligible for the Supreme Court, since so many of us who have overcome odds many whites could not imagine grew up, like Thomas, with outhouses! Don’t make excuses. Whether you are poor or rich, don’t think that children of privilege don’t have to fight for meaning in their lives too. In fact, Booker T. Washington told Tuskegee students that they were blessed compared with some people. “The man or woman who has money, without having had to work for it, who has all the comforts of life, without effort, and who saves his own soul and perhaps the soul of somebody else, such an individual is rare, very rare indeed.” Make up your mind that you are not going to allow anything to discourage you. Never use physical poverty—or family status and wealth—as an excuse for spiritual poverty. Don’t think if you just had money it would solve your problems or empty feelings. Success, Booker T. Washington warned, may injure individuals and institutions (and I’d add countries) more than poverty. Indeed, perhaps America is not hungry enough to listen to and learn from countries with a smaller gross national product whom we perceive as less than peers. The children of the poor have much to teach the children or privilege about the strength that comes from a journey of struggle. Lesson 23: Remember your roots, your history, and the forebears’ shoulders on which you stand. And pass these roots on to your children and to other children. Young people who do not know where they come from and the struggle it took to get them where they are now will not know where they are going or what to do for anyone besides themselves if

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and when they finally get somewhere. All Black children need to feel the rightful pride of a great people that produced Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass from slavery, and Benjamin Mays and Martin Luther King and Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from segregation— people second to none in helping transform America from a theoretical to a more living democracy. All children need this pride of heritage and sense of history of their own people and of all the people who make up the mosaic of this great nation. African American and Latino and Asian American and Native American children should know about European history and cultures, and white children should know about the histories and cultures of diverse peoples of color with whom they must share a city, a nation, and a world. I believe in integration. But that does not mean I become someone else or ignore or deny who I am. I learned the Negro National anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” at the same time I learned “The Star Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful” and I love them all…. Lesson 24: Be reliable. Be faithful. Finish what you start. When my sister admonished our aging mother to relinquish some of her many church and community responsibilities, including a home for the aged in which most of the occupants, for whom she was cooking, were younger than she, and also her roles as church organist and chief fundraiser, she replied: “I did not promise the Lord that I was going part of the way. I promised him I was going all the way until he tells me otherwise.” America . . . must finish what we started in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and go all the way until we assure liberty and justice for the millions of children of all races and incomes left behind in our society today despite national leaders who seek to turn us back to the not-so-good old days of race and class and gender divisions. Lesson 25: Always remember that you are never alone. There is nothing you can ever say or do that can take away my or God’s love. I cannot improve upon but only repeat some of my Daddy’s frequent words on home life and devotion to children. In a 1951 sermon he said: “Parents for today’s children must at all cost maintain a home, a center of love for their nurture and security. The pressure of our high-powered civilization is too much for a homeless and loveless child. The growing tragedy of our time is the increasing broken homes. The home—that should be the strongest link in education—is rapidly becoming the weakest . . . Nothing must separate parents from their duty to their children.

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The Religious Needs of Negro Students Benjamin E. Mays [S]trive for the establishment of a righteous order; but ... if the righteous order is not established; both the unrighteous and the more nearly righteous will suffer. [T]herefore, give direction to Negro life— [i.e., ] security in the midst of insecurity. On the basis of the analysis of the religious life of Negro students, we shall now attempt to set forth some of the fundamental religious needs of Negro students. We shall begin first with organized religion. 1. Negro students need to develop a critical but fair appreciation for the Negro church in particular and for the Church generally. It must be admitted by all fair-minded people that the Negro church has many shortcomings. There are too many Negro churches. The leadership, both ministerial and lay, could be greatly improved. Frequently, the sermons are not relevant to everyday life. And there are many other adverse things that could be said. But to see these defects without properly evaluating the significance of this institution as to its role, past, present, and future, in American life would be just unscientific as if one tried to make the Negro church a perfect institution. As I listen to Negro students in their adverse criticism of the Negro church, I usually find myself in agreement with many of the things they say. But I also find myself feeling that they do not fully appreciate nor do they understand what this institution has done and is doing. To criticize without understanding and without appreciation is to be highly unscientific both in attitude and approach. There are certain facts about the Negro church which no one can truthfully deny. With the exception of a few business concerns, the Negro church is the most completely-owned institution in the Negro race. Nowhere else, except in the home and in a few business enterprises, is the Negro’s word so final and conclusive. The church is the Negro’s very own. This cannot be said of his educational institutions. The Negro church provides an opportunity for the common man to exercise leadership. It furnishes the masses freedom to relax after having been circumscribed and suppressed during the week. It has encouraged education and nurtured business. Except in a few instances where big business dominates the Negro church, it is a free institution. It bridges the gap between the “high” and the “low” in the

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Negro race. It is an institution that transcends race, denying freedom of worship to no man because of color. In the early period of the Negro’s freedom, it was the Negro minister who kept telling the member of his congregation that they were God’s children, made in His image, and that they were as good as any human being God has made. These historical truths must be known and appreciated by Negro students. They must understand that whatever they may say against this institution the church is probably here to stay, and it has great potentialities for good. They must see that their adverse criticism will hardly help constructively. Since the church is their very own and since it is here to stay, whether in its present form or in a modified form, it is their responsibility to help make it more efficient by criticizing it constructively from the inside rather than hurling epithets at it from the outside. The same holds true for the church as a whole. It is not enough for one to point out the glaring failures and shortcomings of Christianity. It is a well-known fact that they are many. But to stop there would be to tell but half a truth. The highest ideals the world has ever known are those of Christianity. The Christian church is the only institution in the world whose sole function it is to strive to bring these ideals into realization. Of course, it falls short; but as long as it pronounces the ideals of Christ, it is obligated to work for their realization. It is not enough for the Negro to parade the fact that Christianity was used by many to prove that slavery was ordained of God. As a fair critic, he must also make it plain that others used Christianity to prove that slavery was incompatible with the will of God. The searchlight of Christianity could not shine forever upon the institution of slavery without dissolving it. The Negro would have been in a sad plight after emancipation if the Christian church had not come to his rescue educationally and religiously. Christianity has been and still is one of the most powerful weapons the Negro possesses with which to press his claims in American life. It cannot be denied, therefore, that the Negro’s heritage in America is a religious one. To understand this fact is necessary if the Negro student is going to be able to see clearly the significance of the church in American life. 2. The second religious need of Negro students is closely related to the first. He needs to have an intelligent understanding of the Bible and a fair knowledge of the historical development of the Christian religion. It is amazing how little American students, and particularly the Negro

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student, knows about the Bible. It is no credit to the student to have no knowledge of how the Bible came into existence. It is no credit to him not to know that the Book of Ruth is in the Old Testament. It does not help him to be ignorant of the contents of the Bible and to say that he seldom, if ever, reads it. There are certain facts about American history that an intelligent person ought to know. Likewise, there are certain things in the Bible with which high school or college men should be familiar. Certainly, it is nothing to be proud of if he has no understanding of this Book. Yet, there are many students who have no Biblical knowledge and seem to be proud of the fact. A goodly number of them have radical ideas about the Bible. The only point that is being insisted upon here is that if a person takes radical views about the Bible he should know the Bible. Radicalism should be based on knowledge. If a student knows and understands the contents of the Bible, it does not matter whether he comes out on the conservative end or on the liberal end. But if he is radical about that of which he knows nothing, he makes himself ridiculous. It is not the Negro student’s fault that he is largely ignorant of the Bible. College or university administrators and boards of trustees are to blame. In many of our colleges, there is no opportunity afforded the student to select courses in religion in the college curricula. In other colleges, even if religion is taught, the teachers are too often less qualified that the teachers who teach in other areas of the college. The Negro students should also have some knowledge of the history of religions and a clear idea of the development history of Christianity. When he studies these, he will find many things that are not complimentary but he will also see that the human spirit throughout all time has been reaching out toward something beyond itself. He will discover things beautiful, noble, and inspiring. He will understand that man is incurably religious. He will see that it is not a question as to whether man is going to be religious, but a question of what kind of religion he will embrace; not a question as to whether mankind is going to have a God – but a question of the kind of God. If a man must give allegiance to something other than himself, he will understand that man must cling to some object that he considers worthy of supreme devotion. An understanding such as this will give him a basis for formulating his philosophy of religion. Without such knowledge, he is likely to accept religion blindly without questioning or his is likely to branch off on a radical tangent rejecting what he does not

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understand Negro students, lie all students, should have the right to be critical or even indifferent toward the church and religion. But when they reject these they should know what they are rejecting and why. Again, it does not matter whether he comes out a radical or a conservative. Whatever the position he arrives at, it should have a basis in knowledge and understanding. 3. In the nature of things, the third religious need of Negro students grows out of the first two which is a responsibility of college administrators. There should be courses in religion in the college curriculum. If the first two needs are valid, then the third is inescapable. If education is to deal with the whole of culture, with every aspect of the student’s life, the college can no more escape its responsibility in the area of religion than it can escape its responsibility in the area of literature and mathematics. These courses in religion should be manned by men who are just as able in the field of religion as is the chemist or the biologist in his chosen field. The men who teach religion in high school or in the undergraduate college must not only be good men, but they must be men who command respect academically as they move in and out among their colleagues. We have assumed too long that if a man is a good man it is all right for him to teach religion even though we know that he does not meet the intellectual qualities required of men in other fields. An able professor of religion, as authority in his field, will do much to offset the antireligious attitude engendered in students by able professors in other fields who speak ex cathedra about religion when they are not trained in it. Since we must maintain academic freedom at all cost, the student is entitled to other points of view than those presented by men who are not authorities in religion and who have had no kind of religious experience that would enable them to approach religion with understanding and sympathy. If the student is to have an opportunity to be as intelligent in religion as he is in history or English, the high schools and colleges cannot escape their responsibilities. These courses in religion are all the more urgent because it will be a long time before the Negro church, or any church for that matter, will be in a position to provide the kind of religious knowledge the students need. The work in the church schools is largely in the hands of non-professionals. Even if the teachers in the church schools were highly qualified, there would still be the time element. The averaged church school gives less than

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thirty minutes a week to the actually teaching of the church Sunday School lesson. Then, too the students who miss the church schools would still have an opportunity to become religiously intelligent when they reach college. 4. The fourth need of Negro students, and all students, is contact with people who demonstrate in their person the fact that religion counts. Professor A. O. Steele of Johnson C. Smith University, who is making a study of religion in Presbyterian schools, feels very strongly about this. In discussing this question with him, he writes: An important religious need of Negro students is, I believe, contact with persons on and off the college campus who are living sincere and intelligent Christian lives. The Negro student is rather cynical about the real living of Christianity. He needs desperately to see in college life and life beyond the campus some representative Negro leaders who are actually striving to live the religion of Jesus in an intelligent and sincere manner. The religion that can mean something to the Negro student of today cannot be bottled up in certain exercises or organizations, or a department. It must be a living, driving force in the whole of college life and policy. The same would apply to Negro life beyond the campus.

Professor Steele’s statement carries considerable weight. It means that the religion which students see demonstrated in the lives of teachers and administrators has more significance than all the preaching and compulsory chapel services combined. Teachers in their treatment of students should meet the test of high religion. Administrators in their dealings with students should also meet the test of high religion. After all, colleges and universities are run for students and students are not to be treated as things or machines but as personalities who are entitled to the highest respect and consideration. Every care should be taken to see it that they, the students, are the ends and not the institution. Religion at its best always makes persons ends and not means. 5. Negro students need authority and this authority is to be found in religion. The old sanctions of religion have gone. There is no need to tell the student that if he does “this or that” he will go to hell or that he will not succeed in life. It is more than likely that he will not believe you. If he has a faint belief that you may be right, he is likely to do what he wants to do, hoping that the predictions you make will not come true. Many of them act on the theory that right and wrong are wholly relative terms. The Bible is no longer the authority it used to

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be. It seems that parental authority is not what it once was. Despite these facts, the student needs to understand that if he throws aside all external authority he or she must create an authority from within. Whatever students may think to the contrary, they, and nobody else, can afford to negate all authority. An individual, if he is to be a personality that counts, must keep forever the lines of his destiny in his own hands. And that means some kind of inner authority. At certain points if the student or the individual is to maintain the integrity of his own selfhood, he or she must defy the mores, refuse to be used, whether by men or systems, and decide within himself or herself that there are some things which he will not be brow-beaten into doing. Ethics and morals may be relative terms. But the student, if he is to count, must build up for himself a system of ethics which for him is final authority. And this system must be an ever-expanding system but always built up in the light of the highest and the best that he knows. Whether we like it or not, we cannot always do as we please. There are some things we cannot afford to do. Whether the physician likes it or not, he cannot stay drunk half the time and expect people to trust him. Whether the teacher likes it or not, he cannot cut his classes half the time and expect students to like it. He cannot be a professional gambler and expect students to respect him. Whether right and wrong are relative or standardized, the individual must have some kind of authority. 6. Somehow, and I do not know how it is to be done, Negro students need a faith for their day equivalent to that of their enslaved ancestors. They had the religious faith that brought them through when times for them were far more precarious than the times are for us. They did not have the opportunity to develop their minds as the modern students have. They were highly untrained and had no hope except that which they found in religion. But they believed that somehow they were going to pull through. This faith in our day would need to be modified in the light of changed condition and in the light of what science has revealed. But if the Negro student’s intellect could be saturated with a religious faith that could do for him what faith alone did for their ancestors, it is difficult to image what could be accomplished. A religious faith coupled with brain and intelligence would go a long way to save Negro students from despair and cynicism. To state it another way, Negro students need a religion that will stand them in good stead when no security is at hand. Negro students and Negro people generally, make a mistake if they see religion only as something which

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guarantees them security. Our ancestors were inclined to me it give security in another world. The modern person sees no value in it if it does not guarantee security here and now – social, political, and economic. It goes without saying that a religion which ignores social problems will in time be doomed. But to make this the sole function of religion is to misunderstand the role of religion in history. This the Negro student needs to know. He needs to know that if there were no Heaven and if the Christian religion offered no solution to social ills, it would still have a function. The offering of material security, whether here or in Heaven, has never been the sole function of religion. This religious leaders must help Negroes to understand. They must interpret religion to the Negro and to America so that religion will give direction to life – a direction that is neither communistic for fascistic – not even the direction of a capitalistic individualism. It is an interpretation of religion that recognizes the judgment of God in history – a faith in God that would not be shaken even if economic structures collapsed altogether, if governments the world over were destroyed, and if ecclesiastical systems came to ruin one by one. The Negro should still be able to say: “Be still and know that I am God.” This is a faith based upon the conviction that men cannot build systems of governments nor systems of economics as they please – a faith anchored in the belief that when certain fundamental principles of justice are trampled under foot and respect for the sacredness of human personality are violated there will appear the judgment of God – a faith in God that understands that there may come a time in the history of a nation when its army, airplanes, submarines, and natural resources cannot save her; that an economic order can become so corrupt; a church can be so far removed from God that the inevitable result will be disaster. An interpretation such as this will give poise and serenity in the midst of chaos and ruin. It will give one balance and direction however desperate the times. With such a conviction one will strive for the establishment of a righteous order; but he will understand that if the righteous order is not established; both the unrighteous and the more nearly righteous will suffer. And on the ruins of unrighteousness he will try again to build the City of God. This kind of religion, therefore, would give direction to Negro life – security in the midst of insecurity.

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Independent Neighborhood Schools: A Framework for the Education of African Americans Joan Davis Ratteray African American independent neighborhood schools are at the center of the policy debate between advocates of self-help and those who would allow the education of African Americans to be controlled by others. This external control has been directed toward the curriculum content and academic objectives of the schools as a result of the schools’ early links to private philanthropic sources and later to government sources of support. The nation’s goal should be to develop self-motivated youth who are academically prepared, culturally affirmed, and spiritually reinforced. African American independent neighborhood schools have shown that they can make the grade. Reforms in American education . . . have been developed with the expressed intention of including all students and encouraging them to become productive citizens in an increasingly technological society that faces challenges in the global community. Most African Americans have embraced the spirit of these reforms, but many ultimately reach the conclusion that mainstream education can never fulfill this promise because it is designed and controlled by another group to serve that group’s own cultural, political, and economic interests. People of African descent have been creating their own educational institutions in America for over 200 years. The history of the African American quest for independent education provides a beginning framework for designing a system of quality education that can meet the needs of the masses of African American youth in the 21st century. These African American independent neighborhood schools continue to meet the educational and employment needs of their students. Their success story, with its classical beginnings, embraces the debate over institutional control, parental choice, and the need to develop a solid foundation of basic and advanced academic skills.

Classical Beginnings The earliest African American independent schools were created as a natural response to the revolutionary ideals of the new republic that became the United States. Prince Hall, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, repeatedly petitioned the city of Boston to establish a separate, tax-

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supported school for Africans, as Blacks were then called and called themselves, because African youth were being harassed in the common schools of Boston. When his petitions proved unsuccessful, he started an alternative school in his son’s home in 1798. African Americans openly created schools in northern cities such as Philadelphia and New York, and they created schools by subterfuge in Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina where they were still enslaved. In the wake of the Civil War, over 3 million enslaved African Americans were declared free. They were, for the most part, illiterate and without the basic skills needed to support themselves. There were enormous pressures to contain and control this large number of freed men, women, and children, which led public and private funding sources to collaborate in planning the education of African Americans. Then, as today, very little attention was paid to, and little or no advice sought from, the many African American educators and leaders who were active in what W. E. B. Du Bois called a “widespread system of private, selfsupported schools and philanthropy.” The emphasis in the United States at that time was on educational quantity rather than quality. The need for a massive infusion of resources to develop an educational system for the masses of emancipated African American youth eventually overshadowed the efforts of those who were intent on enabling African Americans to control their own educational destiny. By 1897, African Americans had established and controlled 18 colleges, 34 academies, and 51 high schools and seminaries (Grand United Order of Odd-Fellows in America, 1898). At the turn of the 20th century, a core group of African American women and men began addressing the needs of African American youth by developing creative approaches to teaching and learning. Their efforts provided the intellectual foundation for the African American independent education movement. The women included Lucy Laney (Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, Georgia), Mary McLeod Bethune (Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Girls [now Bethune-Cookman College], Florida), Charlotte Hawkins Brown (Palmer Memorial Institute, North Carolina), and Nannie Helen Burroughs (National Training School for Women and Girls, Washington, DC). The men included Booker T. Washington (Tuskegee Institute [now Tuskegee University], Alabama), W. H. Crogman (Clark College, Georgia), Laurence Jones (Piney Woods Country Life School, Mississippi), and John Hawkins (Kittrell Institute, North Carolina). Most of the African American independent schools functioning today opened their doors for the first time between 1964 and 1984. These

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schools presently serve the second largest group of African American youngsters in private schools around the country, second only to the national Catholic school system (“African-American Enrollment,” 1990). Following in the tradition of African American independent schools in the previous centuries, these contemporary schools were also created to protest social inequality, serve as examples of institution building, and provide a service to their communities.

Institutional Control African American independent neighborhood schools are at the center of the policy debate between advocates of self-help and those who would allow the education of African Americans to be controlled by others. This external control has been directed toward the curriculum content and academic objectives of the schools as a result of the schools’ early links to private philanthropic sources and later to government sources of support. African Americans generally have adopted, almost intact, European historical and cultural traditions in shaping the content and process of their education. In many respects the African American mind had been the clay that others have sought to mold for their own purposes and priorities. The curricula and pedagogy of African American schools, in both their content and perspectives at the elementary, secondary, and university levels, are practically indistinguishable from those of Eurocentric institutions. Historically, even in schools operated as self-help institutions by African American churches, the content of the curriculum offered in African American schools was determined by European American ecclesiastical organizations. Secular African American schools had either to eliminate academic preparatory courses or subordinate them to industrial education. After the Civil War, many were required to include the word “industrial” in their names before they could receive funds from corporate philanthropic interests. Funding sources outside the African American community generally have been cautious about supporting independent schools operated by African Americans. Charlotte Hawkins Brown offered a vivid description of how a funding agency, even though it had endorsed the work of her school, expressed more interest “in helping towards equipping our new building, than any project that has been offered to them from us.” She added that the agency had adopted a policy “with regard to all such schools, however worthy—that is, unless the county authorities own the property, they no longer contribute to other than equipment.” Brown’s experiences were repeatedly echoed as the African American independent

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schools of her day were forced to conform their programs to the expectations of funding sources. African American independent schools have generally sought to minimize the impact of outside control by culling their financial support from the infrastructure of the Black community—from churches, fraternal orders, sororities, library societies, and similar organizations. The African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and African American Baptist churches, through their various district and state convention, have provided the most systematic funding for African American independent schools. The Prince Hall Masons and the Grand United Order of Odd-Fellows are among the leading fraternal organizations that have been deeply involved in independent education. Contemporary independent neighborhood schools derive most of their operating budgets from tuition rather than philanthropic or other funding sources. African American independent neighborhood schools played a pivotal role in preparing African American students for higher education until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which promised greater educational opportunities in mainstream education. However, the tide of desegregation and the hope of integration that swept across the educational landscape in the aftermath of Brown redirected almost all available resources from these independent institutions to government-sponsored institutions. The federal government assumed, and in some instances state governments were offered, greater responsibility for helping African Americans gain access to mainstream education. Some African Americans, who had previously taken the leadership in creating and supporting independent neighborhood schools, subordinated the concept of self-help and self-direction in education to what they believed were larger and more important political issues of civil rights such as voting rights and equal access to public accommodations, transportation, and institutions. Even more significantly, the advocates of equality in education gradually came to stand in opposition to those who supported African American independent education. Anything deemed “separate” or “segregated”—including most African American independent institutions—was regarded with suspicion and considered a drain on the amount of public resources available to African Americans in general. As a result, financial support of African American independent schools was even more severely reduced, and the client base of these schools decreased. As African Americans gained at least the outward appearance of access to America’s schools, even in elite institutions in European American communities, the African American independent institutions

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that had been created to fill a void in the American social order were treated as irrelevant to the policy debate on educational progress. Thus, the creative energies of African American educational leaders, and most of the financial resources of society as a whole, were diverted to institutions completely beyond the control of African Americans. The debate over institutional control, and its impact on curriculum content and pedagogy, continues….

Parental Choice In the African American community the concept of parental choice is not a creation of the political movements of the late 1980s. Its roots reach back to the 1960s and 1970s when groups of African American parents began to search for alternatives to public schools as they sought more community control. African American parents interviewed in a recent nationwide study revealed that they enrolled their children in independent neighborhood schools operated by African Americans primarily because of the negative learning environment their children experienced in local public schools. While the reasons cited by these parents were complex, their decision to part company with public schools involved two major phases: (1) Parents became generally dissatisfied with public schools and eventually pinpointed specific ways in which public schools were not serving the needs of African American youngsters (overcrowding, disciplinary problems, fear for personal safety, failure to reinforce the values of the parents, the inability of teachers to provide sufficient attention to individual students, and failure to foster a positive affirmation of the child’s cultural or religious traditions). (2) Parents then began an active search for “a good school” for their children, often focusing on some of the qualities they observed and liked in independent neighborhood schools such as a family-like atmosphere, strong expectations for student achievement, the early teaching of basic skills, and sharing of cultural and religious values. These parents enrolled their children in African American independent schools, and after experiencing these “new” environments decided to keep their children in these institutions. However, as their children began achieving highly, despite the perceived threat that mainstream education presented to them and despite their strong feelings in favor of African

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American independent education, many felt constrained, for financial reasons, to return their children to public schools. The Ratteray and Shujaa study confirms that the issue of parental educational choice is not being addressed by an elite group of African American parents. The majority of independent school families in the study sample had total incomes of less than $30,000 annually, and most came from a broad cross-section of economic groups. Most of the families were comprised of four or five members, although larger families (those with six to seven members) usually enrolled their children in secular as opposed to religiously affiliated schools. Most of the families lived less than 3 miles from the schools, although some higher-income families drove up to 21 miles daily so that their children could attend an African American independent school.

Academic Preparation The first major study to document the success of students at African American independent schools was On the Road to Success (Institute for Independent Education, 1991). This study developed profiles of the schools, their operating characteristics, students, and teachers; analyzed student achievement on standardized reading and mathematics tests; and surveyed alumni regarding their perceptions of the education they received in independent schools.

School Profiles Profiles of the 82 schools in the study, almost all of which are African American institutions, reveal that of the 11,068 students enrolled, males and females are fairly equally distributed at each grade level. Most of these institutions were found to concentrate on the early elementary grades; quite a few enroll students from kindergarten to grade 12, yet very few are completely secondary level schools. Most of the teachers in the sample had been employed at their schools for two years or less. The largest percentage of teachers have a bachelor’s degree, although those with master’s degrees and doctorates are also well represented. Mean teachers’ salaries at the schools range from $11,273 to $23,142 per year. The average per-student expenditure at the independent neighborhood schools during the school year of the study (1991) was $2,458, although one institution reported spending as much as $4,597. This compares to the average per-student expenditure of $5,247 at public schools (“Total and

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Current Expenditure,” 1991) and $3,832 at other private schools during that same year (computed from “Estimated Total Expenditures,” 1990; and “Student Participation,” 1990). It is interesting to note that no correlations were found between test performance and either teacher qualifications or per-student costs in the independent school sample.

Test Performance A sample of schools in the study voluntarily provided test data, and analysis revealed that most students performed above the national norm (which is a percentile rank of 50) on such tests as the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, the Metropolitan Achievement Test, and the Stanford Achievement Test. Specifically, data for more than 2,300 independent school students indicates that 64% scored above the norm in reading and 62% ranked above-norm in mathematics. The Institute for Independent Education (1991) study identified four types of schools—high-performing, normal distribution, “multimodal,” and low-performing. Histograms of the percentile scores for students were examined for each school in the sample. These four groups established the contexts in which learning appeared to occur in independent neighborhood schools. The percentile scores for all the students in each type of school were grouped in ranges of frequencies, and the mean was computed for each school in each group. The mean of the percentile scores at high-performing schools ranged from 60 to 72. Schools with a normal distribution had means ranging from 46 to 57. A unique group of schools, called “multimodal” in the study, served at least three distinct levels of students—those at the high, middle, and low areas of the curve. At low-performing schools, most of the students scored in percentiles below 50. The learning contexts of the first three types of schools served 89% of the students in the sample, while the low-performing schools served only 11%.

Alumni Survey A sample of schools provided contact information on their alumni and 190 alumni responded to a survey about their independent school experiences. Of those who left their schools at the elementary level and who were not still in high school, 59% were enrolled in college and 38% were employed. These former were pursuing a broad range of college majors. Twenty-six percent were seeking medical or health-related

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degrees, and 19% were studying business administration or management. A small sample of the alumni who responded to the written survey were interviewed by telephone and asked to elaborate on their responses about the most important characteristics of their schools. The majority of alumni rated the schools’ academic curricula most highly, followed by school climate (which includes a “family-like” atmosphere), the bonds they developed with their teachers, the small size of the student body, and the affirmation of African American culture in the schools.

Conclusion Contemporary African American independent neighborhood schools are continuing a nearly 200-year-old tradition of providing learning environments in which children can succeed. They have struggled to survive as expressions of social protest, institution building, and community service. On the other hand, financial support for educating the masses of African American youth remains locked in the grip of governmental control. An agenda for social change that includes the effective education of African Americans remain elusive, especially at the elementary and secondary levels. Among African American independent neighborhood schools, there is no single, ideal urban institution; there is, however, a range of options from which parents can choose. The act of choice made by the broad cross-section of African American parents, even those with low incomes, who have chosen independent schools for their children, is remarkable and can serve as a blueprint for parental choice in many urban areas. Members of this community, recognizing that they have the freedom to choose, have exercised their will to act and serve African American youth who need a variety of learning environments. This choice is not a solution imposed by education policymakers; it springs from within the African American community itself. In that sense, these independent schools are symbols of triumphant parenthood in the African American community. Surrounded by the dismal educational scenarios of most urban areas, the overwhelming majority of African American independent elementary and secondary schools have demonstrated that they are effective educational institutions. Compared to other types of institutions, they spend fewer dollars per child and still produce high achievers—even in classrooms where students appear to have vastly different ability levels. Now more than ever, African American independent schools have an important role to play in shaping the future of American education. Efforts to reform the nation’s educational systems would do well to replicate the

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experiences of African American independent neighborhood schools. It is conceivable that, at least at the elementary and middle school levels, they could completely replace the current structure of public schools, many of which continue to be academic prisons for the masses of African American youth. The nation’s goal should be to develop self-motivated youth who are academically prepared, culturally affirmed, and spiritually reinforced. African American independent neighborhood schools have shown that they can make the grade.

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Relevancy Remains: Historically Black Colleges (and Universities) Needed Roderick L. Smothers, Sr. It has always been my opinion, and there is compelling evidence to prove it, that HBCU graduates can compete against graduates from any other college or university in America. This is especially true when the barriers that impede success are removed. Every president of an historically black college or university (HBCU) has heard the question: Are HBCUs still needed today? It's a fair question. We are 150 years past slavery, 60 years past the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education decision that began the tumbling of racial barriers in America's educational system. The answer, simply put, is yes. The proof doesn't require a debate of American history. As HBCUs field questions concerning relevancy, it seems that predominantly white institutions are also being faced with their own set of questions and issues. Race-related issues are increasing at campuses of several of the best-known campuses as students protest and advocate for change. At Princeton, African American students have led efforts to strip Woodrow Wilson's name from a prestigious school. At Harvard, protests broke out after students discovered black strips of tape had been placed across photos of African American professors of the law school. Across the nation students are rightly questioning the commitment of universities to diversity and black studies programs. They are correct because some major universities fail to see that the appointment of a chief diversity officer with little authority will only result in administrative impotency and ultimately the frustration and anger of students. Meanwhile, historically black universities continue to provide a quality educational experience. In Arkansas, we have four HBCUs: Arkansas Baptist Church, Shorter College in North Little Rock, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and Philander Smith College, which I serve as president. It has always been my opinion, and there is compelling evidence to prove it, that HBCU graduates can complete against graduates from any other college or university in America. This is especially true when the barriers that impede success are removed. The HBCU experience removes those barriers by placing students in nurturing environments, with caring

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and compassionate faculty and staff who not only believe in them, but also hold them to high expectations. I won't saddle up with the posse in pursuit of the majority institutions. I'm a product of one, having received three degrees from Louisiana State University. I know how earnestly many of them have worked to recruit African Americans. As I see it, however, HBCUs will never lose relevancy. Since arriving in Arkansas, I have taken a special interest in two groups of students. One group is the 50 percent of African Americans who graduate from high school each year and do not go on to college. The second group is embedded in the 50 percent who do go to college, but who are not prepared for college-level work, thus requiring some form of remedial education. Several predominantly white institutions in Arkansas do not admit students who require remediation. HBCUs admit these students and specialize in creating a learning environment in which they can successfully address their remedial needs. As long as those dynamics exist, the need for HBCUs will be affirmed. Our fundamental mission is to go after these two groups and to give them a chance to succeed in getting a quality competitive education. We who teach and mentor students at majority-black institutions feel affirmed by what we see on our campuses. Arkansas and the nation benefit from a solid and continuing stream of black graduates who become teachers, engineers, business executives and religious leaders. HBCUs are more relevant today because of five imperatives: success, economics, global competitiveness, access and diversity. A majority of our society's most successful African Americans--doctors, lawyers and judges--graduate from HBCUs. We need more of them. A growing percentage of African Americans are entering the middle class. We need HBCUs to serve the growing demographic and to allow our nation to capture the economic benefits it brings. The global competitiveness imperative recognizes that many of the fastest-growing nations in the world are composed of college-educated Africans and our nation needs an educated African-American leadership to engage them. We continue to open the doors of opportunity to African Americans regardless of their personal, social, economic or academic background. And, in a generous and progressive state like Arkansas, the value of diversity is shown in almost every aspect of rational endeavor, but especially in education where the diversity of not just race, but thoughts, perspectives and opinions is valued.

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At Philander Smith, we recruit young people of all colors. Caucasian make up 2 percent of our student body, Hispanic Latinos 3 percent. And we see a gradually increasing enrollment from Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Just like a majority of higher-education institutions in America, HBCUs have challenges. We need more students, new and renovated buildings, better pay for faculty and more diverse educational programs. Most of all, we need the good people of Arkansas--corporations, foundations, taxpayers and legislators--to see the value that HBCUs bring to communities, our state and our nation. And, most of all, we hope they see the value that we bring to students of color seeking to be a positive part of society. Additional Readings: Goode, Robin White. "The HBCU Debate: Are Black Colleges and Universities Still Needed?" Black Enterprise's blog, February 15, 2011. www.blackenterprise.com/lifestyle. Jennings, Robert R. "The Importance of HBCUs and the Family." www.aces.edu/urban/metronews/vol6no1/HBCUs.html. Wilson, John Silvanus, Jr. "The Importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities." Department of Education's blog, February 17, 2012.

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Fighting for Our Lives Gloria Ladson-Billings One African American parent caught on the documentary film footage of the award winning civil rights series, “Eyes on the Prize” exclaimed, “When we fight about education, we’re fighting for our lives.” This urgent perspective of “fighting for our lives” informs the discussion about preparing teachers to teach African American students effectively. . . . Ultimately, the work of education in a democracy is to provide opportunities for all citizens to participate fully in the formation of the nation and its ideals. These ideals can never be fully realized if significant portions of our society are excluded from high-quality education and the opportunity to play public roles in the society. African American students are suffering in our schools at an alarming rate. They continue to experience high drop-out, suspension, and expulsion rates. Although possessing a high school diploma is no guarantee of success in U. S. society, not having one spells certain economic and social failure. Thus, when we fight about education, we indeed are fighting for our lives. During the 1970s, school desegregation in U. S. northern cities became a national focal point. In Boston, a contested court order had parents, teachers, administrators, students, school committee members, and community members struggling with school busing to achieve desegregation. One African American parent caught on the documentary film footage of the award winning civil rights series, “Eyes on the Prize” exclaimed, “When we fight about education, we’re fighting for our lives.” This urgent perspective of “fighting for our lives” informs the discussion about preparing teachers to teach African American students effectively. This article addresses the dearth of literature about preparing teachers to teach African American students, the attempts by scholars to fill this void, and the need for ongoing research in this area.

The Silence of the Literature With very few exceptions, the literature does not expressly address the preparation of teachers to teach African American learners effectively. Instead, references to the educational needs of African American students are folded into a discourse of deprivation. Searches of the literature base indicate that when one uses the descriptor, “Black education,” one is

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directed to see, “culturally deprived” and “culturally disadvantaged.” Thus, the educational research literature, when it considers African American learners at all, has constructed all African American children, regardless of economic or social circumstances, within the deficit paradigm. The literature is reflective of a generalized perception that African American culture is not a useful rubric for addressing the needs of African American learners, and thus, that African American culture is delegitimized in the classroom. Rather than seeing African Americans as possessing a distinctive culture, African American learners often are treated as if they are corruptions of White culture, participating in an oppositional counter-productive culture. Schools and teachers treat the language, prior knowledge, and values of African Americans as aberrant and often presume that the teacher’s job is to rid African American students of any vestiges of their own culture. I would argue that the educational literature is silent on the issue of teaching African American students because much of the educational research has relied on generic models of pedagogy that position themselves as “culture neutral” when they actually support the learning of mainstream students. The emphasis on a “one best system” emerges from the 19th-century Americanization model that was designed to merge all students, regardless of ethnic and cultural origins, into one ideal “American” model. Of course, this Americanization process considered only those immigrant and cultural groups from Europe. Indigenous peoples and people of African descent were not thought educable and therefore not a part of the mainstream educational discourse. For many years, the education of African American learners was left solely to the African American community via state-supported segregated schools. And, although not consistent with professional national ideals of equity and justice, there is some evidence to suggest that some segregated schools did meet the educational needs of African American students. Community access and involvement, trust between teachers and parents, and concern and caring for students were all hallmarks of these schools where the needs of African American students were paramount. Foster indicates that African American teachers in segregated schools felt more comfortable introducing and discussing issues of race and racism in their all-Black settings than in the integrated schools in which they subsequently taught. Furthermore, Foster suggests that effective teaching of African American students almost always involves some recognition and attention to the ways that race and racism construct and constrict peoples’ lives.

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With the increasing diversity of the school population, more literature has emerged that addresses the needs of non-White students from the standpoint of language and culture. However, some of this literature has compressed the experiences of all non-White groups into a singular category of “other” without recognizing the particularity of African American experience and culture. It is important for teachers (current and prospective) to understand the specific and unique qualities of the African American cultural experience.

The Uniqueness of the African American Cultural Experience Two concepts I attempt to have my own teacher education students grapple with are the notions of “equivalent” and “analogous,” because discussions of racism, discrimination, inequality, and injustice sometimes degenerate into a “hierarchy of oppression;” that is, discussants want to talk in terms of who has suffered most. However, when we understand the ways in which oppression has worked against many groups of people based on their race, culture, class, gender, disability, and sexual orientation, we must recognize that there may be analogous experiences that are not necessarily equivalent ones. Thus, the displacement and forced removal of indigenous groups throughout the Americas and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II are both examples of oppression. However, they are not equivalent experiences. Our understanding of the commonalities of oppression cannot wash out the particularities and specifics of each experience. The African American social and cultural experience, like those of each cultural group, is unique. African Americans are the only group forcibly brought to the Americas for the expressed purpose of labor exploitation through racial slavery. As one of the earliest nonindigenous groups to appear in the Americas, African Americans have a history in this country that predates most European Americans. The creation of a racial hierarchy with White and Black as polar opposites has positioned all people in American society and reified “whiteness” in ways that suggest that the closer one is able to align oneself to whiteness, the more socially and culturally acceptable one is perceived to be. Thus, when European Americans of various ethnic groups assert, “My people faced discrimination, and they made it. Why can’t Blacks pull themselves up like we did?” they are ignoring the very different historical trajectories from which these cultural groups were launched and the very

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different symbol system that has been created to reinscribe blackness and whiteness as fundamentally opposite. The ideology of White supremacy argued that African Americans were genetically inferior and not fully human. Thus, the expectation for educating them was (and continues to be) low. Early efforts at statesupported education for African Americans was directed at training for manual labor and domestic service. Scholarly arguments to the contrary failed to make their way into the mainstream literature. Thus, separate and unequal education continued for many decades past the Civil War. As a group, African Americans have been told systematically and consistently that they are inferior, that they are incapable of high academic achievement. Their performance in school has replicated this low expectation for success. In addition to being told that they cannot perform at high levels, African American students often are taught by teachers who would rather not teach them. By the time the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision was rendered, many African Americans were arguing from a position of sameness. That is, they were asserting that African American and White children were alike and deserved the same educational opportunities. This rhetoric of “equality means sameness” tended to ignore the distinctive qualities of African American culture and suggested that if schools were to make schooling experiences identical for African Americans, we somehow could achieve identical results. However, because African American learners do not begin at the same place as middle-class White students either economically or socially, and because what may be valued in African American culture differs from what may be valued in schools, applying the same “remedy” may actually increase the educational disparities. For example, in the case of gender differences, we know that female students do not perform as well as male students in mathematics. A variety of reasons have been posited to explain this differential. Some reasons are related to females’ abilities in spatial relations. Others examine the ways that male students dominate classroom discussions and teacher time. Still, others argue about the way mathematics is organized and presented. The way to improve female performance, however, is not merely to continue to give female students more of the same, but rather to reorganize mathematics education in some fundamental ways. For example, all-female mathematics classes, integration across math areas (algebra, geometry, trigonometry), and more obvious and specific connections of math to everyday lives, are being employed to improve the performance of female students (and students of color) in school mathematics. Uncovering optimal learning environments

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for female students may mean deciding on very different strategies for male versus female mathematics learners. The same thing may be true in developing effective strategies for African American learners. As we begin to learn more about successful teaching for African American learners, we are better able to address their needs through curricular and pedagogical strategies.

Strategies for Improving the Education of Teachers Teacher preparation is culpable in the failure of teachers to teach African American students effectively. Most teachers report that their perservice preparation did little or nothing to prepare them to today’s diverse classrooms. Reviews of the literature on multicultural teacher education indicate that most pre-service approaches rely on individual courses and diverse field experiences to satisfy legislative and professional association calls for meeting the needs of diverse students. However, no single course or set of field experience is capable of preparing pre-service students to meet the needs of diverse learners. Rather, a more systemic, comprehensive approach is needed. Work that uses autobiography, restructured field experiences, situated pedagogies, and returning to the classrooms of experts can each provide new opportunities for improving teaching.

Autobiography Jackson argues that autobiography provides an opportunity for the “critical examination and experience of difference.” She further asserts that autobiography allows individuals to speak as subjects with their own voices, “representing themselves and their stories from their own perspectives.” This use of one’s own story is also employed by Gomez and Tabachnick as a way to get per-service teachers to reflect on their practicum experiences in diverse classrooms. Hollins refers to “resocializing pre-service teachers in ways that help them view themselves within a culturally diverse society” through the construction of personal/cultural autobiographies. Similar to this, King and LadsonBillings link critical education theory and multicultural teacher education to help prospective teachers “consciously re-experience their own subjectivity when they recognize similar or different outlooks and experiences,” both in courses and field experiences.

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Restructured Field Experiences The practical aspects of learning to teach are overwhelmingly valued by teachers as the most important part of their preparation. Unfortunately, many of these field experiences occur in White middle-income communities that offer a different set of challenges and opportunities from those that teachers can expect to encounter in the urban classrooms populated by African American students. Thus, when new teachers enter urban settings, they experience a mismatch between what they expect based on their pre-service preparation and what they find in urban schools. Some teacher education programs require that part of the field experience occur in a “diverse” setting. However, sometimes these “diversity requirements” are seen by students as hurdles in the way of their “real” student teaching (i.e., in middle income, suburban schools). Spending limited time in urban classrooms often serves to reinforce students’ stereotypes and racist attitudes toward African American students because they are not accompanied with requisite understanding about African American culture and cultural practices. Other programs stress “immersion” experiences in diverse communities, placing students in community (as opposed to school) settings to help them understand the daily lives of the children in context. Moving away from the predictability of the classroom with its rules, routines, and rituals, prospective teachers may recognize that limited access to goods and services, poor health care facilities, uneven police and fire protection, and unsafe and dilapidated playgrounds, all work against students’ willingness to participate in school tasks. At the same time, community experiences also can help students to see the strengths that reside in a culture. Self-governing bodies such as churches, lodges, social clubs, and neighborhood associations serve as surveyors of culture. Students may learn that families use a variety of child-rearing practices that may or may not map neatly onto schooling practices. They may learn of the role of “other mothers” who although not blood relatives of particular children, serve in a maternal capacity. Learning to see students with strengths as opposed to seeing them solely as having needs may inform the pedagogical practices of novice teachers in positive ways.

Situated Pedagogies The literature of educational anthropologists has addressed culturally specific pedagogies. This work has described teachers’ attempts to make

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the school and home experiences of diverse learners more congruent. The majority of this literature has dealt with smallscale, encapsulated communities where cultural practices are easily recognizable and not as intertwined with other cultures. Critical scholars have posted theoretical, conceptual, and research possibilities for situated pedagogies that consider race, class, and gender. By addressing the specifics of particular diverse communities, this literature avoids the platitudes and unsubstantiated generalities of generic pedagogical perspectives. This work asks teacher educators to think more carefully about the relationship of teacher preparation to the communities in which they are located and the school populations that their graduates are likely to serve.

Returning to the Classroom of “Experts” In my work on successful teachers for African American students, I began looking for common beliefs and practices among such teachers. What I discovered were three propositional notions about how they conceived of their practice that form the basis of what I term culturally relevant pedagogy. These propositions involve academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical critique. Academic achievement: In the classrooms I observed, teaching and learning were exciting, symbolic events. Although teachers established routines and rituals, the classrooms were never dull. Students were regularly reminded that they were expected to learn and that learning would be rigorous and challenging. Some of the teachers taught from what might be considered a constructivist position (i.e., students’ own knowledge forms the basis of inquiry either as part of the official curriculum or as it interacts with the official curriculum). Standards were high in these classrooms. Students were expected to work hard, and they welcomed this responsibility. Cultural competence: In addition to promoting learning and academic achievement, culturally relevant teachers foster and support the development of cultural competence. Cultural competence refers to the ability to function effectively in one’s culture of origin. For African American students, this means understanding those aspects of their culture that facilitate their ability to communicate and relate to other members of their cultural group. Because of the pervasive negative representations of Black culture, students may unwittingly ally themselves with schooling that works to promote their disaffiliation and alienation from African American culture.

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Cultural competence can be supported in the classroom by acknowledging the legitimacy of students’ home language and using it as a bridge to American Edited English. (2) It also is supported through the use of curriculum content selections that reflect the full range of humanity extant in students’ cultures. Sociopolitical critique: Perhaps if teachers could get students to achieve academically and manifest cultural competence, they might be more than satisfied with their pedagogical efforts. However, culturally relevant teachers recognize that education and schooling do not occur in a vacuum. The individual traits of achievement and cultural competence must be supported by sociopolitical critique that helps students understand the ways that social structures and practices help reproduce inequities. This aspect of culturally relevant teaching links it closely with a critical pedagogy that argues for students and teachers alike to participate in a collective struggle. Thus students must be challenged to ask questions about the ways that whole groups of people are systematically excluded from social benefits.

Antiracist Teacher Education: A Promising Practice Autobiography, restructured field experiences, situated pedagogies, and examining the classrooms of experts all provide glimpses of possibility for facilitating the pedagogy of teachers who teach African American students. However, each has the potential to fail to confront the major stumbling block in preparing teachers for success with African American students: racism. Although many teacher education programs include some form of multicultural education, confronting issues of racism in a deliberately antiracist framework is less common. Discussions of race and racism are absent from educational discourse even when our conceptions of race are more embedded and fixed than ever before. Teacher educators who have attempted to bring issues of race and racism to the forefront of their preparation programs have been subjected to resistance and harsh criticism from students. Lee states that the “aim of [anti-racist education] is the eradication of racism in all its various forms. Anti-racist education emerges from an understanding that racism exists in society and, therefore, the school, as an institution of society, is influenced by racism.” Thus, teacher education that embraces an antiracist perspective recognizes that prospective teachers’ and “teachers’ sensibilities are shaped by the same forces that

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mold us in the society at large.” However, antiracist educators understand racism as learned behavior and, as such, it can be unlearned. Kailin’s approach to antiracist staff development for teachers addresses two perspectives on racism: individual and institutional. The individual aspect of her work requires teachers to know and understand themselves, a process also used by King and Ladson-Billings. Kailin employed strategies for developing collective autobiography, understanding teachers’ social backgrounds, participating in multicultural and race awareness exercises, examining teacher expectations of student competency, and exploring the manifestation of individual racism in teacher-student interactions and in school culture. At the institutional level, Kailin’s approach prompts teachers to examine the historical roots of institutional racism in the United States as well as the ways that texts and curricula and schools as institutions support racism. To prepare teachers to be successful with African American students, teacher educators must help prospective teachers recognize the ways that race and racism structure the everyday experiences of all Americans. More specifically, teachers must understand how race and racism negatively impact African American students and their ability to successfully negotiate schools and classrooms. Some of the recommendations for change in teacher education that may lead us to more positive outcomes include: Reassessing admissions procedures. A good deal of our struggle in teacher education resides at the admission door. Haberman argues that we will not get better teachers until we admit better people into the profession. Current admission procedures continue to screen out potentially excellent teacher candidates who desire to teach in African American communities, while at the same time including many candidates who have no intention or desire to serve those communities. Reexamining course work. Dissatisfaction with teacher education course work has been widely expressed by both those within and outside of the profession. One of the places where course work is particularly weak is in its lack of attention to the perspectives and concerns of African Americans. Many of the foundations and methods courses fail to mention African Americans except as “problems.” Course work that addresses the legitimacy of African American culture and problematizes Whiteness can begin to make pre-service course work more meaningful for those who teach African American students. Restructuring field experiences. As previously mentioned, field experiences tend to leave a lasting impression on teachers. Restructuring these field experiences may help students to understand the complexities

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of communities and cultures. Rather than having prospective teachers dread going into African American communities, field experience may play a role in addressing the stereotypes and racist attitudes that they may hold. Recruiting and retaining African American scholars. For too many prospective teachers, their only encounter with African Americans is as subordinates. Increasing the numbers of African American faculty can help to disrupt some of the preconceived notions that they may have about the competencies and abilities of African Americans. Certainly, African American faculty can serve as a resource and counterbalance to prevailing notions of African American communities, for both adults and children. Ultimately, the work of education in a democracy is to provide opportunities for all citizens to participate fully in the formation of the nation and its ideals. These ideals can never be fully realized if significant portions of our society are excluded from high-quality education and the opportunity to play public roles in the society. African American students are suffering in our schools at an alarming rate. They continue to experience high drop-out, suspension, and expulsion rates. Although possessing a high school diploma is no guarantee of success in U. S. society, not having one spells certain economic and social failure. Thus, when we fight about education, we indeed are fighting for our lives.

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Maintaining Social Justice through Culturally Responsive Classroom Management Lloyd E. Hervey While there is extensive research of best practices for managing traditional classroom settings, there remains, however, scant research of best practices for managing tomorrow’s classroom and its changing demographics of culturally diverse students. What will be needed are quality teachers possessing the knowledge, attitude and skills necessary to impact the social, emotional, and cognitive needs of diverse students. Needed also are teachers trained to embrace and appreciate the cultural differences that students bring to the classrooms and that they as teachers will face in their classrooms. Specifically, needed are teachers trained to create a learning environment that is culturally responsive and will positively impact social justice. Classroom management has been identified as a major challenge in the 21st century for novice teachers, and increasing diversity of today’s student population further intensifies this challenge. While there is extensive research of best practices for managing traditional classroom settings, there remains, however, scant research of best practices for managing tomorrow’s classroom and its changing demographics of culturally diverse students. Generally speaking, in America’s traditional classroom setting, the novice teacher is white, middle class, and female, and usually she is from suburban and/or rural areas, and she has had little or negligible contact with the cultures of minority students. (Zeichner, et al, 1998). An area of direct impact on teacher preparations and pedagogy for the 21st century revolves around the concept of social justice within a framework of culturally sensitive classroom management. What will be needed are quality teachers possessing the knowledge, attitude and skills necessary to impact the social, emotional, and cognitive needs of diverse students. Needed also are teachers trained to embrace and appreciate the cultural differences that students bring to the classrooms and that they as teachers will face in their classrooms. Specifically, needed are teachers trained to create a learning environment that is culturally responsive and will positively impact social justice. It is expected that classroom management of diverse populations, namely African Americans and Hispanics, will become easily problematic, especially when little consideration has been allowed for an imbalance between the culture and ethnicity of teachers and students. Without

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relevant preparations, promising teachers’ lack of multicultural competence will in turn also lead to inequitable practices, difficulties, or simply a lack of social justice within the classroom setting. The challenge, therefore, is how will teacher education programs move prospective teachers beyond the basics of traditional classroom management systems and namely to culturally relevant classroom management systems? How will teacher education programs assist prospective teachers in developing culturally sensitive knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will help ameliorate cultural dissonance, especially since today’s society continues to rely on its teachers to increase the academic progress of all students, including the culturally diverse? Proposed reform of teacher education preparation programs will need to introduce prospective teachers to a culturally relevant management system, and the possibility of such a system is substantiated by a number of researchers. For example, in Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students’ Cultural Strengths, Rothstein-Fisch and Trumbull (2008) purport that cultural values and beliefs are the core of all decisions in the classroom and are at the heart of how students engage and interact in the classroom. In Urban Teachers’ Professed Management Strategies: Reflections on Culturally Responsive Teaching, D.F. Brown (2004) identifies several challenges that will face teacher preparation programs in the future: How to encourage pre-service teachers to embrace and value diversity in the classroom? How to create and maintain a culturally responsive classroom management system that is equitable in terms of social justice? How to respond to the unique needs of minority students within a diverse setting? How to address students’ cultural and ethnic needs as well as their social, emotional, and cognitive needs? In the study, Culturally Responsive Classroom Management: Awareness into Action, Weinstein, Curran, and Tomlinson-Clarke (2003) identify three essential components that are necessary for teachers working in diverse classroom settings: 1) recognition of one’s own cultural beliefs, biases, and assumptions; 2) acknowledgement of others’ ethnic, cultural, and other differences; and 3) understanding of the ways that schools reflect and perpetuate discriminatory practices of the larger society. In the same year, Cummings (2003) concluded that in order to ensure student and teacher success, an environment must be maintained that is conducive to learning. The operative word is environment. This environment must be created and maintained by teachers who are cognizant and accepting of the diverse cultural capital their students bring with them into the classroom. Several years later in Differentiated Reading Instruction and Classroom Management Structures that Promote Reading Development, M. Miller

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(2007) reiterated the findings of fellow researchers in his conclusion that teachers must have an awareness of the diverse abilities and backgrounds of their students including those with learning and behavior problems. In essence, an operative knowledge of students’ diversity is the foundation for constructing and maintaining an environment where learning occurs and aberrant behavior is minimized. As Van Tartwijk, et.al. (2009) reminds us misunderstandings between teachers and students with different socio-cultural backgrounds are one of the biggest challenges that teachers have to manage today in the multicultural classroom. While research is scant on how to increase value of a culturally relevant management classroom, again, the findings remain consistent and unified on the need for such reform. With deliberate focus on the needs of an ever- increasing diverse student population in the classroom, pre-service teacher education programs must be willing to “sensitize” teachers to culturally- relevant students, free of biases and discrimination. On this point, researchers again are consistent in their admonishment. For instance, in Culturally Responsive Classroom Management: Awareness into Action, Weinstein, Curan & Tomlinson-Clarke (2003) conclude that educators must recognize that they discriminate in the classroom when 1) they do not recognize that behavior is influenced by culture; 2) the behaviors of non-majority groups are devalued, reprimanded, and punished; and 3) they fail to understand that through their management practices some students and their cultures are marginalized while others are given preference. In Responsive Classroom Management in a Multicultural School Context, Kostis and Efthymia (2009) echo, “When teachers have to cope with multicultural classroom contexts, creating safe and productive environments with a diverse student population sets challenges that require more than the strategies recommended in the general classroom management literature.” Instead, teachers must be (1) assisted to become increasingly more culturally literate, (2) trained to use culturally responsive instructional strategies, and (3) taught to use deliberate self-reflection in order to identify their own cultural biases. In Connections between Classroom Management and Culturally Responsive Teaching, Geneva Gay (2006) argues that the underlying causes for the problems that teachers have in classrooms with a culturally diverse group of students are located in cultural conflicts, misunderstandings and inconsistencies between the behavioral norms of schools and the cultural socialization of ethnically diverse students. The results of such researched conclusions therefore are beneficial: There must be the establishment of teacher’s education preparation

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programs that promote culturally relevant management classrooms. As best captured by Debra Pane (2009), writing in Teaching and Teacher Education, cultural considerations in the process of interpreting student behavior indicates that teachers who understand their own ethnocentrism along with their students’ cultural backgrounds are less likely to misinterpret cultural behavior as misbehavior. When synthesizing the results of findings by researchers, it can be concluded that prospective teachers must be exposed to training in classroom management that has a deliberate focus on addressing the needs of an ever- increasing diverse student population. This training must include challenging prospective teachers to identify and address their own biases and ethnocentrism and include promising ways which the school culture, as it currently exists, can discriminate ethnically and culturally diverse students. This training also must underscore best management practices in a culturally relevant environment. If social justice refers to the concept of achieving equity in every aspect of society, then preparing pre-service teachers to create culturally sensitive classroom management systems for tomorrow’s diverse student population is a positive step in that direction. Additional Readings: Gist, Conra D. Preparing Teachers of Color to Teach--CulturallyResponsive Teacher Education in Theory and Practice. New York: NY: Palgrave Macmillan., 2014. Milner, Richard. Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There: Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in Today's Classroom. Cambridge, Harvard Education Press, 2010. Starks, Glenn L. and F Erik Brooks. Issues in Education, Health, Community and Justice. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2015.

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Reflections on America’s Academic Achievement Gap: A Fifty-Year Perspective Freeman A. Hrabowski III [W]e learned that [the] leaders were often educated, knowledgeable people, and that knowledge was power. As they prepared the children to march peacefully in protest demonstrations, they served as extraordinary role models, demonstrating their ability to think clearly, speak eloquently, and act confidently. In so doing, they reinforced what our families and teachers had been telling us all our lives – that education makes the difference between success and failure.

Changes in the Wind: 1950s – 1960s Writing about the Brown decision in his book Simple Justice, historian Richard Kluger asserts that “Probably no case ever to come before the nation’s highest tribunal affected more directly the minds, hearts, and daily lives of so many Americans.” Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decision on May 17, 1954, was both a legal and moral formulation overturning its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had given legal legitimacy to the bogus ideas and policies of “separate but equal.” This doctrine, the Court asserted, “has no place in the field of public education.” Interestingly, the arguments used by the lawyers for the plaintiffs were based largely on interdisciplinary work in the social sciences, rather than simply on legal theory. Through Brown, then , the Court not only provided the means by which to rectify decades of educational inequality (reflected, in part, by shameful funding disparities between schools for blacks and whites and irrational commuting requirements imposed on black children), but it also dramatically challenged the nation’s conscience. Until that time, some states spent two to three times as much, if not more, on schooling white children. Barely one year later, however, in its follow-up ruling on Brown, the Court qualified the mandate it issued in 1954 with its famous “all deliberate speed” stipulation, which had the effects of calling into question the interpretation of its 1954 decision and of slowing school desegregation. In short, those states and local jurisdictions that sought to be defiant now could delay action. In fact, the Brown decisions became precursors of the nation’s civil rights movement, leading ultimately to federal legislation insisting on equal opportunities. At times during this turbulent period, progress was stymied by serious, even tragic setbacks—from the 1955 murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi and the 1956 expulsion of

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Autherine Lucy from the University of Alabama (just days after she enrolled as the first black graduate student there), to the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four black girls, and the 1968 assassination of Dr. King in Memphis, Tennessee. At other times, though, progress was steady and clear—from the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in 1955, the federally enforced school desegregation in Little Rock in 1957, and the Birmingham children’s march in 1963 in which I participated, to the Civil Rights (1964), Voting Rights (1965), and Fair Housing (1968) Acts.

Reflections on Birmingham Naturally, my perceptions of this period are heavily influenced by my own background as a “Negro” or “colored” child growing up at the time in Birmingham. In the African American community there, as in other cities and towns, adults worked hard to counter for their children the messages from the larger, outside, white world that we were second-class citizens. Nevertheless, I remember inescapable messages reinforcing our secondclass status—from schools, water fountains, restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, and amusement parks for “Whites Only,” to seeing only whites as positive role models on television and in positions of responsibility downtown (from businessmen and policemen to even sales clerks). Perhaps no practice was more degrading to me than receiving used, worn books from white schools. These messages had an immeasurable impact on the psyches of young African American children, and the 1954 Brown decision took direct aim at segregation’s psychological impact. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Warren asserted that “To separate (black children) from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to be undone.” In response to segregation’s psychological harm, the black community of my youth constantly worked to balance the negative messages we received from the outside world -– from constructive guidance in the home and neighborhood, to moral lessons taught in the church, to inspirational stories in the black newspaper, to constant encouragement by black teachers who told us we were special. The message we received in our world was that we would have to be twice as good as others in order to overcome life’s unfair obstacles. Moreover, for many of the children, academic work took on an added dimension. From our exposure to local leaders like Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, and to national leaders like Dr. King and Reverend Andrew Young, both of whom came to Birmingham in

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1963, when I was twelve, we learned that these leaders were often educated, knowledgeable people, and that knowledge was power. As they prepared the children to march peacefully in protest demonstrations, they served as extraordinary role models, demonstrating their ability to think clearly, speak eloquently, and act confidently. In so doing, they reinforced what our families and teachers had been telling us all our lives – that education makes the difference between success and failure. In the process, many of us became more committed than ever to becoming the best. Recently, I had dinner in Washington, D.C., with several childhood friends from my neighborhood in Birmingham, including a former director of the International Monetary Fund, a former CEO of a major financial institution in New York, and the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. While we may have held different opinions on a variety of issues, what we shared was a common understanding of the impact of growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s in a segregated neighborhood that supported its children and valued education. My memories of Birmingham in 1963 are vivid. As a ninth-grade student, I listened to adults questioning the idea encouraging children to march as tactic in the civil rights struggle. But participate and march we did. My memories of events that unfolded are particularly clear. I recall seeing big dogs and fire hoses as I led my line of children – singing freedom songs, “Ain’t going to let nobody turn me ‘round” – with the goal of kneeling on the steps of city hall and praying for our freedom. My heart was pounding, and I have never been more afraid. Before we could reach the steps, however, we were stopped by Birmingham police commissioner “Bull” Connor, who asked me, “What do you want, Little Niggra?” As I replied, “We want our freedom,” he spat on me, and the police shoved us into the paddy wagons in a moment of confusion. I spent five days of confinement thinking about the meaning of freedom, while constantly supporting the kids for whom I was responsible and worrying about my own personal safety. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life; yet, we learned many lessons – the importance of group support, what it means to stand up for your beliefs, the power of individual choices. After being released, I was devastated to learn that I could not return to school. In fact, the local board of education had suspended all children who had participated in demonstrations and used this approach to discourage others from doing so. I distinctly remember worrying that, even as an A student, I might not be able to finish school, or that I might miss so much schoolwork that I would be unable to excel. I will never forget our jubilation when we learned that a federal judge in Atlanta ordered the

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school system to return the child protesters to school. And so it was that in this community and environment, during tense and often terror-filled times that gripped the nation, my friends and I grew up as children.

Changes in Higher Education Throughout the 1960s, as integration came slowly to public schools in the South and elsewhere in the country, important changes also were taking place in previously segregated colleges and universities, and the experiences of black students moving into these institutions ranged from peaceful integration to being met with resistance and violence. In recent years, I have spoken at anniversary events marking the desegregation of Clemson University and the medical schools at Duke and Vanderbilt, where the transitions were reasonably smooth. Such experiences were in sharp contrast in the response in 1963 by Alabama governor George Wallace, who, on national television many of us recall, stood defiantly in the doorway, blocking the admission of black students to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Just three years later, in 1966, as I entered Hampton University in Virginia, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) opened its doors to approximately seven hundred students—black and white—and became Maryland’s first predominantly white postsecondary institution that, from its inception, admitted any student qualified to attend, regardless of race. (Today, in fact, we refer to ourselves as a “historically diverse” university.) Unlike UMBC, however, most of the nation’s colleges and universities were founded long before court rulings outlawing segregation. Many of those in the South admitted their first blacks in the early 1960s. Others, like my graduate alma mater, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, had admitted a few before this period but initiated major desegregation efforts in the mid-to late 1960s. Over time, these efforts have resulted in the movement of substantial numbers of African American college students from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In 1954 the vast majority of black college students were enrolled in HBCUs; by 1980, however, fewer than 20 percent were studying at HBCUs; and today, more than 85 percent are enrolled in predominantly white institutions, and these institutions award more than three-quarters of all bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks.

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1970s and 1980s With the influx of black students onto campuses where they had previously been excluded, American colleges and universities began grappling with the challenge of helping these students to succeed. The focus shifted with time from simply admitting these students—what some called a “revolving door” phenomenon—to their academic performance. My own observations and experience as a graduate student at the University of Illinois are illustrative. In 1968 the university established Project 500, an experiment in affirmative action that presented challenges for both the administration and students. Among the five hundred black undergraduate students admitted, a few thrived academically because of strong backgrounds, but many were not prepared to handle college-level work and therefore struggled simply to pass or left discouraged. In retrospect, it is remarkable that some of these students succeeded, given the university’s lack of experience with black students and the students’ weak academic preparation. Working with these students as a graduate student helped me to understand what often happens to minorities and others whose academic preparation is significantly below that of most students and in climates that lack successful experience in educating minorities. We find that the environment , or their experience there, often shakes their confidence and leaves them feeling like victims, unable—and sometimes even less motivated—to overcome obstacles. The UMBC Experience The UMBC experience over the past several decades is especially instructive. On arriving at UMBC in 1987, two decades after its founding, I found a complicated situation involving the campus’s black students, especially those in science and engineering. During my first week as vice provost (on April Fool’s Day, in fact) I walked onto the tenth floor of the administration building and found the entire floor occupied by hundreds of black students and television cameras. The students were protesting what they saw as racism on campus. A staff member assured me, though, there was no cause for concern. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This happens every spring.” I immediately thought back to the last time I had seen a major student protest—it had been at Hampton in the 1960s, and I had participated in it. My second thought was that, ironically, I had become “The Administration. We quickly learned that the primary reason for the protest—beyond a number of obvious racial incidents in the residence halls—was the students’ sense of isolation, perhaps resulting, at least in part, from their

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poor academic performance, especially in science and engineering. When we examined data on black students’ grades and retention rates, we found that their mean grade point average was slightly below 2.0 and substantially below those of whites and Asians. In short, many of the black students who expressed disappointment about the campus climate, were, in fact, also not doing well academically. Many simply lacked the academic background needed to succeed—not only in terms of high school preparation, but also study habits, attitudes about course work, and a willingness to accept advice about balancing school work, outside interests, and part-time employment. While the university had been successful in preparing blacks in the social sciences and humanities for graduate programs and especially law school, few black students were succeeding in science and engineering—a national trend. In addition, like other institutions, the university had not developed an adequate support system for these and other students, especially in science and engineering. We responded to the problem by working with focus groups of faculty, staff, and students, several of whom showed considerable interest in understanding this issue and helped develop strategies for supporting students. We found that many of the challenges that minority science students were experiencing were being experienced by all science students, and that we needed to look carefully at both admission standards and the level of support we were giving students (e.g., tutorial efforts, academic advising, freshman-year experience) in order to improve their performance and increase retention among all students. Within this broader context, and with support from philanthropists Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, we created in 1988 the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. The program has become a national model for excellence and diversity in science and engineering. Today at UMBC, unlike at most universities, no academic achievement gap exists between minority and white students across disciplines. At other institutions, we find that underrepresented minority students, even those with strong academic preparation, often do not persist at rates similar to those of their white counterparts (often, the research points out, because these students face negative stereotyping and low expectations). UMBC has become a model for what is possible regarding minority high academic achievement, and this is why representatives from other universities, foundations, federal agencies, and companies with interests in this area visit the campus regularly. In fact, Science magazine has identified the Meyerhoff Program as one of the nation’s leading higher education initiatives for “training minorities and women scientists,” specifically citing “institutional leadership” as one of the program’s strongest

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components. That leadership refers broadly to department chairs and leading faculty and staff, in addition to central administration; and the involvement of research faculty with minority undergraduates is precisely what makes UMBC one of the exceptions in the country. In this light, fifty years after Brown, the question is how much progress has the nation made in eliminating the achievement gap in schools, colleges, and other areas of society? The results, we find, are mixed.

Fifty Years Later: Where Are We Today? Unquestionably, changes in American society resulting from Brown and other landmark developments of the civil rights movement have made it possible for African Americans to participate freely and fully in all walks of American life. Those changes also have enabled high-achieving blacks to excel and become national leaders—from former secretary of state Colin Powell to Brown University president Ruth Simmons and John Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson, for example.

Persistent Disparities While serious disparities continue to persist between blacks and whites in education, Census Bureau data show that the percentages of African Americans and whites attending school and graduating from high school and college are much higher now than at the time of Brown, and that the gap between the two groups has narrowed over time. The percentage of black twenty-five years old and over with high school diplomas increased dramatically between 1957 and 2002, from18 percent to about 80 percent, and the percentage of whites the same age earning high school diplomas increased from 43 percent to almost 90 percent. But high school completion rates are only one measure of achievement. Perhaps an even more important question to ask is how well prepared today are minority students who are graduating from high school? Unfortunately, the answer is not encouraging. The National Assessment of Educational Progress report showed heartening gains by African American schoolchildren in the 1970s and early 1980s and a narrowing of the achievement gap, but by the late 1980s, that gap had stopped narrowing. Most alarming, in the nation’s high schools today, the achievement gap is distressingly wide, with African American and Hispanic twelfth graders performing at the same level as white students in eighth grade.

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School Resegregation and No Child Left Behild In addition, we are seeing the steady “resegregation” of America’s minority school children, particularly African Americans, especially in the nation’s urban areas. We know that the majority of children in our country attend schools where most of the children are the same race. Between 85 and 95 percent of the students in many of the largest school districts in the country—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Baltimore—are black and Latino children. Georgetown University law professor Sheryll Cashin provides evidence of this disturbing development, even in cities cited as models of desegregation, in her book The Failures of Integration. Take Charlotte-Mecklenburg [school district], North Carolina, for example. By the early 1980s, the school district had come close to fulfilling a court order to eliminate its system of dual education . . . . By the late 1980s [however], . . the number of racially identifiable schools began to grow and then in the early 1990s began to accelerate. By 1999, the school system was resegregating rapidly, even though the district’s demographics were relatively stable . . . and Mecklenburg County as a whole was more residentially integrated than it had been thirty years earlier. Whereas roughly 19 percent of black students had attended racially identifiable black schools in 1991, by 1996, the count had risen to 23 percent; by 2000, that percentage had risen to 29 percent, and by 2001, the number jumped to 37 percent. In the 2002-2003 school year, fully 48 percent of the black students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system attended racially identifiable black schools.

Commenting on school resegregation more generally, Cashin notes that A similar fate befell many, if not most, school districts throughout the country that serve significant numbers of minority children. Black and Latino public school students are now more separated into racially identifiable schools than at any time in the past thirty years. Nowhere are the effects of this retreat more palpable than in the South. Court-ordered desegregation of African American students in the late 1960s and 1970s resulted in the South becoming the region with the most integrated schools. By 1988, the South reached a high point of 43.5 percent of black students attending majority-white schools, up from a mere 0.001 percent in 1954. But by 2000, marking a twelve-year and continuing process of resegregation, only thirty-one percent of black students in the South attended majority-white schools.

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In fact, many of the nation’s poorest black children live in “ ‘hypersegregation’—a demographer’s term for segregation along several dimensions that translate into a deep wall of isolation and concentrated poverty.” Such isolation has a profoundly adverse impact on children’s education, which was well documented in sociologist James Coleman’s famous 1966 study, Equality of Educational Opportunity. Moreover, Abigail Thernstrom, coauthor of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, recently highlighted the implications of the achievement gap among American school children and concluded that the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act falls far short as a remedy for narrowing the gap, “with its unfunded mandates, its tendency to drown schools of data . . . and its dream deadline of 2014 for 100 percent of students to be achieving at the proficient level.” Elsewhere, Thernstrom has written: Unequal skills and knowledge are the main source of ongoing racial inequality today. And racial inequality is the nation’s great unfinished business, the wound that remains unhealed . . . . It’s true that, after decades of disgraceful silence in the public square, the federal government has finally addressed the situation. The central aim of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act is . . . “to close the achievement gap” . . . . [But] students radically disengaged from school need radical intervention . . . [and] the standards-based testing and rather weak accountability measures in . . .No Child Left Behind . . . are . . . insufficient steps down the road to closing the gap. More is needed, especially for the country’s most disadvantaged youngsters.

According to Cashin, No Child Left Behind “provides more in the way of mandates for testing than it does resources for the most challenged schools to meet the new standards . . . [T]he Bush administration reneged on its promise to provide an additional $5.8 billion in funding for the poorest schools to meet the act’s though performance requirements.” At the very least, closing the achievement gap will require sustained efforts and resources to support new and experienced teacher preparation, strong after-school and summer academic programs, ongoing parental education, and, perhaps most important, a critical shift in the thinking of both policymakers and the public about the complexity of this issue.

College Preparation and Changing Demographics Despite the challenges at the K-12 level, at the higher education level, the percentage of blacks age twenty-five and over with college degrees grew from a miniscule 2 percent in 1957 to 17 percent in 2002, while the

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percentage of whites the same age earning college degrees grew from 8 percent in 1957 to 29 percent in 2002. On the other hand, however, what stands out is that many of the underrepresented minority students today are ill-prepared for college work. In fact, one study of minority freshmen in California’s public colleges and universities determined that nearly threequarters of all black freshmen and almost two-thirds of all Hispanics freshmen needed developmental mathematics courses, while over 60 percent of both black and Hispanic freshmen required developmental English education. Now, more than ever, colleges and universities should be involved in K-16 education not only for moral reasons, but also for selfinterest. Enlightened universities are connecting proactively to school systems. The list of such initiatives at UMBC is long and impressive. Minority student achievement has become a major issue throughout the nation’s school systems. African American, Latino, and American Indian children trail significantly behind their white and Asian American counterparts in academic achievement, including high school completion, college participation, and college graduation rates. These and other disparities are of growing concern especially because of the nation’s overall growth and its dramatically increasing diversity. We know, for example, that Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in America; in fact, we expect that before 2050, one of every four Americans will be Hispanic. By that time, 10 percent of the population will be Asian American, and 14 percent will be black. In other words, essentially one of two Americans will be of color. Former university presidents Derek Bok and William Bowen, in The Shape of the River, capture the essence of this compelling issue: “The reasons why diversity has become so important at the highest levels of business, the professions, government, and society at large are readily apparent . . . .[A] healthy society in the twenty-first century will be one in which the most challenging, rewarding career possibilities are perceived to be, and truly are, open to all races and ethnic groups.

Emphasizing High Academic Achievement Ultimately, the critical question is how do we increase the number of minorities prepared to enter and excel in leadership positions across sectors of society? Reaching the Top, the College Board’s 1999 report on high academic achievement among minorities, points out that Credentials play a gate-keeping role for entry into most professions. In many fields, from engineering to school teaching, a bachelor’s degree is the minimum credential. Advanced degrees are required for entry into

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The academy is a primary example, where fewer than 3 percent of all full-time tenured faculty at Carnegie Doctoral Research/Extensive institutions are African American. While we have made progress in the production of black PhDs, the actual numbers and percentages are still small. Regarding PhD productivity, in the early 1950s before Brown, fewer than 150 African Americans with doctoral degrees were employed in the nation, and the number was fewer than 600 fifteen years later. Moreover, by 1975, blacks accounted for less than 4 percent of all doctoral degrees (1,056 of 28,796), and by 2001, the percentage was virtually the same (1,604 of 40,744). In this light, the College Board report focuses on the need not only for broadly addressing the achievement gap, but also for concentrating on increasing the numbers of minority students who achieve at the highest levels so that more will pursue graduate and professional degrees. What is distinctive about UMBC’s vision is that we are increasing the number of high-achieving minorities at “the top,” creating a cadre of wellprepared minority students who will become leading researchers and professionals. To the surprise of some, one of the greatest examples of long-term success in diversity on this campus involves African American social sciences and humanities graduates who have become leading attorneys, judges, and policy-makers. Among recent examples are the first black woman speaker pro-tem of the Maryland House of Delegates and three others who graduated from the University of Maryland Law School, including the first black president of the Maryland Bar Association, the first black secretary of higher education in the state, and the first black woman circuit court administrative judge in Baltimore. Universities might be well served to identify broad success stories and practices that can provide lessons for replication. One of the campus’s most recent success stories involves the Meyerhoff Program and its emphasis on ongoing evaluation. My colleagues and I have learned a great deal in our research on how these high-achieving students were raised—including especially the roles of parents and families, the significance of peer pressure, and the importance of supplemental education. At the same time, what we have learned from our ongoing evaluation of the undergraduate and graduate experiences of these

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students can be applied at colleges and universities nationwide to prepare many more minority, and majority, research scientists and engineers. *** On the fiftieth anniversary of Brown, Americans have tended to focus more on minority students’ deficiencies than on their strengths, and much of the discussion in education has been about addressing the achievement gap. We can, however, find inspiring exceptions. Several years ago I had the pleasure of speaking at the celebration of the first one hundred minority PhD recipients (many in the social sciences and humanities) who participated in the Mellon-Mays program (which has produced many more PhDs since that celebration), the Meyerhoff Program, which started the same year, stands out—it has produced from the undergraduate program more than fifty PhDs and MD/PhDs and more than one hundred physicians. With hundreds of Meyerhoff graduates now in graduate and professional programs throughout the country, we expect to average ten or more PhDs per year. It also is significant that we have started a major initiative to produce minority PhDs across disciplines here. Our success is rooted in an idea that the African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois referred to a century ago as “The Talented Tenth.” While some considered this notion elitist, I am convinced that more than ever, when the popular culture suggests to minority children that it is not “cool” to be smart, American society needs to increase substantially the numbers of blacks and other minorities who excel academically—and we in universities have a special responsibility in this regard. In his much heralded 1903 treatise, The Souls of Black Folks, Du Bois wrote, Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and character? . . . . [I]t is, ever was, and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up . . . . This is the history of human progress . . . . How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and universities of the land . . . . A university is a human invention for the transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to generation, through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no other human invention will suffice.

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From Du Bois to Obama: The Education of Peoples of African Descent in the United States in the 21st Century Carol D. Lee The Black community consciously crafted education as a tool for our liberation as a people during the unlikely period between 1860 and 1965. But what would a vision of education, while standing on the shoulders of Du Bois and handed as a mantle to Barack Obama look like, and how would such a vision ultimately represent a gift to all of our youth? When I decided on this title, I took the bold move of writing the introduction before the November 4th, 2008 election, because of my deep faith that we would be making history. We have this momentous occasion in the history of our nation and of Black people standing on the shoulders of proud men, women, and children, who as Dr. King would have said, carved out of a mountain of despair, a roadmap for us. Malcolm X and John Henrik Clark told us that history would reward our inquiries. The question before us today is how do we build the bridge from our history to the wide world literally, which is now open to our children? While African American history broadly offers much relevance for today, I will focus my comments through the lens of a wise man and scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, who lived from the end of the Civil War, through Jim Crow, the Brown v. Broad of Education (1954) decision, and through the first victory against colonialism with the independence of Ghana. It is most appropriate to understand our journey and challenge in the road from Du Bois to Obama, for the two men have much in common. Du Bois was the first Black person to earn the Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1895. Obama attended Harvard Law School and was the first Black to head the prestigious Harvard Law Review. Both men’s lives reflect deep connections between the U. S. and Africa. Du Bois left the U. S. to live in Ghana, West Africa where he was naturalized as a citizen in 1963 at the age of 95, which is also where he died and is buried today. Obama’s father was from Kenya and has direct descendants in Kenya. Most African Americans who are descendants of those who were enslaved during the African Holocaust cannot identify their direct ancestors from the continent because family lineages were destroyed through the horrors of that Holocaust. These two men, each in their own unique way, have been able to live in multiple worlds to which most of us do not have access. In 1892 Du Bois attended the University of Berlin and traveled extensively in Europe.

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During his long political career, Du Bois was actively engaged in the Pan African conferences of 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945, which forged long-standing relationships among African, African American, and Caribbean activists who were struggling against racism and colonialism (such giants as George Padmore of Trinidad, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya were at the 1945 conference; Adi, Sherwood, & Padmore, 1995). Obama, having been raised by his White mother and grandparents has had access to two social worlds, working-class Whites in Kansas and Hawaii, later living in Indonesia, coming to the Black community on the Southside of Chicago, and as an adult making contact with his biological family in Kenya (Obama, 1995). While Obama is biracial, Du Bois wrote about the French and Dutch lineage on his father’s side of the family, the Du Boises, although he had no direct contact growing up with that side of his family (Lewis, 1993). However, his physical features did become an issue at times in his life, a story not uncommon in the complex world of race within the U. S. Du Bois talked about not marrying a young woman with whom he had a relationship because of her light complexion, which might lead others to think, as he put it, that he had married outside his race In addition to these biographical points of comparison, I am most interested in similarities in their ideas about politics and power in relation to peoples of African descent. This may seem ironic to some since Du Bois is clearly known as a “race man” while Obama has positioned himself in the presidential campaign as an example of someone of a postracial world. However, those who know Barack Obama from Chicago know his commitment to the African American community. As he stated in his speech on race, “A More Perfect Union” in Philadelphia in March, 2008: yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their times….We do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. (Obama, 2009, pp. 237-238)

The question that Obama’s presidential run – and his presidency – poses is a strategic one that I will argue Du Bois anticipated. Du Bois

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wrestled with how Black people should position themselves to take advantage of the tides of history as an empowered people. Du Bois always understood this challenge as navigating between race consciousness on the one hand and class consciousness on the other. Du Bois considered class, both within the African American community, as well as the nation, which crossed racial and ethnic groups and onto the international scene when he contemplated political developments in China, India, Eastern Europe, and South Africa. I will focus on Du Bois’s understanding of the historical circumstances during the period from 1893 to the 1930s and the role of education in terms of the uplift of Black people in the U. S. Du Bois clearly understood the challenge faced by Africans newly emancipated from the horrors of the system of chattel slavery (Du Bois, 1935/1973a). The opportunities of land ownership and skill acquisition in the changing economy of the South after the Civil War through the Reconstruction period became all the more complicated with the retreat into Jim Crow. In such an environment, the discussions were not only about the acquisition of land and formal skills, including literacy, but also equally about the political responses of the Black community to the violence directed at us and the structural constraints of de jure segregation. The well-known debates between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington navigated between economic opportunities for skilled labor, largely manual labor, and the political organizing of Blacks against racism and segregation (Du Bois, 1903/1968). Largely influenced by his philanthropic mentors, such as Samuel Armstrong who founded Hampton Institute which served as the prelude to the establishment of Tuskegee Institute, Washington argued in a speech in 1895 at the Atlanta exposition, “in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (Du Bois, 1973b, p. 64). Both Hampton and Tuskegee were established to train Black teachers to be humble and respect hard labor and to then go back to teach Black people about the value of learning skilled manual labor, but to eschew the education of the intellect (Anderson, 1988). Washington maintained that an intellectually focused education would lead Blacks to aspire to social equality with Whites and as a consequence to struggle for political equality. In contrast, Du Bois argued for an intellectually focused education that would develop leadership devoted to political, economic, and social equality. However, it is interesting that by 1930, when Du Bois gave a speech at the Howard University graduation – having received an honorary doctorate from Howard that year – he responded to a different set of historical circumstances (Du Bois, 1973b). By 1930, Hampton, Tuskegee,

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along with other Black colleges – Howard, Atlanta University, Fisk – mirrored the liberal arts colleges of the East, and either eschewed or provided inadequate support for the development of skilled labor. Du Bois sharply criticized Howard for producing graduates who engaged in what he considered frivolous play instead of intellectually rigorous study, who developed without the skills to be producers in the economy and who aspired simply to social mobility, without any critical consciousness to contribute to the development of the African American community (Du Bois, 1973b). Du Bois argued throughout the 1930s and 1940s about what he considered the unique role and responsibility of Black colleges, including the responsibility to train intellectually superior teachers who are then prepared to teach and socialize the next generation (Du Bois, 1973c). While it is clearly not the sole purview of the historically Black college, it is significant that over the last several decades, we have seen a significant decline in the number of Blacks going into teaching, and if the general condition of schools serving predominately African American youth from low-income communities is any indication, we are certainly not training our most talented to go into teaching (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Irvine, 1990). Du Bois consistently saw education not merely as a means for getting a good job, but as a way of taking advantage of opportunities for economic advantage. Such a purely utilitarian view of education, especially when linked to a lack of race consciousness, led in Du Bois’s thinking to the reification of an upwardly mobile social class of Blacks whose primary aims were to disconnect from poor Blacks and to acquire the social trappings of White privilege (Du Bois, 1973d, 1973e). Du Bois himself was perhaps among the noble examples of a man of great intellect and letters who totally committed all his life to the uplift of his people. The question Du Bois raised and with which we still wrestle is, what is the role of education in producing such people? And it is equally important to note, that for Du Bois, there was not a contradiction between being an active ‘race man or woman,’ a deep intellectual, a contributor to the common American good and a citizen of the world. This was Du Bois’s vision of the consequences of a good education and I believe it is this vision of the educational good that Barack Obama shares. I believe he wants his daughters to be proud of being African American, to contribute to the development and uplift of the African American community as well as to understand their fundamental roles as citizens of the United States with all the rights and responsibilities that go with it, working for the common good, but also seeing themselves within the broader world of which they are a part, and in which they will inevitably play a central role.

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I thereby position this as the fundamental question for this article: How do we educate African American youth to take up the mantle to oppose cultural hegemony and racism, to be proactive in building for Black people, while simultaneously being able to provide leadership in a changing world? How do we reconcile what Du Bois referred to as the double consciousness of the American Black?

Reconciling the Double Consciousness of the American Black Du Bois describes this dilemma eloquently in the opening of the The Souls of Black Folk: …the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness --an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (Du Bois, 1903/1968, pp. 2-3).

If we think this viewing of one’s self through the eyes of others is a relic of our past, recall the image of Obama on a newsletter of the Chaffey Community Republican Women during the election with his head imposed on a donkey surrounded by fried chicken, barbeque ribs, and watermelon. One of the lessons of Obama is that he understood the necessity of appearing not to take the obvious insult personally in part because his goal is to bring Americans together, but I think also because any discussion around race, particular related to his candidacy or his presidency is fraught with delicate manholes that he hopes to avoid. I think our job as a community, as an institution such as Howard, and a publication such as The Journal of Negro Education, is to produce the safety nets that allow President Obama to carry out his job as president for all people while taking advantage of the opportunities that his presidency offers. These safety nets are the creation of liberated zones in which we actively engage in civic debate; politically organized at all levels of government; create international collaborations around joint interests, particularly with the Black world in Africa, the Caribbean and South

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America; and perhaps most important, actively work to become producers who create products (material and intellectual) for inter-generational wealth and unique economic niches. As an educator, I am interested in the role that education plays in the creation of such safety nets, not only during an Obama administration, but also as a staple of Black political life across administrations. One of the lessons we learned in Chicago after the death of our first Black major, Harold Washington, was because the Black community had not created a political and economic infrastructure, the political capital that had been accrued during this tenure, died with Washington (Rivlin, 1992). President Obama is the hallmark of a long trek that began with the yearnings of our enslaved ancestors for freedom and their undying belief that they could create a better future for their children and their children’s children. The Black community consciously crafted education as a tool for our liberation as a people during the unlikely period between 1860 and 1965. But what would a vision of education, while standing on the shoulders of Du Bois and handed as a mantle to Barack Obama look like, and how would such a vision ultimately represent a gift to all of our youth?

The Education of Blacks: 1865-1965 This hundred year period in history is formulated using two foundational studies: The Education of Blacks from 1860-1935 by James Anderson (1988) and the research of Vanessa Siddle-Walker (1993, 2000) on Black education 1935 to the 1960s, including her book, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Siddle-Walker, 1966). During the African Holocaust, it was illegal for Blacks to read, write, or attend school. It is important to also note that there was no such thing as a public school system for poor Whites. Du Bois often discussed the problems of both the slave and the serf, acknowledging the joint class interests of disenfranchised Blacks and Whites. There were stories of Blacks being brutally beaten or having hands chopped off if they were found trying to read or having books. However, in the midst of this brutality, Black people would hide books in the walls of their cabins and in the lateness of the night under candle light risk their lives to read (Bennett, 1964). It was also a common practice that those who learned to read, had a responsibility to teach others. There were many stories in the oral histories of ex-enslaved Africans collected in the 1930s through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as in the many slave narratives by people such as Frederick Douglass that were written as first-person documentation of the evils of U. S. slavery (Gates,

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2002). And yet, in the midst of such unimaginable conditions, at the end of the Civil War, the very first institutions that Blacks established were schools. The Freedman’s Bureau documented some 500 schools established along with 1500 of what were called Sabbath Schools, attached to churches (Anderson, 1988). These schools were run, funded, and were either constructed by Blacks or existing space was used in the Black community, such as churches. In 1865, when John W. Alford, superintendent of education for the Freedman’s Bureau came South for the beneficence of the newly emancipated Africans, he was shocked to discover that Black people through their own initiative and with their meager resources had established schools that they insisted on running themselves. These Black institutions were established to provide basic literacy skills (reading and arithmetic) to help both adults and children, with the understanding that in order to take advantage of the new opportunities of freedom and not be taken advantage of in their interactions with the landed aristocracy by whom they had been previously enslaved and to be able to vote (in that period before the end of Reconstruction), Blacks had to be able to read, write, and do basic calculations. These efforts were focused on education for liberation. Du Bois and others have argued that the development of a public education system in the South for all was directly influenced by the efforts of Blacks to establish schools for their children (Du Bois & Dill, 1911). Remember that during this period, there were no public schools for poor White children in the South. By the 1920s, the education of Black teachers in the South took place largely in what were called Normal Training Schools, which were tantamount to a high school education; while others were being trained at colleges such as Hampton and Tuskegee (although these institutions did not operate as colleges do today). Blacks had to travel far and wide to find a high school. During this period, there were two political forces from the White community who attempted to influence the course and direction of education for Blacks in the South. One was the landed aristocracy who supported the Hampton-Tuskegee model of education for manual labor, with the goal of producing a class of Blacks who would be loyal and hardworking, but who did not develop a sense of literacy aimed at political empowerment and social equality. A second group was liberal philanthropists from the North who envisioned new economic challenges for the U. S. involving the ways that new and emerging technologies could create international markets, such as greater efficiency and productivity for cotton production. They wanted a more educated class of Blacks who were able to participate in a more advanced technological workforce. This

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required a greater focus on literacy, but not one based on the model of the liberal arts found in the colleges of the East. There is a history of how Du Bois actively engaged in this educational debate (Du Bois, 1973d). However, what is less known are the efforts of ordinary Blacks in poor rural counties to resist both of these hegemonic moves (Anderson, 1988; Siddle-Walker, 2000). Anderson and others (Buchart, 1988) documented how Blacks resisted a model of education for manual labor only, in spite of the urgings accompanied by capital investments of foundations such as the General Electric Fund, the Rosenwald Fund, the Rockefeller, and the Carnegie Funds. In fact, between their tax contributions – individual contributions of both money and labor – in a number of counties, Blacks contributed a greater percentage of the funds to build and sustain rural schools than their White counterparts. This history of the political collaborations by Whites to constrain the quality of education available to Blacks during the 1920s and 1930s is fascinating. The pivotal conferences held to decide the lot of Negro education has interesting parallels with efforts over the last few decades to decide what kind of education should be available to Blacks (Siddle-Walker, 1996, 2000). In the period from 1935 to the Brown decisions and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Siddle-Walker (1996, 2000) and others provided inspiring detail about the organization and quality of Black schools in the segregated South (Bond, 1976; Rodgers, 1967). This was due in part because teaching was among the few professional opportunities for Blacks, especially Black women, Black teachers in the segregated South tended to be well educated, often with master’s degrees. They saw education not simply as a technical transmission of knowledge, but rather a calling in which the development of the full potential of a whole human being was the goal, a goal crucial to the survival of the Black community. Schools were often the site of meetings and discussions on issues of concern to the community as a whole. It was not uncommon for teachers to live in the same communities or neighborhoods as their students, knowing the students’ families as well. This was largely because of racial and class segregation, leading to Black communities in which middle-class and low-income Blacks lived in the same neighborhoods. As noted earlier by Du Bois’s remarks at the Howard graduation in 1930, class distinctions and tensions certainly did exist, including social distinctions based on gradations in skin pigmentation. Even with these internal contradictions, Black teachers generally held high expectations for their students and insisted on excellence. There is no question that the teachers today – Black and White – working in predominately low-income and minority schools would love to have such cultures of excellence in their schools. The

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general lack of such cultures of excellence today can be attributed to many factors, including the class segregations in the black community resulting in neighborhoods of intense inter-generational poverty and as a consequence a multiplying effect of the down sides of contemporary poverty in the United States (resources in terms of housing stock, green space, health care facilities, extra-curricular activities for youth; neighborhood violence, National Urban League, 2009). I note contemporary poverty in the U. S. for several reasons. It is interesting that Du Bois as early as 1900 continued to criticizes problems of crime and what he considered problems of social life in Black communities. In his famous sociological treatise, The Philadelphia Negro, he calculated correlations between levels of crime and poverty (Du Bois, 1899). However I am certain that Du Bois would be absolutely shocked at the levels of Black-on-black crime in many low-income Black urban neighborhoods today and the too many cases of young people who actively resist academic achievement. I do not think that there are simple answers to these problems and will address a way of organizing education that might ameliorate them. However bottom line, it is crucial that we not view these current dilemmas as if they always existed, and examine our history to understand what allowed us under much more dire circumstances to resist low expectations and low achievement, and not fall into a “blame the victim” mind set. There are many examples of all-Black high schools during segregation and Jim Cow which excelled in terms of graduation rates and college admissions. In fact, the educational outcomes for Blacks from the end of Reconstruction through the 1930s was nothing less than astonishing (Bond, 1939; Du Bois, 1973a).

Implications for Education of Blacks Today So this history poses a couple of questions. What are the lessons we can learn about how to educate African American youth; and for what ends? One lesson is to view education as a community responsibility and not the sole purview of schooling. A second is to view education as a holistic endeavor, aimed at the expansive development of human beings, with the goal of not only developing usable skills, but also connecting to one’s immediate and broader community. A third is to understand the power we have as a community, despite poverty, racism, discrimination, and class divisions to provide the human and material infrastructure for the free education of our youth. If it were not for this history, these statements might sound like unattainable and lofty platitudes. If our ancestors could build schools and organize education that resulted in the kind of

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monumental shift in literacy levels that Du Boise described under political and economic conditions that could not even be imagined, then Blacks must certainly be in a much better position today to take up the mantle that has been passed on. Without question, the election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of these United States is testimony that mantle has not been dropped. However, in taking up the torch, it is vitally important that we understand what this means. Again, Du Bois reminds us that we must understand the historical moment. The demands of being literate are quite different today than they were from 1865 to 1965 (Resnick & Resnick, 1977); and financing an education is much more expensive. Du Bois was critically aware of political efforts around the world to wrestle with extreme divisions based on class and colonialism, and he worked throughout his life to forge political international alliances with liberation movements. Although some of these divisive tensions continue, there is equally a rise in international connectedness that would have sparked Du Bois’s interest – a connectedness that Barack Obama clearly understands. His statements during the presidential campaign about engaging in ongoing communication with countries with whom we have serious differences and about strengthening our collaborations around the world to engender joint efforts rather than unilateral moves is evidence. The size of the audience during his July 2008 speech in Berlin and his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize are proof that the world supports his forward-looking perspective on world politics. Let us consider what this means not only for U. S. education, but specifically for the education of Blacks in the U. S., across the Diaspora, and the continent of Africa. This treatise has been much influenced by a book of Freed Zakaria (2008) titled, The PostAmerican World. The current economic crisis has shown how inter-connected we are to the rest of the world (Friedman, 2006). This economic inter-connectedness is not just at the level of multi-national corporations (e.g., the largest concentration of Wal-Mart stores is now in China), but filters down to home mortgages, credit card accounts, and the job market in the job market in the U. S. There are many examples of manufacturing, communication, and technology services being shipped overseas. Much of the debate in the presidential campaign surrounded the U. S. government’s response to companies who ship jobs overseas. President Obama was proactive and forward-thinking to understand that the United States must be internationally and economically competitive. What is troubling, however, is that Black people–whether in the U. S., in the Caribbean and South America, or on the African continent–are not major players in

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economic production: We are largely the consumers. Education has a role in this inequity, not only in terms of skill preparation, but also in terms of entrepreneurial goal motivation. Youth have few examples or role models to follow, and typically understand little about business. I take seriously an admonition made by Zakaria (2008): “In an age of constant activity across and within boarders, small groups of people with ingenuity, passion and determination have important advantages” (p. 245). With the power and ubiquitous role of technology, the options for entrepreneurship are greater now than at any point in history. This political and economic inter-connectedness is largely a consequence of modernism. Modernism is deeply connected with the Western world. However, it does not involve a simple transmission of Western politics and cultural practices. While English is without question the “lingua franca,” the rise of a Chinese economic power inspires greater attention to Mandarin (although nearly 3 million youth in China are learning English everyday in school). “Today, almost one-fourth of the planet’s population of 1.5 billion people, can speak some English” (Zakaria, 2008, p. 79) Additionally he noted, “walk down a street anywhere in the industrialized world today, and you see variations on the same themes – bank machines, coffeehouses, clothing stores with their seasonal sales, immigrant communities, popular culture and music” (Zakaria, p. 78). However, cultural traditions can and do live side by side, often resulting in interesting hybrid practices. Zakaria continued, Today, people around the world are becoming more comfortable putting their own indigenous imprint on modernity. . . . Local and modern is growing side by side with global and Western. Chinese rock vastly outsells Western rock. Samba is booming in Latin America…the greatest growth on television, radio, and the Internet is in local languages …now every country is producing its own version of CNN….Trade, travel, imperialism, immigration and missionary work have all mixed things up. Every culture has its distinct elements, and some of them survive modernism. (Zakaria, 2008, p. 82).

Du Bois understood the hybridity of modernism when he wrote The Souls of Black Folk, there are today no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African.” (1903/1968, p. 7).

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Therefore my original three questions are: (a) How can education in the U. S. prepare young people for this changing world in which American dominance must now confront what Zakaria calls “the rise of the rest”; (b) What does such an education mean for African American youth; and (c) What are implications for education in the rest of the Black world? For many, these may seem like separate questions. However, I see them as intricately inter-connected. Zakaria made a noteworthy comment: The difference between average science scores in poor and wealthy school districts with the United States, for instance, is four to five times greater than the differences between the U. S. and Singaporean national averages…. If we cannot educate and train a third of the working population to compete in a knowledge economy, it will drag down the country. (Zakaria, 2008, p. 192)

It is equally interesting to note that Andrew Carnegie made a similar comment in the 1920s (e.g., disparities in education have a negative impact on the economic status of the U. S), but with a different end in mind in terms of the kind of education and for who the benefits would accrue (Anderson, 1988). Additionally, it is clear that one of the changes needed desperately in the American education system is for our youth to better understand the diversity that is in the world; not only in terms of knowledge, but equally important in terms of being able to view problems from differing points of view. This means having a richer and more nuanced understanding of culture. Such an orientation is needed in public education not only because of international competition and inter-connectedness, but also because the country is increasingly more diverse. We need to better understand the cultural variations within the U. S. Therefore the argument is for the practical demands of understanding inter-culturality on both the national as well as the international scene that impels a different set of fundamental principles to inform the conduct of education in the U. S. As Du Bois has consistently opined, it is this cultural question that links the education of all youth. The culture questions in education is one of science, practice, and politics. For people of African descent in the U. S., the culture question especially in regard to education is complex because the question of double consciousness which Du Bois raised in 1900 continues. In some respects, Du Bois’s argument was that African Americans could see into two worlds; and this idea of being able to see other perspectives, to imagine walking in the shoes of others is certainly one aspect of understanding the world that we want and need American young people to

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understand. For Du Bois, one complication of this double consciousness was seeing ourselves through the eyes of others, specifically seeing through the eyes of the hegemonic worldview that positioned African Americans as inferior beings and by contrast positioned whiteness (in color, in consciousness, in culture) as superior. These warring subjectivities have been a persistent thorn in the public consciousness of the African American community. Therefore, how we conceptualize in aims and practices of education must address these warring subjectivities; the question of how to be American, Black, and a citizen of the world in tandem, and in so doing to go against the normative grain that Americanness requires one to shed off Blackness (in all the variations of what that means). Therefore one goal in the education of African American youth should be to address the consequences of their racialized positioning in the U. S. (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). In what follows, I attempt to address this dilemma raised by Du Bois at the beginning of the 20th century and argue that is the challenge that Barack Obama faces in the early part of this century. One in which African Americans equally share with the new president.

The Culture Challenge in American Education In order to begin to address the dilemma of double consciousness we must first question our most fundamental assumptions about culture and its relation to learning. The hegemonic views that inform our conceptions of culture are well-known: the idea that Whiteness is superior, that Europe has always represented the pinnacle of human civilizations, and that those who are designated as people of color have some kind of deficits in which a good education must overcome. These deficit assumptions to those designated as non-White have a long history in education (Lee, 2009); from the use of IQ tests to argue for differences in abilities based on race compounded with physiological measures (e.g., head size, width of noses, etc.) as further evidence of racial differences; to arguments about cultural deprivation regarding child-rearing practices, and ways of using language that were presumed to interfere with readiness for school. I will not take time to delve into these propositions, in part because much has already been written about them, and also because such discussions in some ways continue to fuel such discourse. We should not think such propositions ended with Jensen (1969) or with Hernstein and Murray (1994), or the more recent publication by Sarich and Miele (2004). Beliefs about Black inferiority are alive and well. At the same time, this preoccupation with conceptions of race has yielded an interesting and ironic history in which

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over the last century, there have been historic periods when peoples who we would today consider as White were designated as non-White (e.g., Irish, Germans, Italians during their immigrations in the early part of the 20th century; Guglielmo, 2003; Ignatiev, 1996). The physical markers of being non-White can be confusing (e.g., olive skin Sicilians, Australian aborigines with straight hair, East Indians who are chocolate brown). Additionally, of course, is the existence of biracial identities, not merely in terms of individual families, but of entire populations. For example, across Central and South America one finds a tremendous inter-mixing of persons with Spanish, African, and indigenous backgrounds (Grande, 2000). Categories for purposes of racial classification in the U. S. Census are equally stupefying. It would be particularly useful, both as a society and within the schools, to have serious conversations about what exactly is race, and what does it mean to belong to a race (Helm, Jernigan, & Masher 2005; Helms & Talleyrand, 1977)? Du Bois would have probably enjoyed such conversations. Within the U.S., race and culture are confounded (Helms & Talleyrand, 1997). We tend to use the terms inter-changeably in many instances. Our popular conceptions of race are so bipolar that these conceptions of culture suffer from myopic views. Gutierrez and Rogoff (2003) refer to this as “the box problem” – that human communities can be placed into neat, uni-dimensional categories. There are many flaws with such a conception. First, even what may appear to be the most homogeneous communities from the outside have significant heterogeneity within them. Second, many of the political ascriptions of identity are actually pan-ethnic identities that obfuscate what are national and withinnation differences in ethnic histories. For example, African American includes those whose family histories trace back to the African Holocaust along with immigrants from Jamaica, Haiti, Senegal, Nigeria, and South Africa. Latino or Hispanic conflates peoples whose families trace back to Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Brazil, and Argentina. As indicated earlier, according to U. S. bipolar classifications, among these panHispanic populations are Blacks, Whites, peoples of indigenous backgrounds, and multiracial people from all of these groups. Similar arguments can be made for Asian American and Native American groups. Third, cultural communities are defined by inter-generational beliefs, practices, and institutions that are both stable over time, emergent, and hybrid. American music reflects cultural practices that are emergent and hybrid. Therefore, such cultural communities may reflect ethnic or national histories but they are not the only kinds of cultural communities or cultural practices with which we affiliate. In fact, human beings move within and across multiple cultural communities during a lifetime. We are

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hard-wired with the capacity to adapt to new environments – social and physical (Lee, 2008b; Quartz & Sejnowski, 2002). It is precisely the experiences within the culture that prepares us for such navigations and influences that range of settings we cross and the resources that we bring (Cole, 1996). If we work from such fundamental propositions about culture, we can only conclude that all human beings have culture and that few cultures–especially now – are immunized against cross cultural influences. The resources with which we are endowed by virtue of being human include: x The ability to attribute meaning to patterns of experience in the world x The ability, in fact, the inclination, to use knowledge constructed from the meanings attributed to prior experiences in the world to make predictions about new experiences and settings x The significance of the emotional valence attributed to experience to filter what is salient, threatening, and ego-fulfilling x The ability to learn from others, often influenced by levels of trust (or levels of distrust; (Dai & Sternberg, 2004; Dalgleish & Powers, 1999: Kunda, 1999; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Quartz & Sejnowski, 2002; Spencer, 2006). I point to these fundamental propositions about human learning and development for several reasons. First, discussions of culture and education, particularly for people of color, typically are not from what is fundamental to being human. These propositions are from studies in human development, human cognition, and brain neuroscience. As scientists (biological and social, a better understanding of how these propositions operate within and across the complex settings of human cultural communities is needed (Lee, 2005, 2008a; Rogoff, 2003; Spencer, 2006). However, it can at least be speculated about their implications for the practice of education. And one should not depend solely on speculation, but draw on existing empirical research to warrant actions. Across the resources proposed is the role of meaning and perceptions, or what is called attributions. Attribution theory addresses how perceptions of ourselves, others, settings, and tasks influence the goals we set and our motivations to persist in an activity (Spencer et al., 2006; Weiner, 1985). Perceptions of ourselves are related to our sense of identities. I use identities to refer to an earlier discussion about how people move within and across multiple communities of practice (e.g., cultural communities).

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One has a personal identity (or what might be thought of as an individual personality), as well as identities from being members of a number of groups (e.g., immediate and extended family; a racial or ethnic group; a national group; a gender or gender-orientation; an age cohort; a member of a peer social network; or as a member of a group engaged in particular kinds of routine activities such a rapper, a basketball player, a painter, an auto mechanic, a teacher, etc.). Each of these identities involves some kind of obligation, belief system, and knowledge to participate in routine activity (e.g., as a member of the Lee and Easton families; as a member of the learning sciences community; as a middle-aged woman; and as an African American; as a person of African descent – an identity particularly salient when I travel to Ghana or South Africa). Perceptions of the self also involve perceptions of ability (e.g., as fixed or malleable), and tasks (e.g., mathematics as fundamentally difficult and inaccessible to most; Dweck & Legget, 1988; Graham & Hudley, 2005). As a particular activity is engaged in that involves an effort to learn in the context of schooling, the perceptions to all of these issues (i.e., self, task, and setting) matter. In an effort to remain psychologically balanced (the costs attached to doing the work of schooling is weighted. These costs include the extent to which achieving the learning goal is possible or attainable; and the value that is placed on achieving the goal. Such valuing may include the extent to which fulfilling the learning goal helps one to achieve some desired end. This valuing may be based on the intrinsic motivation of doing work or some extrinsic motivation (e.g., working on the task at hand as a means to an end – receiving a grade, setting a future goal such as getting into college, etc.). Costs can also include competing sets of needs that impinge on one’s availability of time and energy to complete the task. Therefore, the importance of our perceptions, of people, tasks, and settings, including the costs attached to completing the work of schooling, can be viewed as the engine that drives this effort. At the same time, it is important to recognize that it is not merely our perceptions that matter, but how learning is organized (i.e., in families, schools, community organizations, sports teams, etc.) that can also help to shape perceptions or alleviate fears (about attainability, relevance, costs). Learning environments can be sufficiently robust and generative to engage even reluctant and illprepared learners to help them to become successful learners (Lee, 2007). Because this engine of learning based on relationships between perceptions of the learner and the characteristics of the learning environment are essentially cultural in nature, the implications for the education of African American youth is particularly salient.

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Why is this the case? I return to Du Bois’s argument about double consciousness or these warring subjectivities of having the gift to see into alternate worlds, but at the same time wrestle with how a hegemonic world views you. On almost every measure of well-being (educational outcomes, health, in-tact family structure, levels of poverty, incarceration rates, exposure to violence, etc.), African Americans face significant challenges, particularly those living in persistent inter-generational poverty (National Urban League, 2009). In addition, African Americans encounter societal stereotypes regarding beauty, intelligence, and gender (Spencer, 2008). In the context of public schooling, African American youth face a widespread culture of low expectations, significant differences in per pupil funding, curricula that are basic-skills oriented, less access to technology resources, and more teachers who are not certified in their fields (DarlingHammond, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 2006). These deficiencies in school opportunities are then compounded by concentrations of neighborhood poverty and the attendant factors associated with such poverty (Massey, 1990). Even middle class African American students typically score below their White peers on standardized measures of achievement, college graduation rates, and college grade point averages (Ferguson, 2007; Fergusson & Ladd, 1996). The psychological costs that surround being African American in the U. S., and the particular psychological configurations of those costs for middle class African American students who are in integrated schooling, takes a toll as well; although it is interesting to note that African immigrants do better than their African American counterparts and have higher graduation rates than any ethnic group within the U. S. (“African immigrants, in the U. S.,” 1999-2000). This suggests that there are internal issues of socialization with which the Black community must wrestle, despite the grievances of structural racism (Hilliard, 1995). Learning psychologically to interpret these obstacles, to understand their origins without internalizing their negative messages, has always been one of the major life-course tasks for African American youth (Bowman & Howard, 1985; Boykin & Toms, 1985; Davis, Aronson, & Salinas, 2006; Fischer & Shaw, 1999; Garcia Coll et al., 1996; Mandara, 2006). Such lessons were perhaps most stark during the period of enslavement where Black people did not internalize the assumptions that others had of them, despite the realities of their enslavement (Stuckey, 1987). There is no question that these messages must be socialized within families (Mandara, 2006). But families do not stand in isolation (Bell, 2001, 2004). This is a mission that the African American community must take up, using its institutional resources – extended family networks,

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extended social networks, churches, and community and professional organizations. We must create institutional safety nets that surround all of our children, leaving them no space in which to fail. The recent efforts of Susan L. Taylor, former editor-in-chief of Essence Magazine, to develop a national network of youth mentoring in the African American community – the National CARES Mentoring Movement – is one example of what must be done (see http://caresmentoring.com/). It is important to realize that schools can also serve as a safety net; and that in so doing, they can perform a civic good for all young people. Learning to be resilient in the face of difficulty and even defeat is a life course that all must learn to manage. Margaret Beale Spencer (2008) discussed what she calls masked vulnerability, referring to youth often middle class Whites, who experience vulnerabilities based on different kinds of stereotyping and social out casting. The vulnerabilities of these youth were exemplified in places such a Columbine High School, and at some colleges (e.g., Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, etc.). To the extent that one envisions a fundamental precept of education to anticipate the vulnerabilities that youth face and to design learning in ways to moderate these vulnerabilities, we can begin to design schools as sites for holistic development (Lee, 2007). We must understand that these vulnerabilities are not merely traits of individuals, but include particular positioning of race, class, immigrant status, sexual orientation, and disability. We must further understand that these masked vulnerabilities not only include matters of academic knowledge, but also include emotional well-being and a sense of psychological well-being and competence. Another arm of a re-conceptualization of the goals of schooling and the organization of learning environments is to understand that all human beings have resources. The point of generative learning should be to leverage the breadth of resources – psychological, cognitive, social – that youth bring from their experiences in the world (Lee, 2006; Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, & Lee, 2006). A deep understanding of learning, particularly the learning of academic subject matter, offers multiple pathways through which learners can become engaged. These pathways provide a point of entry into the world of subject matter. One of the most debilitating characteristics of the K – 12 educational system is the pervasiveness of highly restrictive ideas of how students learn. Such restrictive notions may lead many to believe that not speaking the socalled Standard English, being and English language learner, growing up in a single-parent household, and living in a poor neighborhood makes it more difficult and less likely that a student will achieve academic success.

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We have myriad reform efforts in education that are based on what is presumed students do not have, rather than what they do bring (Bereiter & Engelmann, 1966; Bernstein, 1961; Deutcsh & Brown, 1964). There have been a number of examples of educational research carried out in schools across the country that are based on leveraging cultural resources to promote academic learning. These include The Capstone Institute at Howard University with the talent development model spearheaded by A. Wade Boykin (Boykin, 2000), The Algebra Project led by civil rights activist and mathematician Robert Moses (Moses & Cobb, 2001), The Cultural Modeling Project led by this author which includes four African-centered schools in Chicago (Lee, 2007), the CheChe Konnen Project led by Ann Rosebery and Beth Warren at TERC in Boston (Rosebery, Warren, Ballenger & Ogonowski, 2005), the Funds of Knowledge Project led by Luis Moll and Norma Gonzalez (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2004), the Migrant Student Project at UCLA led by Kris Gutierrez (Gutierrez, 2004), among others. Each of these programs takes an asset-based model linking cultural resources developed in the home communities of Black and Brown youth to leverage rigorous academic learning inside particular school-based subject (Lee, 2005b). These are onthe-ground programs operating in hundreds of schools across the country. They take an explicitly cultural frame for the design of learning environments, which include not only facilitating the development of rigorous academic knowledge, but also linking such knowledge with social learning about the world in which youth must operate by helping them to navigate within and across cultural communities without having to give up their rooting in their home communities.

Beyond Schooling To create the kind of safety net African American youth desperately need, including creating schools that anticipate vulnerabilities and leverage cultural resources for learning, there is much that the community needs to do as well. The country is at a historic moment with the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. All during his campaign, he asserted that he could not achieve the goals he set by himself. He will face difficult times, navigating a wounded economy, mixed political interests within and across political parties, and a world with increasing dangers. Our job is to design the community-based infrastructure needed to address the collective sources of vulnerability as well as opportunities in the Age of Obama. This includes re-creating powerful connections between schools and communities as was done in

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the first half of the 20th century during the period of Jim Crow de jure segregation. Du Bois clearly understood the need for institutional development in the African American community and for institutional links with the rest of the Black world. He was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP). He also made a bold argument for the establishment of a national Negro academy, akin to what today are conceptualized as think tanks. The American Negro Academy was founded in 1897 in Washington, DC and operated through the 1920s (Blaxton, 1997). Its first president was Reverend Alexander Crummell, the influential Pan Africanist of the latter half of the 19th century, and considered the “second Du Bois.” The American Negro Academy included Black scholars from the US and the Diaspora. The Academy produced a number of publications on the important issues facing the Black community, with the hope of helping to shape institution-building within the community and to influence public policy. It had only male membership, but the voices of strong Black women were certainly present in the organization, as illustrated by the intellectual and political work of activists such as Anna Julia Copper (1892-1988) and her infamous statement, “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me’” (Cooper, 1996, p. 648) The American Negro Academy is only one example of collective organizing in the 19th century within the Black community. Du Bois wrote, For the accomplishment of these ends we need race organizations: Negro colleges, Negro newspapers, Negro business organizations, a Negro school of literature and art, and an intellectual clearing house for all these products of the Negro mind, which we may call a Negro Academy (Du Bois, 1897).

There was also the tradition of the National Negro Convention movement. The first such convention was held in 1930 in Philadelphia. From that emerged “The American Society of Free People of Colour for improving their condition in the U. S.; for purchasing land; and for the establishment of a settlement in the Province of Canada” (Africans in America, 1999, p. 2935). The movement spread across the country and included subsequent national as well as state conventions up through the late 19th century. These early examples are appointed out in order to historically place movements that followed, including the establishment of the NAACP and the Urban League, the United Negro Improvement

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Association under the leadership of Marcus Garvey, the decades of legal work and community organizing culminating in the Brown v Board of Education decisions (1954, 1955), the Civil Rights Movement including the Freedom Schools attached to it, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements, and the African-centered education institutions that emerged and continue today (Akoto, 1994; Lee, 1992; Shujaa, 1994). The point is to illustrate that internal efforts within the African American community, often involving strategic alliances with others to create institutional infrastructures for addressing both the sources of vulnerability and emerging opportunities, has been central to our history in this country. I currently call for the intensification and re-focusing of such efforts that echo the voices of those on whose shoulders we stand. It is the essence of what Mary McLeod Bethune (1966) called for in her seminal piece, “My Last Will and Testament.” We should learn from these communitybuilding and organizing efforts of the late 19th and early 20th century – of which Du Bois was intimately involved – several important lessons: first, racial pride and a world orientation can produce positive outcomes for Black people and for the country; second, these kinds of political and intellectual organizations must be responsive to the ecologies of their times; third, these efforts have not been without internal contradictions and tensions within the African American community; and fourth, the sustainability of such efforts requires substantive economic development. The latter was and continues to be a major shortfall of our institutionbuilding efforts. With this historical backdrop, I make the following recommendations for political and social foci of the efforts to build the kind of wraparound infrastructure needed to establish African American communities, families, and institutions that can address the continued sources of vulnerability as well as the unique opportunities of the time. Politically x Re-position the tenor of the discourse on race and education from a deficit orientation to an asset orientation that is rooted in our humanity x Understand how federal, state, and local politics operate (as does Obama) to position ourselves as active participants in civic debate and political action; including resisting those Black politicians who may have short-sighted views that look out for self-interest rather than the interests of the community (the same criticism made by Du Bois and echoed by Obama)

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x Consciously focus the education of our youth to prepare them to become major players in particular segments of the economy (nationally and internationally) through education, medicine (including public health), agriculture, urban planning, engineering, finance, law, communications – skills needed to build infrastructures; to become producers rather than consumers Socially x From the family (nuclear and extended) to the neighborhood, to the school, take over the education and socialization of our children. We currently lose children to the criminal justice system as a consequences of gangs, drugs, and poor education sometimes due to personal goals or complacency

Conclusion I began this article by drawing attention to the similarities between W. E. B. Du Bois and President Barack Obama and how they have each responded to the peculiar political, social, economic, and educational issues of their respective eras. At the same time, I have argued that there is a common challenge faced by the African American community in the 20th century, epitomized by the theories and actions of Du Bois, and the African American community in the 21st century in the Age of Obama. That challenge has to do with how to act with ‘race consciousness’ and work toward ‘racial upliftment’, while simultaneously engaging in the larger civic task of fulfilling the promise of the nation’s founding and our responsibilities as members of a larger world community. I use the terms race consciousness and racial upliftment to echo terminology used by Du Bois, including the inherent tensions he acknowledged about the construct of race (Du Bois, 1897, 1996; Hancock, 2005). However, as I have argued here and elsewhere (Lee, 2002), a focus on Africans in America as an ethnic group – a pan-ethic group – offers greater explanatory power and avoids the inherent contradictions of the construct of race. Du Bois argued and embodied the idea that these positions are not in conflict, and for the African American community, the latter two goals depend on the first. I am committed to the role that the transformation of education in the U. S. can play in these monumental civic tasks when education is organized to acknowledge and build on the varied cultural pathways through which human learning and development can and do occur, and in so doing, draws on the unique cultural contributions of the children of Africa as Du Bois so aptly described in his classic treatise, The Souls of Black Folks.

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INDEX

Acts: Goals 2000: Educate America: 17, 223; Elementary and Secondary Education (ESEA): 15, 16,17, 19, 222, 249; Civil Rights of 1964: 14, 15; Improving America's Schools (ISA): 16; Morrill of 1862: 6, 10, 96; Morrill in 1890: 95; No Child Left Behind (NCLB): 17, 19, 223-224, 366, 367; Pupil Placement : 218; Servicemen's Readjustment: 12 ; Student Success: 19. Affirmative Action 14, 278, 363 African Free Schools 1, 4 , 403 (see also Landmarks and Milestones) Age of Enlightenment 25, 41, 9091 Algebra Project, The 389 Allen, Adria 214 Alleyne, Mark 16 (see Rhodes Scholars) American Apartheid 290 American Missionary Society 7071, 78, 92, 240, 249 American Negro Academy, The 390, 393 Americanization Campaign 346 (see also Gloria LadsonBillings) Anderson, James D. 103, 226-243, 244-250, 267, 376,402, 403 Angelou, Maya 117, 122, 403 Anglo African Magazine 62 Anti-literacy laws (see Landmarks and Milestones; Heather Andrea Williams; Frederick Douglass; Janet Duitsman Cornelius; and James D. Anderson)

Ashmore, Harry S. 112, 403 Ashmun Institute 5 , 89 (see also HBCUs and Christopher Lucas) Association for the Study of Negro Life and History 11 Atlanta Compromise, The 95, 147 Avery College 5, 89 (see also HBCUs and Christopher Lucas) Ayers, Jake, 17 Bates, Daisy L. Gaston 157 (see also the Little Rock Nine) Beals, Melba Patillo 13, 152 -157 (see also the Little Rock Nine) Bell, Derrick 405 Berea College 5 Bethune, Mary McLeod 323, 337, 394 Biddle University 92 (see also HBCUs and Christopher Lucas) Black charitable organizations 66, 91 Black church : Preface, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 113, 118-119, 187, 197, 201, 241, 254 Black College Day (see also HBCUs and Christopher Lucas) Black Community: class strivings: (see Preface and Personal Testimonies); circumvent antiliteracy laws: 25-34, 35-40, 4164, 226-243; economic and political infrastructure: 109112, 113-122, 256-261, 374401; group consciousness: xiv, 25, 35 , 67 ( (see also Preface and Personal Testimonies); upward mobility: (see Preface and Personal Testimonies);

446 white teachers :152-157,186194, 195-201, 202-211, 348357, 358-361 Black family : 41-64, 65-66, 80-88, 98-103, 109-231, 138-140, 145151, 186-195, 195-201, and 202-213 (see also Preface and Personal Testimonies) Black newspapers 4, 6, 178 Black Studies 13 Black teachers: 69, 109, 113, 117, 154, 254, 262, 263, 266, 268, 285 309, 348, 349, 336, 358, 378 (see also Personal Testimonies) Black womanhood 65-66, 69-79, 80-88, 109-122 Blassingame, John W. 406 Bok, Derek 368 Bond, Horace Mann 276, 396, 406 Bond, Julian 169, 181, 182 Bowen, William 368 Boykin, A. Wade 389, 392, 396, 397, 406, 407 Bridges, Ruby 13 British School System 67 Brown, Charlotte Hawkins 11, 337, 338 (see also independent and preparatory schools) Brown, E. V. 76 (see also Schoolmarms) Brown, Josephine 67 Brown v. Board of Education (see Litigations) Burroughs, Nannie Helen 11, 337 357 (see also independent and preparatory schools) Bush, George (Governor) 17 "busing" 15 (see also desegregation court ordered) Butchart, Ronald E. 408 Carnegie, Andrew 91, 378, 381, 382, 385 Carson, Ben (M.D.) 202-211, 365 Cary, Lorene 201

Index Cashin, Sheryl 366 Caswell County Training School 262, 263, 266 Center for Manpower 283 Central High School (Little Rock, AR) 13, 153-154, 173 Chase, Mary 239 Chavis, John 2 Cheyney State College 4, 89, 90 (see also HBCUs and Christopher Lucas) Children's Defense Fund 140 Civil Rights Movement, 13, 14, 296-299, 305-306, 359 Clark, John Henrik 371 Clark, Kenneth 13, 217, 409 Class polarization 302 Clayton, McLouis (back cover) Clinton, Bill (Governor) 17, 155 Coleman, James 367, 370, 416 Collins, Marva 15, 16 Community (see Black Community) Connelly, Wardell Anthony "Ward" 17 Cornelius, Janet Duitsman 23, 35, 41-64 Corporate pluralism 279 (see also liberal pluralism) Crandall, Prudence 4, 5 Crogman, W. H. 337 Cosby, Bill 411 (see also Alvin Poussiant) Cultural Modeling Project, The 392 Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (see Litigations) Davis, Angela 194 Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community 232 Desegregation court ordered 12, 13,14,15, 17, 244, 268, 277, 283, 295, 339, 345, 359, 362 (see also Litigations)

A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience Donaldson Academy, Charles W (Dr) 19, 223 (see also Litigations) Double consciousness 375, 382, 383, 387 Douglass, Frederick 26, 35-40, 44, 229, 235, 317, 376, 412 DuBois, W. E. B. 11, 65, 96, 98103, 104-108, 123, 145, 230, 231, 248, 256, 370, 371, 377, 380, 383, 390, 397, 398, 412 Dunbar, Paul Laurence 117 Edelman, Marian Wright 113, 123, 138-140, 317-328 Education: ancestors on: 25-34, 4164, 80-88, 138-140, 186-194, 226-243, 262-267, 374-401 (see also Preface, Personal Testimonies, and Intellectual Perspectives); and community: 25-34, 41-64, 65-66, 69-89, 109-122, 195-201, 226-243, 256-261, 262-267, 336-344, 362-374 (see also Preface, Personal Testimonies, and Intellectual Perspectives); and economic advantages: 123-137, 186-194, 251-261, 268-284, 285-308, 345-347, 362-373, 374-401 (see also Preface); and entrepreneurial: 123-137, 145151, 158-185, 251-255, 256-261 (see also Testimonies and Intellectual Perspectives); and disparities in: 25-34, 35-40, 4164, 67-68, 69-70, 80-88,109122, 152-157 (see also Landmarks and Milestones, Personal Testimonies, Litigations, and Intellectual Perspectives); and dignity: 2534, 35-40, 67-68, 123-137, 138140, 145-151, 186-194, 195-201 (see Preface, Personal Testimonies, Litigations and

447

Intellectual Perspectives); and family: 41-64, 65-66, 80-88, 98103, 109-231, 138-140, 145151, 186-194, 195-201, 202-213 (see also Preface and Personal Testimonies) ; and freedom: 25-34, 35-40, 41-64, 67-68, 6979, 141-144, 152-157 (see also Preface); and health: 202-213; and integration: 285-308; and literacy: (see Preface, Landmarks and Milestones, Personal Testimonies, Litigations, and Intellectual Perspectives); and preparatory schools: 67-68,309-316, 336344; and religion : 22-24, 3540, 41-64, 69-79, 226-243, 329335, 362-373 (see also Landmarks and Milestones); and struggles for humanity: 2534, 35-40, 41-64, 65-66, 67-68, 80-88, 109-122, 145-151, 186194, 226-243, 244-250, 306 (see also Preface, Personal Testimonies, Litigations, and Intellectual Perspectives); and survival: 25-34, 35-40, 41-64, 65-66, 67-68, 69-79, 80-88, 109-122, 123-140, 141-144, 152-157, 226-243, 268-284, 285-308, 362-374 (see also Preface, Personal Testimonies, Litigations and Intellectual Perspectives); and tragic struggles: 25-34, 41-64, 186194, 226-243, 306 (see also Preface, Personal Testimonies, and Intellectual Perspectives); as community responsibility: 195-201, 226-243, 256-261, 309-316, 317-328, 336-344, 362-373, 374-401 (see also Preface , Personal Testimonies, and Intellectual Perspectives); independent and neighborhood

448 schools: 309-316, 336-344; industrial: 93-94, 226-243, 246, 249, 251-255, 256-261, 276, 338, 377 (see also Intellectual Perspectives); midwest :186-194 (see also South, North, and southwest); North : 38, 109, 191, 199 (see also South and southwest); public schools 1-6, 93, 285-308 (see also V. P. Franklin and Antonie M. Garibaldi); rural :104, 109; single-parent households : 303304; South : 33 , 47, 76, 81, 93, 100, 109, 110, 145, 195, 196; southwest :104, 109, 243. Education ethos (see Black family; Black church; Black community; Education; and themes) Education themes: back to basics: 307, 315 basics vs. frills: 310; collective voices: xiii; culturally responsive: 290, 345, 354, 355: cultural values: Preface ; dignity: Preface, 65, 246; education goals: 22, 109, 113, 118, 123; gender identity: 80 (see also Booker T. Washington and Jocelyn Elders); history and memory : Preface; familial goals: Preface (see also Edelman, John Hope Franklin, Cornel West); freedom: 65, 246; literacy: 25-34, 41-64, 65 (see also Personal Testimonies and Intellectual Perspectives); perseverance 73, 104, 118-119, 237 (see also Personal Testimonies) ; resilience: 104 118-119, 237 (see also Personal Testimonies); rituals: Preface; spiritual goals : 22-24,41-64, 113, 123, 195-201, 226-243, 329-335 (See also Personal Testimonies) ; survival: Preface

Index 101; "take up the torch" and "uplift" : 65, 69, 92, 96, 233, 248, 249, 252, 255, 258, 261, 275, 360, 373, 392; value of reading: Preface (see also Personal Testimonies); witnesses : Preface (see also Personal Testimonies, Litigations, and Intellectual Perspectives) Education of the Negro in the American Social Order 276 Eisenhower, Dwight 173 Elders, Jocelyn (Dr.) 109-112, 113122 Ellison, Ralph xiii, 140 Equality of Educational Opportunity 367 Equalization Campaign 2, 5, 287, 307-308 Ervin, Hazel Arnett xv, 414 (see also bio-statement) Extended Family 302 Failures of Integration, The 366 Faubus, Orval (Governor) 13 Federal Writers Project 43, 45, 63 First School Integration Suit (see also Benjamin Roberts and Landmarks and Milestones) Foner, Philip S. 415 Forten, Charlotte 70-71 , 75, 78 (see also Schoolmarms) Franklin, John Hope 123-137, 238, 416 Franklin, V. P. 232, 268-284, 416 Freedmen Bureau 7, 8, 89, 91, 92, 239, 241, 377 Freedom Schools 5, 239, 243 Freedom's Journal 4, 62 (see also Black newspapers) Fultz, Michael 262 Gaines, Ernest 122 Gaines, Lloyd Lionel 12 Gantt, Harvey 14

A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience Garibaldi, Antonie M. 285-308 Gates, Henry Louis 211, 398 Goose Creek Parish 1, 227 Green, Ernest (see Landmarks and Milestones and the Little Rock Nine) Group consciousness (see Black Community) Haines Institute 8 Hale, Janice E. 418 Haley, Alex 141 Hall, Prince 2, 336, 338 Hammond, Darling L. 419 Harlan, John Justice 275 Harlem Children's Zone & Promise Academy 16 Harris, Blanche V. 76 (see also Schoolmarms) Hawkins, John 337 Haynes, Lemuel 3 HBCUs 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 89-97, 253, 345-347, 389 (see also Landmarks and Milestones and Christopher Lucas) HBCU-General Education Alliance Inc. 19 (see also bio-statements of Hazel Arnett Ervin and Lois Jamison Sheer) Headstart 426 Hemmings, Annette 420 Hervey, Lloyd E 358-361 (see also Gloria Ladson-Billings) Highgate, Edmonia 76 (see also Schoolmarms) Hilliard, A. G. 399 History and Memory xiv (see also Education themes) Historically Black Colleges and Universities (see also Landmarks and Milestones, HBCUs, and Christopher Lucas) "historically diverse university" 362 (see also Freeman A. Hrabowski)

449

Hollowell, Don 158, 169 Holmes, Hamilton 14, 158 (see also Charlayne Hunter-Gault) Hood, James 14 (see also Vivian Malone Jones) Hrabowski, Freeman A. 362-373, 421 Hughes, Langston 5, 117, 137 Hunter-Gault, Charlayne 14, 104, 151, 158-167, 168-185 "hybridity of modernism " 381 "hyper-segregation" 367 Identity (see Education themes) Independent School Movement 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 60, 240, 309, 336337, 343 Industrial education 251 (see also Education) "inter-generational poverty" 379, 387 "interpersonal caring" 262 Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan 262 Jackson, Ellen Garrison 71, 74 , 422 (see also Schoolmarms) Jacoway, Elizabeth 157 Jones, Edward A (see also Landmarks and Milestones and Lucius Twilight) Jones, Jacqueline 233 ,424 Jones, Laurence 4, 337 Jones, Vivian Malone 14, 167 Jordan, Jennifer, xv Jordan, Vernon E., Jr. 145-151, 159 Journal of Negro Education, The 12, 375 Journal of Negro History, The 12 Kennedy, John F. 14 King, Jr., Martin Luther 133, 156, 292, 359, 360, 363, 371 King, Tim 17 (see also urban prep academies)

450 Kittrell Institute 93, 337 (see independent and preparatory schools) Ladson-Billings, Gloria 348-357, 399 Land-Grants 93, 95 Laney, Lucy 8, 337 Latinos 366-367 Lee, Carol D. 374-401 Liberal pluralism 279 , 283 (see also corporate pluralism) Lincoln University 89 (see also HBCUs and Christopher Lucas) Literacy (see education, education ethos, and education themes) Litigations 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10,12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 139 Little Rock Nine 13, 173, 359 (see also Melba Patillo Beale) Little Rock School District 13 Littlefield, Valinda W. 266-267 Locke, Alain 11 (see also Rhodes Scholars) Lucas, Christopher J 89-97 Lucy, Autherine 13, 359

Malcolm X 133, 141-144, 371 Malone (Jones), Vivian 14, 167 Mann, Horace 153, 155, 270, 276 Marshall, Thurgood 5, 13, 132 , 160 (see also Mark Tushnet) Matilda 65-66 Mays, Benjamin 151, 324, 329335 McCall, Nathan 144 McPherson, James M. 79, 87, 428 Meade, Bishop William 22-24, 35 Meharry Medical College 8 Meier, August 87, 428, 429 Meredith, James 14, 133, 185, 429 Meyerhoff Scholars Program 364 Miller, Kelly 145, 251-255 Miseducation of the Negro, The 12 Mitchell, Edward 4

Index Morehouse School of Medicine 424 Morris, Vivian 430 Mosley, Toni O'Neal 309-316 Motley, Constance Baker 158, 159, 164, 172 "My Last Will and Testament" 391, 394 "Nation at Risk, A" 224, 310, 430 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 11, 12, 13, 19, 132, 153, 158, 276, 390 National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) 15 National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) 14, 15, 224, 301, 365 National Negro Convention 63 National Training School for Women 11 (see also independent and preparatory schools) National Urban League 11, 400 Nature v. Nurture 11 (see also Age of Enlightenment) New Orleans Tribune, The 6 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 17 Normal Training School 11, 377 Noyes Academy of Canaan 4 (see also independent and preparatory schools) Obama, Barack 19 , 351, 371, 380, 383, 389, 400 Oberlin College 4, 6, 59, 70, 75 (see Landmarks and Milestones) Ojezua, Teresa Preface On the Road to Success 341 Oprah 195 -201 (see also Oprah Winfrey) Palmer Memorial Institute 11 (see also independent and preparatory schools)

A Community of Voices on Education and the African American Experience Parent PLUS Loan 19 Patterson, Mary Jane 6 Peabody and Slater Funds 7, 91, 94, 245 Peake, Mary 6, 30,69-78, 239 (see also Schoolmarms) PELL Grant 18 Penn Center, The 78 Perry, Thelma D. 432 Philadelphia Negro, The 379 Pioneer School of Freedom 243 Plessy v. Ferguson (see Litigation) Porter, Dorothy 433 Post-American World, The 383 Poussiant, Alvin F. 411 Powell, Colin 365 Quakers 1,2, 3, 4, 8 , 61, 76, 89, 156, 239 , 435(see also Landmarks and Milestones) "race consciousness" 392 Race to the Top Initiative 19 (see also Acts and Education) Ratteray, Joan Davis 336-344 Ravitch , Diane 433 Reconstruction 7, 8, 91, 246, 247, 249, 272, 373, 376 Reed, Wornie I. 285-308 "resegregation" 366 Rhodes Scholars 11, 14, 15,16, 17 Roberts, Benjamin 5, 270-271 Roberts v. City of Boston 270 (see Benjamin Roberts) Roll Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made 231 Rosenwald Fund 91, 378, 381 Rury, John L. 434 Russworm, John 4 (see also Lucius Twilight) Schmoke, Kurt (see also Rhodes Scholars) School-community 263 Schoolmarms 69-79 Sekora, John 96

451

"separate but equal" 5, 10, 13, 96, 272-274, 276, 339, 359 (see also Education) Shape of the River, The 368 Sheer, Lois Jamison xv (see also bio-statement) Siddle-Walker, E. V. (see Vanessa Siddle Walker) Shujaa, Mwalimu J. 401, 436 Signification 145 Sims-Wood, Janet xv (see also back cover) Simmons, Ruth 365 Smitherman, Geneva xv Smothers, Roderick L., Sr. 345347 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, The 1, 2, 227 Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools (SACS) 128 Span, Christopher M 226-243 Spelman College's endowment 17 Spence Foundation 257 Spencer, Margaret Beale 388, 391, 401, 436. 437 Stanley, Sara G. 72, 74 (see also Schoolmarms) Steele, Claude M. 437 Sterling, Dorothy 69 Stevenson, Karen 16 (see also Rhodes Scholars) Supreme Court Rulings (see Litigations) Swinton, Patricia Walker 21 Talent Development Model, The 389 (see also A. W. Boykin) Talented Tenth, The 256, 261, 370, 373 Taylor, Susan L. 388 Teacher education (see LadsonBillings and Hervey) There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America 63

452 Thirteenth Amendment 6 (see Landmarks and Milestones) Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund (see Landmarks and Milestones) Thurman, Howard 326 Tim King 17, 18, 19 Title I 15 (see also ESEA) Title II 15 (see also ESEA) Title III 15 (see also ESEA) Title IV 15 (see also ESEA) Title V 15 (see also ESEA) Title VI 15 (see also ESEA) Title IX 15 Toldson, Ivory A. 439 Traditional Model of Educational, A 263 Tushnet, Mark 439 Twelve Million Black Voices 249 Twilight, Lucius 4 UMBC Experience 363 (see Freeman A. Hrabowski) UNCF/Mellon Mays Program 370 Underground Railroad, The 232 United Negro College Fund (UNCF) 12 "Uplift" 374, 380 (see also Education themes) Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men (see also Tim King) 17, 18, 19 Vandiver, Ernest (Governor) 169 Walker, David 27 Walker, Vanessa Siddle 262-265, 266-267, 376, 401, 440

Index Wallace, George (Governor) 14 WPA 231, 376 Ward, Horace 158 Warren, Earl Justice 277, 360, 363 Washington, Booker T. 9, 80-88, 94, 95, 123, 147, 150, 276, 337, 373, 441 Washington, Harold 376 Watkins, Daniel 240 West, Cornell 186-194 Westside Preparatory School 309, 310, 314 White House Initiative on Education Excellence for African Americans 19 White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities 16 Wideman, John Edgar 14 (see also Rhodes Scholars) Wilberforce University 5, 89 (see also HBCUs and Christopher Lucas) Wilkerson, Doxey A. 442 Williams, Heather Andrea 25-34, 35, 41, 123, 233 Williams, Juan 442 Willie, Charles V. 285-308 Wilson, John Silvanus 347 Wilson, William J. 302 Winfrey, Oprah 195-201 Woolworth Sit-in 14 Woodson, Carter G. 11, 12, 24, 44, 230, 234, 443 Wright, Richard 249 Young, Andrew 360, 363 Young, Jon xv