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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ETD - Electronic Theses & Dissertations RAISING A NONVIOLENT ARMY: FOUR NASHVILLE BLACK COLLEGES AND THE CENTURY-LONG STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, 1830s-1930s By Crystal A. deGregory Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History May 2011 Approved: Professor Richard J. M. Blackett Professor Lewis V. Balwin Professor Gary Gerstle Professor Daniel H. Usner, Jr. Copyright © 2011 by Crystal A. deGregory All Rights Reserved To Dr. L.M. Collins, the embodiment of the HBCU teacher tradition; and Mr. August Johnson, for his ever-present example and encouragement. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without the Vanderbilt University History Department, whose generous support allowed me to write and research this dissertation. I am grateful to the College of Arts and Sciences in particular, for awarding this project Social Science Dissertation Fellowship for the 2007/8 academic year. Similarly, I am also deeply indebted to The Commonwealth of the Bahamas‘ Ministry of Education for awarding me Bahamas Government Graduate Student Scholarships 2008/9 and 2009/10, and grateful to its helpful staff, especially Ann Russell of the Freeport Department. Finally, I would like to thank the Lyford Cay Foundation of Nassau, Bahamas for its financial support via the Lyford Cay Foundation Graduate Student Scholarship during the 2009/10 academic year and Lyford Cay Educational Programmes and Alumni Affiars Director Monique A. Hinsey in particular who was a godsend. I sincerely thank my dissertation advisor Richard Blackett, affectionately dubbed ―King Richard,‖ for his belief in this project and my ability to complete it. For a multitude of reasons, many beyond my control, I undoubtedly tested the limits of his patience as he ushered this project to its completion. I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Lewis Baldwin, Gary Gerstle and Daniel Usner for offering their invaluable time and talents to this effort. I extend my endless thanks to Vanderbilt History Department‘s administrative assistants, Brenda Hummel, Jane Anderson, and Heidi Welch, all of whose help made this endeavor much easier. I am also eternally grateful to modern Civil Rights Movement scholar Cynthia Griggs Fleming for taking the time to read and respond to early drafts of this project. Thank you also to my PhD compatriots Marjorie Brown and O‘Brian Holden. I would like to thank the many librarians who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me amass the resources employed in this study. Special thanks to the staff of the John Hope and Aurelia Franklin Library at Fisk University, especially to Special Collections Archivist iv ―Aunt‖ Beth Howse and Jason Harrison. I am also grateful to Janet Walsh, formerly of the American Baptist College Library, Andrea Blackman of the Nashville Public Library, David Limpscomb Serials Librarian David Howard, and the staff of the Tennessee State University Library Special Collections, Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, National Baptist Archives, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Metropolitan Government Archives and Interlibrary Loan Department at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library. If it is rare that an author acknowledges his or her indebtedness to a chosen subject matter, it is one duty than I cannot rebuff. Fisk University has been helpful in ways almost unimaginable to me at the outset of my collegiate career. I return often to her hallowed grounds, where I feel the presence of those who came before me. As a member of the Fisk community, I have not only made lifelong friends, but gained a family and now belong to a rich legacy of extraordinary men and women who dared. It was while I was a student in the Fisk Department of History that I developed a love for history as a passion and profession. I will forever be indebted to its small-but-mighty faculty and above all to my mentor and Nashville ―mom‖ Linda T. Wynn, who shepherded my transformation from a restless 17-year old college freshman to the fledgling academician typing these words. Sankofa. I will never forget. There have been so many people on this journey who have helped in word, thought and deed and for their not so gentle pushing and prodding of me—I thank you all. Most obviously, I would like to thank my mother Wendy Saunders, ―mama‖ Pamela Saunders, godmothers Ann Moss and Elladee Russell, ―grandmothers‖ Joan Moss and Frances Thompson as well as my sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins-in-the-struggle—especially Bernadette Davis, Rokeish Wilson, Renee deGregory Reid, Kristy Rigby, Olive Wilson, Hervis Bain III, Marian McDonald and Lillie Bowman. I would also like to thank my extended loved ones, both biological and kindred—especially the Martin-Saunders, Coleman-Thompson-Turner, Smart-Evans-Malone, Williams, Francis, Johnson and Bagby families, the members of Spruce Street Baptist Church v and my Sorors of the Nashville Metropolitan Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. I may be among the pioneers in this regard, but I must thank my more than 2,000 Facebook friends for their near-constant presence—for better and for worse—during this process. And to all the Bahamians I know and love who have not seen me in several years—I know that the completion of this manuscript does little to ease the pain felt in the wake of my absence from many births, birthdays, weddings, graduations and funerals; but I hope this is a big step in the right direction. Finally, a very special thanks to those who now celebrate with me ―in the sky‖—my godmothers, the late Alice Alvira Hamilton Jackson and Miriam Martin and especially those who transitioned during the writing of this manuscript—cousins, the late Rozena Nesbitt, Tonia Moss- Roker, Jodi Martin and John Barr, brother, the late Dwight deGregory, and most of all, to my father, the late Harold Randolph deGregory, Sr., who I know is ―proud as a peacock.‖ vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ......................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................ iv INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... ix Chapter I. BEFORE BLACK ATHENS: BLACK EDUCATION IN ANTEBELLUM NASHVILLE .................................................................................................................. 1 I’ll Make a Way: Alphonso Sumner Lays the Groundwork for Black Education in Nashville .................................................................................. 4 Riding Out the Storm: Nashville’s Native Schools, 1838-1857 ........................ 9 Emancipation Changes Everything: How the Civil War Challenges Education By-and-For Black People ............................................................................. 15 Stony the Road We‘ve Trod: Nashville‘s Black School Teacher Tradition Redefines Impossibility ........................................................................................... 20 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 25 II. OF MISSIONARIES AND MISSION: THE FOUNDING AND MISSION OF NASHVILLE‘S EARLIEST BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ................ 27 Those Who Dared: Joseph G. McKee and the Coming of the Northern Missionary ................................................................................................... 30 A Worthy Mission: The Founding and Failure of Tennessee Manual Labor University .................................................................................................... 37 Founding Fisk: From Freedmen‘s School to Black College ..................................... 45 “Jubilee!”: The Jubilee Singers and Early Alumni .......................................... 53 Humble Beginnings: Founding Central Tennessee College ............................. 61 A Promise Kept: Meharry Medical College .................................................... 66 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 72 III. NEW, BUT NOT ―NEW‖ ENOUGH: THE SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK NASHVILLE IN THE NEW SOUTH........................................................................... 73 Learning the South a Lesson: Nashville as a New South City or Kansas as the Promise Land ............................................................................................................. 76 The Long Awakening: Nashville as ―Athens‖ of the New South .............................. 83 More of the Same: Ku Klux Klan Violence Terrorizes Tennesseans ........................ 88 Murder in Our Midst: The Case of Julia Hayden ...................................................... 92 Answering the Call: Du Bois and the Black Student ―Schoolmaster‖ .................... 101 Trouble on the Horizon: Signs of Student Unrest .................................................... 105 vii Daunting Realities: Black Nashville in Squalor ...................................................... 111 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 116 IV. IDEOLOGUES,