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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 3. The Development of Negro Education in the South
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Chapter 41. The Negro School 887
3. The Development of Negro Education in the South
The history of Negro education in the South is one of heroic deeds as
well as of patient, high-minded and self-sacrificing toil. In this context we
can only present the outlines of the subject.
One of the cultural disparities between the North and the South at the
outbreak of the Civil War was that the Northern states had established
tax-supported public schools, while the public school movement was only
in its beginning in the South.^ The few Negroes in the North shared, on the
whole, in the better educational opportunities in the region.^® In the South
most white people had little or no formal schooling. In all Southern states
(except a few of the Border states and the District of Columbia) it was for-
bidden to teach slaves how to read and write, and several states extended
the prohibition to free Negroes.^^
Still, a few of the slave owners, or their wives and daughters, considered
it a Christian duty to teach the slaves to read, and by i860 perhaps as much
as 5 per cent of the slaves could read and write.^^ A larger proportion of the
free Negroes had acquired some schooling. The education of Negroes
under slavery cannot be discussed without noting also the excellent training
as artisans and handicraftsmen a small proportion of the slaves received.
Each plantation was a more or less self-sufficient economy outside of its
major crop export and food import, and, therefore, required slaves with
each of the skills necessary to keep up the community. In the cities many
slaves worked in the commercial handicrafts. The artisan tradition was
passed on from person to person and usually did not require schools or the
teaching of the more general arts.®
After the Civil War there came a tremendous demand for education
in the South. Du Bois rightly points out that:
The uprising of the black man, and the pouring of himself into organized effort
for education, in those years between 1861 and 1871, was one of the marvelous
occurrences of the modern world; almost without parallel in the history of civiliza-
tion.^®
A significant number of Union soldiers stayed in the South to teach the
freedmen the ^‘three R’s.” They were immediately assisted by better
trained idealists—^largely Abolitionists from the North, especially from New
England.^^ Northern Negroes also came down to swell the number
of teachers. As soon as these front-rank teachers had given their pupils an
elementary education, the latter had no difficulty in finding positions as
teachers. Wages were low and living conditions poor for teachers, but
idealism was burning, and a rudimentary education spread.
The Freedmen^s Bureau did some of its most important work in establish-
* See Appendix 6.
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