Black Teachers in the Jim Crow South Author(S): Adam Fairclough Source: the Journal of American History, Vol

"Being in the Field of Education and also Being a Negro...Seems...Tragic": Black Teachers in the Jim Crow South Author(s): Adam Fairclough Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jun., 2000), pp. 65-91 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2567916 Accessed: 31-12-2015 03:46 UTC

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This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "Beingin the Field of Education and so Being a Negro ... Seems... Tragic":Black Teachersin theJim Crow South

Adam Fairclough

"Teachers,you arethe shapers of thoughtand themolders of sentiment,not of this age and of thisgeneration alone, but of agesand generationsto come.You aremak- inghistory by thoseyou teach.... You are thefew that are mouldingthe masses." This ringingexhortation by Rev. G. M. Elliottto the 1888 meetingof theAlabama StateTeachers Association (ASTA) typifiedthe missionary fervor that teachers brought to theirwork in thenineteenth century. For blackteachers, education brought the added dutyof dispellingthe ignorance,immorality, and superstitionthat, many believed,slavery had bequeathedto therace-of leadingand elevatinga benighted people.Elliott, president of theASTA, reinforcedthe point the following year: "What theNegro in Americais to be, and whatthe Negro in Africais to be, and in short whatthe Negro in theworld is to be,we arecalled to be instrumentalin deciding."1 The peoplein theforefront of thestruggle for education played a criticalrole in defining,articulating, and advancingthe aspirationsof the race. Mass illiteracy among the freedmenmade teachersa naturalsource of race leadership,and the organizationof schoolshelped blacks define themselves as communities.Scholars

Adam Faircloughis professorof AmericanHistory at theUniversity of EastAnglia. He beganthis project during a fellowshipyear at theNational Humanities Center in 1994-1995. I wishto thankthe NHC and itsstaff for their kindness and generosity.The Universityof Leedsprovided paid leavefor part of thatyear. The financialsupport of theBritish Academy facilitated research in Nashville,Birming- ham,Tuskegee, and Jackson.Dave Bowmanof theUniversity of Texas,David Carltonof VanderbiltUniversity, and Tony Badgerof the Universityof Cambridgeprovided welcome invitations to tryout some of theseideas beforesympathetic audiences. I wishto thankthe LamarLectures Committee of MercerUniversity for inviting me to theircampus in November1999 to developsome of theseideas at greaterlength under the title "Teaching Equality:Black Schools in theAge of JimCrow." Glenda Gilmoreand theother, anonymous readers of theJour- nal ofAmerican History supplied critiques of the manuscriptthat proved helpful. The superblyefficient editorial staffof theJournal provided invaluable assistance in the preparationand revisionof the manuscript.David Thelen, formerlyeditor, offered detailed, constructive suggestions, as well as patientencouragement. Susan Armeny,the assistant editor, eliminated many a solecismand tookinnumerable rough edges off my prose. Readersmay contact Fairclough at [email protected].

i "Minutesof the SeventhAnnual Session of theAlabama State Teachers Association," April 11-13, 1888, box 30A, H. C. TrenholmPapers (Moorland-Spingarn Library, Howard University, Washington, D.C.); "Minutes of theEighth Annual Session of theAlabama State Teachers Association," April 10-12, 1889, ibid.

The Journalof American History June2000 65 This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 66 TheJournal of American History June2000 suchas BettyMansfield and JamesD. Andersonhave demonstrated the importance of blackteachers and blackinitiatives in foundingfreedmen's schools, redressing the overemphasisof previoushistorians on the workof northernwhite missionaries. Northern-educatedblacks such as JohnOliver, Thomas DeSaille Tucker,and John WesleyCromwell began teaching in themissionary schools of Union-occupiedVir- giniaas earlyas 1862. In thesame year Clement Robinson, a graduateof Lincoln University,set up Virginia'sfirst "normal school" for the trainingof black teachers.No soonerwas Savannahliberated than blacks formedthe Savannah EducationAssociation, which swiftly raised eight hundred dollars and founded severalschools. "It is whollytheir own," noted Rev. John W. Alvord."The officers of theAssoc. are all coloredmen. The teachersare all colored."In therural areas, black people organized"freedmen's schools" and "Sundayschools," acting inde- pendentlyof northernwhites. Black teachersoutnumbered white ones verysoon afterthe Civil War.2 When blackmen gained the vote, teachers provided political leadership. During Reconstruction,teacher-politicians such as ThomasW Cardozo,Jonathan C. Gibbs, and JamesWalker Hood rose high in the ranksof the Republicanparty. After Reconstructionblack teachers formed state associations that quizzed political candi- dates,lobbied state legislatures, and took positionson the leasingof convictsto privateemployers, temperance, and otherissues of the day.Teachers in the New South continuedto be involvedin partypolitics and some, such as CharlesN. Hunter,Ezekiel E. Smith,and RichardR. Wright,held federalpatronage jobs. Even afterdisfranchisement, black teachersstrove for, and oftenattained, posi- tionsof communityleadership. Along withministers, they enjoyed prestige and wieldedinfluence.3 The respectaccorded teachers reflected the highvalue thatblacks placed upon education.A determinationto acquireformal knowledge has been one of themost strikingfeatures of the black strugglefor equality. Slaves' clandestineefforts to understandthe written word, the establishmentof freedmen'sschools during and afterthe CivilWar, Booker T. Washington'scrusade for "industrial education," the school-buildingcampaign stimulated by the Rosenwald Fund, the fight for equaliza- tionand thenintegration of publicschools led by theNational Association for the Advancementof ColoredPeople (NAACP)-all werepart of a constantlychanging

2Betty Mansfield,"That FatefulClass: Black Teachersof Virginia'sFreedmen, 1861-1882" (Ph.D. diss., CatholicUniversity of America,1980), 80-102, 184-94; JamesD. Anderson,The Educationof Blacksin the South,1860-1935 (Chapel Hill, 1998), 4-19; JacquelineJones, Soldiers of Light and Love:Northern Teachers and GeorgiaBlacks, 1865-1873 (Athens,Ga., 1992), 75; RobertC. Morris,Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction:The Educationof Freedmenin theSouth, 1861-1870 (Chicago, 1982), 91; WilliamPreston Vaughan, SchoolsforAll.: TheBlacks and PublicEducation in theSouth, 1865-1877 (Lexington,Ky., 1974), 14-15. 3Morris, Reading,'Riting, and Reconstruction,103-8; "Minutesof theSeventh Annual Session of theAlabama StateTeachers Association"; "Minutes of the EighthAnnual Session of theAlabama State Teachers Association"; S. G. Atkinsto CharlesN. Hunter,Sept. 30, 1886, box 1, CharlesN. HunterPapers (Perkins Library, Duke Uni- versity,Durham, N.C.); JohnH. Haley, CharlesN. Hunterand Race Relationsin NorthCarolina (Chapel Hill, 1987), 34, 57; N. C. Newbold,Five North Carolina Negro Educators (Chapel Hill, 1939), 123-34; ElizabethRoss Haynes,"The BlackBoy of Atlanta"(1952), in ElizabethRoss Haynes,Unsung Heroes; The Black Boy of Atlanta; 'Negroesin DomesticService in theUnited States" (New York,1997), 387-402.

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M~~~~

ValenaC. JonesJunior High and NormalSchool, New Orleans,1930. Teacher VeronicaB. Hill, picturedwith elementary school students, was a dedicatedunion and civilrights activist. CourtesySpecial Collections, Earl K LongLibrary, University ofNew Orleans.

but constantlywaged struggle. In everyperiod of theirhistory in America,blacks knewthat literacy and learningwere essential to theirfreedom.4 In theeyes of manyhistorians, therefore, the connection between education and the black strugglefor equality has been crystalclear. Henry Allen Bullock,in a sweepinghistory of blackeducation published in 1967,argued that education functionedas themain lever "pushing the movement toward the complete emancipation of theNegro." In a morerecent study focusing on NorthCarolina, James L. Lelou- dis describedthe segregatedblack schools of the New South as "vitalbridges betweenthe freedom struggles of thelate nineteenth century and thoseof themid- twentieth."In short,the establishmentof schoolsand collegesand the continual raisingof standardsuplifted the race and pointedit in the directionof equality. Fromthis perspective, black teachers tilled the soil and plantedthe seedsof what

'On black appreciationof educationand its genesisin slavery,see BrooksDickens, "Negro Educationin NorthCarolina during Reconstruction," Quarterly Review of Higher Education among Negroes, 7 (Jan.1939), 2-6; Mansfield,"That FatefulClass," 1-52; Anderson,Education of Blacksin theSouth, 281-85; and Thomas L. Webber,Deep likethe Rivers: Education in theSlave Quarters,1831-1865 (New York,1978).

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 68 TheJournal of American History June2000 eventuallybecame a full-blownrevolt against segregation and discrimination:the civilrights movement.5 To equateeducation with black empowerment, however, invites numerous objec- tions.The mostobvious is thateducation did notstraightforwardly empower black southerners.For one thing,the development of blackeducation in theSouth was notcharacterized bylinear progress: it wasslow and haphazard, and things some- timeswent from bad to worse.In theearly twentieth century, for example, black schoolsfell even further behind the standard of white schools. That educational dis- paritieswidened after blacks lost the right to vote underlines the point: black political powerwaned even though black literacy had increased.As J.Morgan Kousser hasstressed, the fact that black schools improved is beside the point: "In the struggle forjobs, or, more broadly, for increased economic welfare, itis relative,not absolute, levelsof education that count." Unequal education perpetuated inequality.6 Duringthe GreatDepression, social scientists and blackintellectuals became increasinglyskeptical about the liberating effects of formaleducation. Surveys com- piled a grimpicture of schoolsbeing held in decrepitstructures-run-down churchesand ramshackleMasonic halls-that lacked adequate lighting, heating, toilets,and washing facilities and even such basic items as desksand tables. In such placesa loneteacher, usually a youngwoman with less than half a year'straining pasthigh school, struggled with classes of as manyas seventy-fivechildren spread overeight grades (the average class size in 1928-1929was forty-seven).7 In a one-teacherschool in MaconCounty, Georgia, the sociologist Arthur Raper askeda childnamed Booker T. WashingtonWilliams for whom he was named. Nei- therhe norany of theother pupils knew. Even the teacher could not identify BookerT. Washington.In 1939,while researching An AmericanDilemma, the Swedisheconomist Gunnar Myrdal "hardly believed his eyes and his ears" when he questionedthe students in a similarschool. "No onecould tell who the President of theUnited States was or even what the President was.... No onehad heard of the NAACP." Askedabout the Constitution of theUnited States, "all remained in solemn silence,until one bright boy helped us out,informing us that it was 'a newspaperin Atlanta."'Schooling was often "so perfunctoryand meaningless," one reportcon-

I HenryAllen Bullock, A Historyof Negro Education in theSouth: From 1619 tothe Present (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), vii-ix; JamesL. Leloudis,Schooling the New South:Pedagogy, Self and Societyin NorthCarolina, 1880- 1920 (Chapel Hill, 1996), 228. See also MichaelR. Heintze,Private Black Colleges in Texas,1865-1954 (College Station,1985), 11-13, 170; JamesM. McPherson,The AbolitionistLegacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP (Princeton,1995), 392-93; JoeM. Richardson,Christian Reconstruction: TheAmerican MissionaryAssociation and SouthernBlacks, 1861-1890 (Athens,Ga., 1986); and Anderson,Education of Blacks in theSouth, 279-85. 6J. Morgan Kousser,"Progressivism-For Middle-Class Whites Only: North Carolina Education,1880- 1910,"Journal of Southern History, 46 (May 1980), 190. See also Horace Mann Bond, TheEducation of the Negro in theAmerican Social Order(New York,1934), 169-71; Louis R. Harlan,Separate and Unequal:Public School Campaignsand Racismin theSouthern Seaboard States, 1901-1915 (Chapel Hill, 1958), 259-66; and Leon F. Lit- wack,Trouble in Mind: BlackSoutherners in theAge ofJim Crow (New York,1998), 101. 7 Bond, Educationof theNegro in theAmerican Social Order,274; StateDepartment of Education,Alabama, "Reportof a Surveyof Wilcox CountySchools, 1929-1930," box 1, series12-6-14, Division of NegroEduca- tion,Georgia Department of Archivesand History(Atlanta, Ga.); FredMcCuistion, The South's Negro Teaching Force:A BriefStudy (Nashville, 1931), 6-8, 23-24.

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In the1930s one-teacher schools housed in churches, like this one in Gee's Bend, Alabama,outnumbered the Rosenwald schools. Social scientistsquestioned their educational value. CourtesyLibrary of Congress.

cluded,"that most of thechildren cannot be said to havebeen touched by anyreal educationalinfluence whatever."8 Assessingthe shortcomings of themissionary schools of Reconstruction,Bertram Wyatt-Brownhas argued that "Americanpedagogy at midcenturywas totally unsuitedto the ruraland penuriouscharacter of blacklife." In the 1930s the dis- juncturebetween schooling and sharecroppingremained equally sharp. "Having no relationto lifeor itsneeds," wrote Charles S. Johnson,"education has no meaning beyondthe luxury of form."Studying rural schools in six cottoncounties scattered acrossthe South, Johnson concluded that for many black children education was a confusing,disturbing, alienating experience. Poorly prepared teachers, harsh pun- ishments,rote learning,and a lifelesscurriculum promoted "maladjustment" to

8 ClarkForeman, Environmental Factors in NegroElementary Education (New York,1932), 40; ArthurE Raper, Prefaceto Peasantry: A Taleof TwoBlack Belt Counties(New York,1968), 334; GunnarMyrdal, Richard Sterner, and ArnoldRose, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and ModernDemocracy (2 vols.,New York,1944), II, 902-3; JohnSimon, "Program in RuralEducation," 1935, box 12-6-62,Division of NegroEducation, Georgia Departmentof Archivesand History.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 70 TheJournal of American History June2000 school and inhibited"proper personality development." Small wonderthat many childrenleft school at theearliest opportunity.9 A second objectionto education-as-empowermentconcerns the fundamental characterof thesocial order in theUnited States: Even when blacks improved their positionrelative to whites,educational gains did notlead to commensurateeconomic and politicalgains. Starting in the1940s, black and white schools in theSouth moved steadilytoward equalization; yet even as thegap closed,blacks remained politically powerlessand sufferedsystematic job discrimination.By 1965 black schoolshad achievednear parity with white schools in percapita spending, teachers' salaries, and lengthof schoolterms. But young black men were still earning 30 percentless than youngwhite men. As Samuel Bowles and HerbertGintis argued in theirclassic 1976 studySchooling in CapitalistAmerica,echoing a conclusionreached by Horace Mann Bond and W E. B. Du Bois thirtyyears earlier, "Education . . . has never beena potentforce for economic equality."10 A thirdobjection to education-as-empowermentreflects the basic dilemmathat confrontedall black southernersduring the Jim Crow era: the need to appease whiteswhile still maintaining personal dignity and racialloyalty. Teachers experienced thatpressure in a particularlyacute manner,because, unlike black ministers, they dependedupon white support, both political and financial,in orderto do theirjobs. Schoolimprovements had to be achievedthrough supplication and persuasionrather than negotiationand pressure.The role of teachersas racialdiplomats, therefore, madeit hard for other blacks to regardthem with unalloyed respect. On theone hand, teacherswere admired for their selfless dedication; on the otherhand, some blacks resentedthe privileged status that whites accorded teachers and wondered where their ultimateloyalty lay. In additionto respect,teachers evoked cynicism and distrust. The positionof black teachersas communityleaders was thereforedeeply ambiguous-some would say fatallycompromised. Stranger and Alone,a 1950 novelby J. Saunders Redding, offered a chillingportrait of a blackteacher devoid of idealism,racial loyalty, and spiritualstrength; mentored by the cynical, corrupt presidentof a blackstate college, he betrayedNAACP members-fellow teachers-to the whitesuperintendent. Critics of teachersreserved their sharpest barbs for black col- legepresidents. Where such men "have taken over as leadersof Negrocommunities," observedRedding, "there rises a nauseatingreek of deviousand oilyobsequiousness. It is a kindof fascismin reverse."Lewis K. McMillan,who taughthistory at South CarolinaState College, complained that in a blackcollege, "the president is usually

I BertramWyatt-Brown, "Black Schoolingduring Reconstruction," in The Webof SouthernSocial Relations: Women,Family, and Education,ed. WalterJ. FraserJr., R. FrankSaunders Jr., and JonL. Wakelyn(Athens, Ga., 1985), 154; CharlesS. Johnson,"The CulturalEnvironment of the Negro Child and Its EducationalImplica- tions,"Feb. 15, 1939, folder5, box 160, CharlesS. JohnsonPapers (Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.); CharlesS. Johnson,Growing Up in theBlack Belt: Negro Youth in theRural South (New York,1967), 128-34. 10Ronald E. Ferguson,"Shifting Challenges: Fifty Years of EconomicChange towardBlack-White Earnings Equality,"Daedalus, 124 (Winter1995), 42-46; SamuelBowles and HerbertGintis, Schooling in CapitalistAmer- ica: EducationalReform and theContradictions ofEconomic Life (New York,1976), 8, 35; Bond, Educationof the Negroin theAmerican Social Order,12-13; W E. B. Du Bois, "Outlineof Reporton EconomicConditions of Negroesin theState of Texas,"Prairie View Bulletin, 27 (Nov. 1935), 97-98.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BlackTeachers in the Jim Crow South 71 an ignorantautocrat" who "standsa surerchance of keepinghis job to the extent thathe is hostileto thebest interests of hisown people."'" In exploringthe efforts of blackteachers, moreover, it is importantto acknowl- edge a fourthobjection, or qualification,to theeducation-as-empowerment thesis: gainsfrom education were rarely clear-cut. Establishing connections between educa- tionalchange and socialchange is alwaysdifficult; almost every educational strategy hasentailed conflicts, costs, and compromises.Determining what constituted progress in theeducation of blacksis an especiallyvexing question. The emergenceof an all-blackteaching force in the South'ssegregated public schools illustratesthe problem.Even beforethe Civil War ended, manyblacks expresseda strongpreference for teachers of theirown race.It cameas somethingof a shockto theAmerican Missionary Association (AMA), forexample, when it entered Savannahupon theheels of Gen. WilliamT. Sherman,to findthat blacks resisted theoffer of northernwhite teachers. In lettersfrom across the South, the Freedmen's Bureauheard similar reports: "They want a coloredteacher." After Reconstruction blackspushed hard to haveall whiteswho wereteaching in theblack public schools replaced.By 1919,when Charleston finally acceded, the campaign for black teachers had achievedits goal throughout the South. The displacementof whiteteachers repre- sentedan economicgain forblacks and reflecteda healthydesire for community autonomy.According to therenowned black teacher Richard R. WrightSr., it was an educationalgain too, for white teachers employed pedagogical methods ill-suited to the"mental, moral and physicalconstitution" of blacks.The problemwas accen- tuatedwith southern-born whites, who, according to thepioneer black teacher John W Cromwell,were too imbuedwith the "false and wickedideas" bred by slavery safely to instructblack children.12 Yet thedeparture of whiteteachers was a mixedblessing. In the ruralareas, the preferencefor black teachersoften represented a bendingto the wishesof local whites,who hatedthe "Yankeeschoolmarms" but would toleratesouthern blacks whomthey felt more able to controlor intimidate."They have had a schoolhouse burntby having a whiteteacher to teachthem," reported a Freedmen'sBureau officer fromFayetteville, Tennessee. A blackteacher "would meet the approbationof the communityat large."In thecities, where southern whites had occupiedthe sought- afterteaching positions, their departure often caused white taxpayers and administra- torsto lose interestin blackschools, leading to a declinein support.Some believed thatthe loss of whiteteachers lowered the quality of blackpublic schools. 13 In citiessuch as New Orleansand Charleston,Creoles and mulattoes,descen- dantsof the freeNegroes of antebellumtimes, often preferred private denomina-

l J. SaundersRedding, Stranger and Alone.A Novel(New York,1950); J. SaundersRedding, On BeingNegro in America(New York,1964), 67; LewisK. McMillan,"Negro Higher Education as I Have KnownIt," Journal of NegroEducation, 8 (Jan.1939), 14-15. 12JuneOdessa Patton,"Major RichardRobert Wright Sr. and Black HigherEducation in Georgia,1880- 1920" (Ph.D. diss.,University of Chicago,1980), 273; Mansfield,"That FatefulClass," 344. 13George F Bowlesto D. Burt,Nov. 22, 1866 (microfilm:T142, reel47), SelectedRecords of theTennessee FieldOffice of theFreedmen's Bureau, 1865-1872, RG 105 (NationalArchives, Washington, D.C.).

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 72 TheJournal of American History June2000 tionalschools that retained white teachers. Catholic schools and American Missionary Associationschools tended to becomehavens for the lighter complexioned and the betteroff. "I knewonly emerged or emergingclasses when the aim was to follow thewhite cultural pattern," recalled Lura Beam,who taughtat the AMIASGregory Institutein Wilmington,North Carolina, in theearly part of thetwentieth century. "The lowesteconomic group -the 'armsand legs'folks, who had onlysimple farm- ingskills-I neverknew at all." The differencebetween the public schools and the privateschools helped to perpetuatea long-standingclass/ color division. 14 Speechpatterns widened this gulf between the classes. Some blackswanted white teachers,explained a Freedmen'sBureau official, because "they want to learnto pro- nounceand speaklike white persons." Yet thosewho learnedto "speakcorrectly," recalledRichard Wright Jr., were "sometimes ridiculed and called'proper' or 'white folksy."'When educatedteachers went back into the country,they could barely communicatewith theirpupils and neighbors."The people don'tknow enough wordsfor a fellowto carryon a conversationwith them," complained the teacher and futurenovelist Charles W. Chesnutt."He mustreduce his phraseologyseveral degreeslower than that of the firstreader." Wright believed that educated blacks oftenlost influence with the masses by belittling vernacular dialect.15 In the ruralareas, black teachers sometimes replaced whites only to findthem- selvesat loggerheadswith black preachers. Ministers had oftenled theopposition to whiteteachers. Keen to establishtheir independence from white-controlled denom- inations,they resented whites who disparagedblack religious worship as ignorant, superstitious,and overemotional.In 1869 Rev.F. W. Morrisejected a whiteteacher fromhis churchin Staunton,Virginia, and took overthe classes."You don'tneed anyNorthern teachers," he toldthe congregation, "let your own peopleteach you." But thechurch's success in extendingits influence over schools did not alwayspro- duce happyresults. Charles P. Adams, who foundedthe school in northernLouisiana thatbecame Grambling University, contended for years against bitter opposition fromBaptist ministers who sponsoreda rivalschool. Denominational rivalries also encouragedcash-strapped churches to spreadthemselves too thin,resulting in dupli- cationand unnecessarycompetition. Secular-minded educators such as BookerT. Washington-whocharged that "a verylarge number of our coloredministers are morallyunfit"-complained that "denominational prejudice" hampered the efforts of professionallytrained teachers to developan efficientschool system. 16

4 Edmund L. Drago, Initiative,Paternalism, and Race Relations:Charleston's Avery Normal Institute (Athens, Ga., 1990), 130-34; JohnB. Alberts,"Black Catholic Schools: The JosephiteParishes of New Orleansduring the JimCrow Era" (M.A. thesis,University of New Orleans,1990); Lura Beam,He Called Themby the Lightning: A TeachersOdyssey in the Rural South,1908-1919 (Indianapolis,1967), 3-4. Some Louisiana school boards adopteda semiofficialpolicy of supportingseparate public schools for Creoles of color. 15 C. J. C. Drake to Burt,Dec. 6, 1866 (microfilm,reel 47), SelectedRecords of theTennessee Field Office of theFreedmen's Bureau; Richard R. WrightJr., 87 Yearsbehind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography(Philadelphia, 1965), 31-32; RichardBrodhead, ed., TheJournals of CharlesW Chesnutt(Durham, 1993), 82. '6Mansfield,"That FatefulClass," 251-56; MildredD. G. Gallot,A Historyof GramblingState University (Lanham,1985), 12-28; BookerT. Washington,"Extracts from an Addressin Birmingham,"Jan. 1, 1900, in The BookerT WashingtonPapers, ed. Louis R. Harlan et at. (14 vols.,Urbana, 1972-1989), V, 394; BookerT. Wash- ington,"Extracts from an Addressin Brooklyn,"Dec. 8, 1907, ibid.,IX, 417-20; BookerT Washington,"A SpeechDelivered before the Women's New EnglandClub," Jan. 27, 1890, ibid.,III, 417-20.

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Washingtonhimself personified both the ambiguous character of teachers'lead- ershipand the elusivenature of educationalprogress. Whether the benefitsof his AtlantaCompromise outweighed the costs is an issuethat divided blacks then and perplexeshistorians now. Critics argue that Washington's stress on "industrialeducation,"even when viewed in the mostfavorable light, represented an approachto social changethat was almostglacial in its gradualism.Most blacksin the South bothvalued education and understoodthe need for other forms of collectiveeffort. Yetby treating education as a panacea,by abjuringprotest, and bydenigrating politics,Washington offered a fundamentallyunrealistic program of racialadvancement. Even as an economicprogram, industrial education failed. Moreover, Washington did littleto disabusehis corporateand southernwhite backers of the notionthat industrialeducation entailed the acceptanceby blacksof second-classcitizenship. Most whiteshappily accepted the proposition that education would "solvethe race problem"if it meantthe continuation of whitesupremacy. By Washington's death in 1915 itwas painfullyclear that the appeasement of southernwhites had done littleto softenracial discrimination. 17 Yetif education,in theshort term, produced neither political empowerment nor liberationfrom Jim Crow, in the long termit contributedto both.Campaigns to establishand sustainblack schools fostered a senseof community,diminished illiteracy, and helped nurturethe hope of equality.Moreover, in the cities-which depression-decadeinvestigators, obsessed with the plight of farmtenants and share- croppers,tended to overlook-schools steadilyimproved. Meanwhile black colleges,state and private,educated many of the men and womenwho led struggles againstdiscrimination, racial violence, and second-classcitizenship. Perhaps,as Diane Ravitchhas suggested,criticism of industrialeducation and unduestress on the disparitiesbetween black schools and whiteschools obscure a moreimportant point: "Blacks were more often oppressed by the education they did not receivethan by theeducation they did receive."Regardless of curriculumand irrespectiveof how farblack schools lagged behind white ones, education could not butencourage discontent over the oppressions of Jim Crow. Simple but telling is the

17Ronald E. Butchart,Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction:Freedmen's Education, 1862- 1875 (Westport,1980); Donald Spivey,Schoolingfor the New Slavery:Black Industrial Education, 1868-1915 (Westport,1978); ElizabethJacoway, Yankee Missionaries in theSouth: The Penn School Experiment (Baton Rouge, 1980); JamesD. Anderson,"Education as a Vehiclefor the Manipulationof BlackWorkers," in Technologyand Education:Dissenting Essays in theIntellectual Foundations of American Education, ed. WalterFeinberg and Henry Rosemont(Urbana, 1975), 15-40; Bond, Educationof theNegro in theAmerican Social Order,404-10; Horace Mann Bond,Negro Education in Alabama: A Studyin Cottonand Steel(Washington, 1939), 290; Harlan,Separate and Unequal;Louis R. Harlan, BookerT Washington:The Makingof a BlackLeader, 1856-1901 (New York, 1972); Louis R. Harlan,Booker T Washington:The Wizardof Tuskegee,1901-1915 (New York,1983); JohnH. Stanfield,Philanthropy andJim Crow in AmericanSocial Science (Westport, 1985); KarenJ. Ferguson, "Caught in 'No Man's Land': The Negro CooperativeDemonstration Service and the Ideologyof BookerT. Washington, 1900-1918," AgriculturalHistory,72 (Winter 1998), 33-54; Kousser,"Progressivism-For Middle-Class Whites Only,"169-94; RobertG. Newbyand David B. Tyack,"Victims without 'Crimes': Some HistoricalPerspectives on BlackEducation," Journal of Negro Education, 40 (Summer1971), 192-206; LesterC. Lamon,"Black Public Educationin theSouth, 1861-1920: ByWhom, for Whom, and underWhose Control?,"Journal of Thought,18 (Fall 1983), 76-89; Emma Lou Thornbrough,"Booker T. WashingtonAs Seen by His WhiteContemporaries," Journalof Negro History, 53 (April1968), 161-82.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 74 TheJournal of American History June2000 factthat black newspapers, famously outspoken in therevelation and castigationof racialprejudice, achieved record circulation during World War II, preciselywhen therate of blackliteracy approached 90 percent.As GunnarMyrdal argued in 1944, "thelong-range effect of the risinglevel of educationin the Negropeople goes in thedirection of nourishingand strengtheningthe Negro protest."18 Despitethe repressive nature of Jim Crow, therefore, teachers worked for equality throughindirect methods. After Redemption and disfranchisementdestroyed black politicalinfluence, open challengesto whitesupremacy were futile and dangerous. But even in the South of JamesK. Vardaman,Coleman Blease,and EugeneTal- madge,education was a sphereof quasi-politicalactivity that whites were prepared to tolerate,albeit with suspicion. While accommodatingto the outwardforms of whitesupremacy, teachers engaged in institutionbuilding, professional organization, and social activismto promotedemocracy and equal opportunity.Viewed in this light,the accommodationist strategy of Washingtonand hisfollowers takes on a dif- ferentmeaning. As a methodof raisingthe status of blackeducation, it was a quali- fiedsuccess. Through skillful racial diplomacy, Washington fended off the threat that disfranchisementmight cause the destructionof black public schoolsalto- gether.His advocacyof industrialeducation also helpedto untiethe purse strings of bothnorthern philanthropists and southernwhite taxpayers. Washington's gradual- istpolicies struck many black southerners as a sensible,pragmatic strategy for secur- ingand strengtheningblack schools. 19 In some cases,it was onlyby stressingindustrial education that blacks acquired state-supportedhigher education. Such was the case, forexample, with Tennessee StateAgricultural and IndustrialNormal School, founded in 1909. Indeed,William JasperHale, itslong-serving president, once fendedoff the threat of closureby call- ing upon the assembledstudents to standup if theytook agriculture.To the dis- comfitureof thewhite trustees-who were complaining that the college had departed fromits original purpose-the entirestudent body rose to itsfeet.20 For all his economicand politicalconservatism, Washington stoutly defended blackhumanity and neverrenounced the ultimate goal of equality.His lettersand speeches,the sociologist and educatorCharles S. Johnsonconcluded in 1949, "show thathe envisionedcomplete political, social, and economicequality for Negroes." The Tuskegeeethic of hardwork, self-improvement, and Christianvirtue was apo- liticaland individualistic.Yet that ethic, Washington insisted, would "give the lie to theassertion of his enemiesNorth and Souththat the Negro is theinferior of the whiteman." Such statements explain why many white southerners never abandoned theirsuspicion of Washington.Their hystericalreaction to Washington'sdinner

18 Diane Ravitch,The Revisionists Revised: A Critiqueof the Radical Attack on theSchools (New York,1978), 67; Lee Finkle,Forum for Protest: The Black Press during World War II (Rutherford,N.J., 1975), 51-52; Myrdal,Amer- icanDilemma, 881. 19 Donald J. Calista,"Booker T. Washington:Another Look," Journal of Negro History, 49 (Oct. 1964), 240- 55; VirginiaL. Denton,Booker T Washingtonand theAdult Education Movement (Gainesville, 1993), 139-42. 20 LesterC. Lamon,"The TennesseeAgricultural and IndustrialNormal School: PublicHigher Education for BlackTennesseans," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 32 (Spring1973), 42-58; LorenzoJ. Greene, Selling Black His- toryfor Carter G. Woodson:A Diary,1930-1933, ed. ArvarhE. Strickland(Columbia, Mo., 1996), 80.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BlackTeachers in the Jim Crow South 75 withPresident Theodore Roosevelt contained a basicinsight: as an Arkansasschool superintendentcomplained, the episodebetrayed Washington's "deep down antip- athyto whitesupremacy."'21 Thus eventhe restricted education advocated by Washington heightened blacks' consciousnessof theirminority status and implicitlychallenged Jim Crow. White southernersremained suspicious of black educationfor precisely that reason. As CharlesS. Johnsoninsisted, the white Southfailed to constructa true"caste system" becauseblacks never accepted the legitimacy and permanencyof whitesupremacy, makingthe Jim Crow regime inherently unstable. Hence blackteachers made a crucial contributionto thestruggle for racial equality during the age of segregation.The imageof theblack teacher as UncleTom or racetraitor is a grotesquestereotype.22 Disfranchisement,of course,clouded the whole conceptof black leadership. Afterblack politicians were abolished, southern whites came to regardblack educa- torsas acceptablerepresentatives of the black community. Teachers figured promi- nentlyin the work of the Commissionon InterracialCooperation, founded in 1919,which opposed racial violence but not segregationor disfranchisement.May- orsand governorsoften appointed teachers to advisoryboards and committees.Yet teacherswere "leaders"and "representatives"of dubious validity. Nobody elected them,not evenin the limitedsense that Baptist churches selected their preachers. Teacherswere dependent, either directly or indirectly,upon politiciansand officials who insistedupon blackacquiescence in whitesupremacy. Washingtonestablished a degreeof autonomyfor Tuskegee Institute by building up a largeprivate endowment. Yet the survivalof his collegedepended upon the supportof Alabama'swhite leaders, and Washingtontook care to cultivategood relationswith them. State-supported black colleges, however, had farless independence.As thedisfranchisement movement swept across the South, the tenure of the menwho headedthose institutions became precarious in theextreme. E. L. Black- shearof PrairieView College,Texas, was dismissedfor being on thewrong side of the temperancequestion. Thomas DeSaille Tucker,president of FloridaColored NormalSchool, was firedfor appointing too manynorthern teachers who, allegedly, sneeredat "southerninstitutions" and instilledin theirstudents contempt for "the agriculturaland industriallife of therace." Richard R. Wright,Republican politico and longtimepresident of GeorgiaState Industrial College in Savannah,found the deteriorationin racerelations so oppressivethat he quitthe South in disgust.23 Conformingto the humiliatingetiquette of whitesupremacy, black educators

21 CharlesS. Johnson,review of BookerT Washington:Educator and InterracialInterpreter by Basil Matthews, MississippiValley Historical Review, 36 (June1949), 158; Washington,"A Speechbefore the Philosophical Lyceum of LincolnUniversity," April 26, 1888, in BookerT WashingtonPapers, ed. Harlan et al., II, 442; ElizabethL. Wheeler,"Isaac Fisher:The Frustrationsof a NegroEducator at BranchNormal College, 1902-1911," Arkansas HistoricalQuarterly, 41 (Spring1982), 43. 22Charles S. Johnson,"Democracy and Social Controlin Race Relations,"1942, folder15, box 160, Johnson Papers. 23 GeorgeR. Woolfolk,Prairie View: A Studyin Public Conscience,1878-1946 (New York,1962), 108-98; GilbertL. Porterand LeedellW. Neyland,History of theFlorida State Teachers Association (Washington, 1977), 43-46; RaymondWolters, The New Negroon Campus:Black CollegeRebellions of the1920s (Princeton,1975), 194-97; Haynes,Unsung Heroes, xxxi, 475.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 76 TheJournal of American History June2000 resortedto flatteryand guile in dealingwith whites who possessedmoney and power.The annualopen daysat blackcolleges, for example, became legendary for theirexcesses in pamperingwhite visitors; politicians and trusteeswere treated to mouth-wateringfeasts, elaborate entertainments, and fawningattention. "Toadying"secured results but exacted psychic costs. At one openday in the1930s, studentsat KentuckyState College refusedto takepart in a tableauthat required themto wearbandannas while pretending to pickcotton. Even the singing of spiri- tualscame to be regardedas demeaning.Isaac Fisher,traveling with the Tuskegee Institutequartet on a fund-raisingtour, complained that whites wanted them to accompanytheir singing with shouts and moans,asking them to "'playthe Nigger' theirown words-more." When thewhite philanthropist George Foster Peabody complainedthat the Hampton Institute choir neglected the spirituals on a tourof England,Robert R. Moton, Washington'ssuccessor at Tuskegee,explained that manyblacks "look withsuspicion on Negro melodies."Of course,it was not the songsthemselves that offended, but thecontext in whichthey were sung. In 1926 Hamptonstudents initiated a proteststrike by refusingto singspirituals in frontof a visitingBritish colonial official.24 In theDeep South,especially, black teachers went to greatlengths to obtainwhite protectionand approval.Principals of privateschools prevailed upon local bankers, planters,and merchantsto serveas trustees.Laurence C. Jones,who foundedthe famousPiney Woods School in Mississippiin 1909 and headedit forsixty years, "wascareful to heed thewill of hiswhite friends, seeking their advice and sanction frequentlyand stayingaway frompolitics." His habit of donningwork overalls wheneverhe visitedstate officials in Jacksonspoke for itself. Later, when the civil rightsmovement challenged segregation, Jones could always be reliedupon to assure whites,"I likethings the way they are."25 The principalsof blackpublic high schools enjoyed even less room for maneuver. Few in number,especially before 1940, theyand theirinstitutions were completely dependentupon whitefinancial support. Moreover, because whites eyed black high schoolswith suspicion, superintendents kept their principals -accessibly located in the townsand cities-undercareful scrutiny. In Charleston,South Carolina, the school board"closely monitored the black principals' work [and] their after-school activities," writesthe scholarEdmund Drago. Elsewhere,superintendents and school board membersoften treated black principals as chauffeurs,gardeners, repairmen, and errand boys.They "asks you to do things,"a Louisianaprincipal told Horace Mann Bond, "andit's right that you shoulddo it.They give you your job. The othernight I was

24 Leon Litwack,Trouble in Mind,83-85; LesterC. Lamon,Black Tennesseans, 1900-1930 (Knoxville,1977), 103; GeraldL. Smith,A BlackEducator in theSegregated South: Kentucky' Rufus B. Atwood(Lexington, Ky., 1994), 100- 112; Isaac Fisherto BookerT. Washington,Oct. 23, 1899, in WashingtonPapers, ed. Harlan et al., V, 242; RobertR. Moton to GeorgeFoster Peabody, Oct. 10, 1918, folder163, box 24, RobertR. Moton Papers(Hollis BurkeFrissell Library, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Ala.); Wolters,New Negroon Camnpus,230-75. 25AlferdteenB. Harrison,Pine), Woods School: An Oral History(Jackson, 1982), 109, 116; ArnoldCooper, BetweenStruggle and Hope: FourBlack Educators in theSouth, 1894-1915 (Ames,1989), 51-62; PrentissHead- light,"The 'LittleProfessor' of PineyWoods Speaks,"April 2, 1959, unidentifiednewspaper clipping, folder 9/19, MississippiState Sovereignty Commission Files (MississippiState Archives, Jackson, Miss.).

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BlackTeachers in the Jim Crow South 77 got up at 2 o'clockin themorning doctoring on one of theschool board member's horses." School superintendentsalso expectedblack principalsto keep them apprisedof whatwas goingon insidethe Negro community.The factthat most principalswere men (mostblack teachers were women) mayhave increasedtheir susceptibilityto whitepressure.26 Nevertheless,black teachers retained respect and influence.For one thing,a con- tinuingpattern of black voluntarismbolstered the relationshipbetween teacher, school, and community.Most black schools and collegesbegan life as private projects,with churchesproviding buildings, farmers land, parentsmoney, and teacherslifetimes of serviceand sacrifice.Even when schools received private philan- thropyand somestate funding, they continued to dependupon the voluntary contri- butionsof patronsand theheroic efforts of teachers.The fivethousand Rosenwald schoolsthat were erected between 1917 and 1932-the vastmajority of themelemen- taryschools-could nothave been built without an enormouscommunity effort. The moneyallocated by theJulius Rosenwald Fund itselfconstituted "less than the total raisedby the Negroes themselves in smallamounts, county by county and village by village."Parent-teacher associations (PTAs) thenraised money to buysupplies, pay for fuel, extendthe school year, and evenpurchase school buses. The anthropologistHortense Powdermaker,studying the blackcommunity of Indianola,Mississippi, marvelled at thePTAs' "indefatigable... efforts[to] maintain and improvethe schools."27 Giventheir huge material and humaninvestment in theirschools, blacks came to treasurethem. The Rosenwaldschools were monuments to blackachievement and symbolsof blackhopes for the future.The schoolsalso functionedas community centers,providing nondenominational meeting places in whichBaptists and Meth- odistscould both feelcomfortable; reaching out to adultsby offeringclasses in health,homemaking, agriculture, and literacy. In ruralareas the annual "school closing" exercise-"speeches,orations, plays, drills, monologues, and singing"-constituted themost important community celebration of theyear.28 Black teachersin the ruralSouth werenot all heroicpioneers in the mold of

26 Drago, Initiative,Paternalism, and Race Relations,177; Horace Mann Bond and JuliaW. Bond, The Star CreekPapers: Washington Parish and theLynching ofJerome Wilson, ed. Adam Fairclough(Athens, Ga., 1997), 43 - 45. HenryAllen Bullock, "Availability of PublicEducation for Negroes in Texas,"Prairie View Bulletin, 29 (Nov. 1937), 48-51; "Florida:Some Data on Principalsin Negro Schools, 1952," box 1, series12-6-14, Division of Negro Education,Georgia Department of Archivesand History.Men accountedfor about four-fifthsof black principals,one-fifth of all blackteachers. Ibid. 27 Butchart,Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction,169-72; JamesD. Anderson,"Ex-Slaves and theRise of UniversalEducation in theNew South,1860-1880," in Educationand theRise of theNew South, ed. RonaldK. Goodenowand Arthur0. White(Boston, 1981), 1- 10; HortensePowdermaker, After Freedom: A CulturalStudy in theDeep South(New York,1968), 310; Edwin R. Embree,Julius Rosenwald Fund: A Reviewto June30, 1928 (Chicago, 1928), 2.6;Nathan C. Newbold,"Negro Education," 1930, box,1,Special Subject Files, Divisionof NegroEducation, Department of PublicInstruction (North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.); CharlesS. Johnson,The Negro Public Schools: A Social and EducationalSurvey (Baton Rouge, 1942), 30. Blacks provided17% of the moneyto build RosenwaldSchools, the RosenwaldFund itselfonly 15%. The restcame fromtax funds (64%) and "whitefriends" (4%). Anderson,Education of Blacks in theSouth, 153. 28 "WashingtonParish," folder 1, box 225, CharlesS. JohnsonPapers; Horace Mann Bond and JuliaW Bond, "A Descriptionof WashingtonParish," Horace Mann Bond Papers,ed. JohnH. BraceyJr. (microfilm, 98 reels, UniversityPublications of America,1988), reel 30, pt. 2; Leloudis,Schooling the New South,204-6; Dorothy RedusRobinson, The Bell Rings at Four:A BlackTeachers Chronicle of Change(Austin, 1978), 22-23.

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29W. T. B. Williamsto T. E. Rivers,July 8, 1920, box 6, W. T. B. WilliamsPapers (Frissell Library); Powder- maker,After Freedom, 316-17; Robinson,Bell Ringsat Four,39-42; MichaelFultz, "African American Teachers in theSouth: Powerlessness and theIronies of Expectationsand Protest,"History of Education Quarterly, 35 (Win- ter1995), 418.

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Help was usuallyfreely given, for the teacher, often the only literate person in the community,and one expectedto performa varietyof extracurriculartasks, com- mandedrespect and affection.Recalling his workin eastTexas in the early1930s, Robinsonwrote, "I was askedto teachSunday school, write orders to Searsand Roe- buck,write letters, and figureup weeklywages. It neveroccurred to me to refuse theirvaried requests. . . . I becamenot merelythe children'steacher but also the community's,and everyonereferred to me as 'ourteacher.' "30 A. C. Facin,who headedMineral Springs School in OuachitaParish, Louisiana, typifiedthe kind of teacherthat Washington praised: college graduates "who go into lonelydesolate districts with little hope of gettingsalaries . . . and givethemselves in thisbeautiful manner to theuplift of ourpeople." During his ten years as principal, Facin leveledthe sitefor the new three-teacherRosenwald school, added a home economicsroom, built his own house,organized canning clubs, and developeda schoolfarm that included a gristmill and vehiclerepair shop. In 1933 the school made $118 fromthe sale of twobales of cotton enoughto payfor a secondhand piano,fix broken windows, and replacemissing doorknobs. In his earlydays Facin contendedagainst jealousy, lack of cooperation,and outrightthreats from parents who wereangered by the corporal punishment he inflictedon theirchildren. Faced withpressures that might have destroyed his effectiveness,Facin enlisted the aid of thelocal mailrider, "one mean white man," to visitthe families who had threatened himand "sortout" the problem.31 Such resourceful,unorthodox tactics typified the double-edgednature of black leadershipin thisperiod. John J. Coss, a boardmember of theRosenwald Fund and a professorof philosophyat ColumbiaUniversity, was struckby the "roundabout fashionin which by various subterfuges Negro education has been improved." Teachers whosucceeded in breakingdown white prejudice against black education were "almost miracles,"thought Coss, for they "have come through the state of thedespised or toler- ated,been subject to condescension,and stillhave kept their steady goodness without bitterness."He citedthe example of WilliamM. Hubbard,principal of a two-year normalschool in Forsyth,Georgia. "Slow, soft-spoken, plodding but patientand humbleand belovedby manyof thewhite town folks," Hubbard was particularly adeptat cultivatingthe principal of a whiteBaptist girls' college. He senthis boys to do odd jobs at thecollege, and, in return,received periodic donations of dog-eared booksand worn-outequipment. Behind their ingratiating facade, however, men such as Hubbardwere often astute diplomats, who used theirconnections with northern supporters churchboards, philanthropic foundations, and wealthyindividuals to manipulatestate officials and leverageincreased funding.32

30Robinson, Bell Rings at Four,14, 45. 31 BookerT. Washington,"Extracts from an Addressat CarnegieHall," Feb. 23, 1909, in WashingtonPapers, ed. Harlanet al., X, 51; EstelleMassey Riddle, "The MineralSprings School," 1934, folder 1, box 335,Julius Rosenwald FundPapers (Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee); Estelle Massey Riddle, "The MineralSprings Community," ibid. 32JohnJ. Coss, "Some Notes on Educationin SoutheastGeorgia," June 15-19, 1936 (microfilm:reel 333), RosenwaldFund Papers(Amistad Research Center, Tulane University); Williams to W. R. Farrand,Jan. 3, 1912, box 5, WilliamsPapers; Jackson Davis to JohnC. Dixon, Oct. 24, 1933, box 1, series12-6-62, Division of Negro Education,Georgia Department of Archivesand History;Willard Range, The Rise and Progressof Negro Colleges in Georgia,1865-1949 (Athens,Ga., 1951), 184-88.

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Through"diplomacy and machinations,"wrote the Tuskegee sociologist Lewis W Jones,the black high school principal often prized additional funds from skeptical whites."When he wantedto developa band or an athleticteam he exploitedlocal pride.His appeal forsupport . . . was thatthe good whitepeople of Sandusky couldn'tafford to let thoseof neighboringBelltown provide better for their Negro school." Many a principalalso exploitedthat old standby,the Negro spiritual. ArthurHarold Parker, who createdBirmingham, Alabama's Industrial High School, the most famousblack high school in the South, assiduouslycultivated the city schoolsuperintendent, John Herbert Phillips, who, like manyother whites, could be movedto tearsby hearing"those plaintive, tuneful and soul stirringmelodies." On one occasion,Parker recalled, Phillips lamented that if thehigh school got an orchestrainstructor, the young people might forget the slave songs. "You will get an instructorof orchestraon one condition,"the superintendent promised, "and that is thatyou will always sing these old songs."33 If teachershad to do theirshare of bowingand scraping,blacks rarely con- demnedsuch roleplaying so long as theyconsidered it beneficialto theinterests of the community.Hortense Powdermaker was astonishedto see how a college- educated teacherin SunflowerCounty, Mississippi "a strongself-respecting person"-transformed herself into "the essence of meekness"in frontof herwhite superintendent.Afterward, with a cynicalchuckle, the teacherexplained to the anthropologisthow by "actingproper" she securedbooks, equipment, playgrounds, and betterwages for black teachers. Blacks understood these facts of life."She was admiredand likedby all theNegroes," Powdermaker recalled.34 Insidethe classroom, teachers enjoyed greater freedom of speechand actionthan one mightexpect. For one thing,it was rareto see a whiteperson in a blackpublic school.The teachingforce was entirelyblack, and whitesuperintendents, especially in the ruralSouth, rarely visited black schools. Dorothy Robinson recalled that in the 1930s,"I was a ratherfree agent and did justabout what I wantedto do, as long as I did not ask foranything that would entailthe expenditureof money."That whitesregarded black women as lessthreatening than black men may also havecon- tributedto therelative freedom enjoyed by teachers, for at leastthree-quarters of all blackteachers were females.35 The factthat superintendents often delegated administration to a Jeanesteacher increasedthe de factoautonomy of blackschools. The Jeanesteachers, nearly all of them women,were paid by the Anna T. JeanesFund to promote"industrial education" includingcooking, sewing, and basketmaking in ruralschools. Yet

33 LewisW. Jones,Cold Rebellion: The South's Oligarchy in Revolt(London, 1962), 128; MarshallFred Phillips, "A Historyof thePublic Schools in Birmingham,Alabama" (M.A. thesis,University of Alabama,1939), 111-13; ArthurHarold Parker,'A Dream That Came True"'Autobiography ofArthur Harold Parker (Birmingham, 1932), 57-58. 34Hortense Powdermaker, Stranger and Friend:The Way of an Anthropologist(New York,1966), 144, 148-49. 35 Robinson,Bell Rings at Four,33; Leloudis,Schooling the New South,187; GlendaElizabeth Gilmore, Gender andJimCrow: Women and thePolitics of WhiteSupremacy in NorthCarolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1996), 157-58.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BlackTeachers in the Jim Crow South 81 these"supervising industrial teachers," to givethem their official title, soon outgrew theirWashingtonian job description.They hiredand firedteachers, lobbied school boards,organized public healthcampaigns, set up PTAs, and establishedhome- makersclubs. Sometimesfeared, usually respected, they acted as informalsocial workersand generalproblem solvers.36 The philanthropicfoundations persistently complained that the Jeanes teachers had becomeall-around administrators rather than promoters of "industrialeducation." Only foundationbureaucrats, however, clung to the dogmaticbelief that blackschools should specialize in somethingcalled "rural education." Black teachers and blackparents resisted the notion that children should be educatedto stayon the farm.They knew all too well thatagriculture was a dead end. One surveyof black schoolchildrenasked the sons of farmersto statetheir preferred careers: only 8 per- centchose farming. When highschool students in Louisianawere questioned, the boyswanted to be teachers,doctors, aviators, ministers, mail clerks, carpenters, and lawyers;the girls aspired to be teachers,nurses, beauticians, seamstresses, stenogra- phers,and musicians.37 Blacksperceived a highschool education and, evenmore, a collegeeducation as meansof escapingthe poverty, cultural isolation, and politicaltyranny of thesouth- erncountryside. In the 1930s,when 250 studentsat LivingstoneCollege in Salis- bury,North Carolina, returned a questionnaireon theirintended occupations, not one choseagriculture. Even at theso-called land grantcolleges, only about 10 percentof studentstook classes in agriculture.The factthat black aspirations had so far outdistancedwhite expectations was due, at leastin part,to blackteachers. As the presidentof the North Carolina black teachersassociation pointedly asked of NathanC. Newbold,the white head of thestate's Division of NegroEducation: "Is it to be thepolicy to confineNegroes to certainoccupations . . . or is it to be the Americanpolicy to bothallow and encouragetheir participation in all of theoccu- pationalphases of thenational life?"38 Whileproclaiming their support for "industrial education," black teachers quietly and steadilyraised academic standards. In 1908, forexample, Sam HustonCollege in Austin,Texas, boasted courses in sewing,millinery, dressmaking, cooking, house-

36 Gilmore,Gender andJim Crow, 161-65; Leloudis,Schooling the New South,188-91, 201-4; Lance G. E. Jones,The Jeanes Teacher in the UnitedStates, 1908-1933 (Chapel Hill, 1937); Williamsto ArthurD. Wright, Oct. 16, 1935, folder14, box 23, Phelps-StokesFund Papers(Schomburg Center for Research in BlackCulture, New YorkPublic Library,New York,N.Y.); "EcologicalSurveys: Avoyelles Parish," folder 3, box 225, Johnson Papers;Estelle Massey Riddle, "Political Structure [Lincoln Parish, Louisiana]," 1934, folder1, box 334, Rosen- wald Fund Papers;Estelle Massey Riddle, "Mrs. E. M. Riddle'sReport," 1934, folder1, box 335, ibid. 37 Fultz,"African American Teachers in the South,"402; JamesSimon, "Negro Trade Schools and StateCol- leges,"1936, folder11, box 127, RosenwaldFund Papers;"Program in RuralEducation," 1935, box 1, series12- 6-62, Departmentof NegroEducation, Georgia Department of Archivesand History;Jones, Jeanes Teacher in the UnitedStates, 111 - 12; ThomasJesse Jones to Rossa B. Cooley,March 13, 1929, folder1014a, box 133, Moton Papers;Johnson, Growing Up in theBlack Belt, 194-98; Johnson,Negro Pu blic Schools, 152-59. 38 R. Clyde Minor to NathanC. Newbold,April 16, 1934, box 1, Special SubjectFiles, Division of Negro Education,Department of PublicInstruction, North Carolina State Archives; J. W. Seabrookto Newbold,April 22, 1934, ibid. So poor wererural schools, and so greatwas the desirefor education, that many black families migratedto the citiesso thattheir children could attendhigh schools; Ambrose Caliver, A BackgroundStudy of NegroCollege Students (Westport, 1970), 68-75.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 TheJournal of American History June2000 keeping,and printing.Instead of glorifying"political harangues, opera house speeches, and constitutionalamendments," the college proclaimedthe need for "prayer, patience,quiet demeanor,and a spiritof good will." Fiveyears later Sam Huston advertiseda collegecourse, insisting, "We musthave prophets, priests, seers, poets, philosophers,artists, physicians, [and] orators."In Georgia,Rev. Joseph W. Holley persuadedlocal whitesto supportthe Albany Bible and Manual TrainingInstitute, foundedin 1903, bypromising to turnout well-traineddomestic servants and effi- cientfarm laborers. By 1927 Holley'sschool was a state-supportedcollege with a three-yearliberal arts program. Even the exemplars of "industrialeducation," Hamp- ton Instituteand TuskegeeInstitute, added college-levelcourses in the 1920s. Southernstate education officials actually encouraged the raising of academicstan- dardsby setting higher qualifications for teachers.39 Even in the state-fundedcolleges of the South,black administrators retained a largedegree of controlover the curriculum. As KennethR. Warlickdiscovered when he studiedNorth Carolina, most college presidents were moderates rather than con- servativesand forthrightlyinsisted that blacks should receive exactly the same kind of educationas whites.F. D. Bluford,for example, consistently favored the liberal arts,retained Latin and Greekin theface of whitecarping, and transformedNorth CarolinaA&T intothe state's fourth-largest college and one of the bestblack col- legesin the nation."Conformity and conservatism. . . proveddifficult to guaran- tee,"Warlick concluded, even when whites controlled the purse strings.40 Blackteachers used organizationand research,not just flatteryand dissembling, to pressthe case forequal opportunity.The Journalof NegroEducation and the QuarterlyJournal of HigherEducation for Negroes, both establishedin the 1930s, documenteddisparities between black and whiteschools, pushed for higher standards,and sponsoredconferences where teachers could engagein politicaldebate, hearingand interrogatingthe likes of W E. B. Du Bois,Walter White, and RalphJ. Bunche.In additionto theirstate associations, black teachers formed several national associations,with different constituencies but overlapping memberships, that amplified theircollective voice. The mostimportant, the American Teachers Association, culti- vatedthe philanthropicfoundations, criticized racism in textbooksand Hollywood films,promoted the teachingof Negro history,and soughtrecognition from the NationalEducation Association. The Associationof Collegesand SecondarySchools forNegroes worked to haveblack schools accredited by thewhite education associations,asking that black schools be ratedon exactlythe same basis as whiteinstitutions. 41

39Anderson,Education of Blacksin theSouth, 108-9, 273-75; Sam Huston College,Bulletin, Jan. 19, 1908 (microfilm:reel 132), GeneralEducation Board EarlySouthern Programs: Texas (Perry-CastanedaLibrary, Uni- versityof Texas,Austin); Sam HustonCollege, Weekly Bulletin, July 18, 1913, ibid.;Jackson Davis, "Sam Huston College,"Nov. 2, 1916, ibid.;Williams to JamesE. Gregg,Jan. 24, 1919, WilliamsPapers; Moton to Williams, May 27, 1919, ibid.;Gregg to graduatesof HamptonInstitute, June 10, 1920, ibid.;Williams to G. S. Dickerson, July8, 1920, ibid.; George P. Phenixto Williams,Dec. 14, 1925, ibid.; W. T. B. Williams,"Is TuskegeeJust AnotherCollege?" Journal of Educational Sociology, 7 (1933), 173-74. 40Kenneth R. Warlick,"Practical Education and theNegro College in NorthCarolina, 1880-1930" (Ph.D. diss.,University of NorthCarolina, 1980), 401-9. 4 In 1904 blackteachers formed the National Association of NegroTeachers, renamed the National Associa- tionof Teachersin ColoredSchools in 1907 and theAmerican Teachers Association in 1937. A parallelorganiza-

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The growthof blackhigher education-the numberof blackcollege students increasedfrom 12,000 in 1928 to 37,000 in 1941-constituted one of themajor achievementsof black teachers.Although students still chafedunder Victorian codesof conduct,the very frequency of studentstrikes from the 1900sto the 1940s suggeststhat the blackcolleges, far from being tyrannies, were safe environments whereyoung people could challengeconstituted authority. If collegeswere hardly the "modelsof democracy"that the Morehouse College sociologist Walter Chivers calledfor, they were oases of freedomcompared to thesurrounding society. Inside theclassrooms, students and professorsdiscussed politics, economics, sociology, history,and literature.(Chivers, who taughtMartin Luther King Jr., even offereda coursetitled "Karl Marx and theNegro.") In bothprivate and publiccolleges, stu- dentscould hear visiting speakers such as JamesWeldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, KellyMiller, Walter White, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Blackcolleges fostered the South- ernNegro Youth Congress (SNYC), whichheld its 1942 conferenceon thecampus of TuskegeeInstitute. Fred Patterson, Tuskegee's president, served as an adviserto the SNYC-duringits lifetime (1937-1949), one of themost important and mostradi- cal civilrights organizations.42 Throughthe Negro history movement, initiated by Carter G. Woodson,teachers directlyaddressed the position of blackpeople in America.In somestates and cities, Negrohistory was added to theschool curriculum. During Negro History Week in New Orleans,for example, children in gradesone througheleven read poemsby blackauthors, heard stories about black heroes, learned about Louisiana's free people of color,and consideredthe current economic status of Negroes.Even in itsmost dilutedform, Negro historyencouraged children to celebrateblack achievements and promotedracial consciousness.When Angela Davis attendedBirmingham's CarrieA. Tuggleelementary school, "Black identity was thrustupon us." She learned aboutFrederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and HarrietTubman; she thrilled to the wordsof James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice and Sing,"the "Negro National

tionof coloredparent-teacher associations appeared shortly thereafter. The presidentsof blackstate colleges began meetingin 1901; in 1923 theyformed the Association of NegroLand-Grant Colleges. Seven years later the Asso- ciationof Collegesfor Negro Youth made itsdebut (renamed the Association of Collegesand SecondarySchools in 1934). 1947 saw the organizationof theNational Conference of StateTeachers Associations. See Thelma D. Perry,History of theAmerican Teachers Association (Washington, 1975), 42; Woolfolk,Prairie View, 236-37; LelandStanford Cozart, A Histoiyof the Association of Collegesand SecondarySchools (Charlotte, 1965), 2-7; and MelanieCarter, "From Jim Crow to Inclusion:An HistoricalAnalysis of theAssociation of Collegesand Second- arySchools for Negroes" (Ph.D. diss.,Ohio StateUniversity, 1996). In one or two southerncities, notably New Orleans,teachers formed unions affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. 42 Doug McAdam,Political Process and theDevelopment of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago,1982), 93, 102; WendellGrant Morgan, "A Surveyof the Social ScienceOfferings in NegroColleges, 1935-1936," Quar- terlyReview of HigherEducation among Negroes, 2 (1936), 169-79; JohnA. Hardin,Fifty Years of Segregation: BlackHigher Education in Kentucky,1904-1954 (Lexington,Ky., 1997), 52; Neil R. McMillen,Dark Journey: BlackMississippians in theAge ofJim Crow (Urbana, 1990), 100; LeedellW. Neylandand JohnW. Riley,The His- toryof Florida Agricultural and MechanicalUniversity (Gainesville, 1963), 142; JohnettaRichards, "The Southern NegroYouth Congress: A History"(Ph.D. diss.,University of Cincinnati,1987), 17-32, 40-41, 49-56, 95- 107, 137-47. WalterChivers was, according to David J. Garrow,King's "favorite sociology professor"; see David J. Garrow,Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JrA, and theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955-1968 (New York,1986), 637n23.

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Anthem,"which the school sang at everyassembly. "I alwayssang the last phrases fullblast: 'Facing the rising sun, till a new day is born,let us marchon tillvictory is won!' "14 The simplestand safestmethod of politicaleducation was to celebratethe Amer- icanideal of democracy.In proudstatements of purpose,black high schools echoed the beliefof philosopherJohn Dewey-by 1940 familiarto virtuallyall college- trainedteachers, black and white-that thefundamental aim of theschool was to prepareits membersfor democratic living. The "Philosophyof HuntingtonHigh School,"Newport News, Virginia, drafted in the 1930s byLutrelle F. Palmer,struck a shrewdbalance between criticizing segregation and appearingto acceptit: we musttake frankly into account that the school serves a segregatedand under- privilegedpeople who havenot yet been admitted to fullcitizenship.... It would be a seriousmistake to shutour eyesto theseconditions in developinga curriculum forNegro children.... The coreof theHuntington High School'sphiloso- phyis an unshakablefaith in democracy.... In developinga curriculumhere as a vehiclefor the growth of thepupils, we mustalways work within the framework of thisdemocratic ideal. Such rhetoricwas completelyin tunewith the idealismof the period.The New Deal had redefinedgovernment in termsof helpingthe common man and promot- ing equality.Public education, declared the State of Tennessee,was essentialto the survivalof democraticsociety. "Every child in Tennesseeis entitledto an equal edu- cationalopportunity with that of everyother child in thestate." By the 1940s,black teacherswere winning the ideological argument.44 All theevidence, however, suggested that whites in theSouth would not concede equalityof opportunityin practice.The strugglefor racial equality demanded a directconfrontation with white officialdom, a head-on challenge of thekind advo- catedby the NAACP. Manydoubted that teachers would rise to thatchallenge. "They have becomewell knownin recentyears for their lack of convictionon public issues,"lamented the journal of theblack teachers association in Texas.Despite the veryreal risks, however, many teachers did join theNAACP. Teachersheaded branches in Hampton,Virginia; St. Petersburg,Florida; Dallas, Texas; and High Point,North Carolina.Teachers made up a fifthof the NAACP'Smembers in Savannah,Georgia. Many moreteachers expressed support for the NAACP throughtheir state associations.In the early1940s, aftermuch internalstruggle, the teachersassociations

43 GeorgeLonge, "The Studyof the Negro,"Crisis, 43 (Oct. 1936), 304, 309; RobertL. Cousins to James Simon,March 29, 1935, box 1, series12-6-62, Division of NegroEducation, Georgia Department of Archives and History;A. H. Parker,"Negro Pupils Plan Programs,"Nations Schools, 23 (April1939), 45; AngelaDavis, AngelaDavis: An Autobiography(New York,1988), 90-91. On Woodson and the Negro historymovement in general,see AugustMeier and ElliottRudwick, Black History and theHistorical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana, 1986), 7-62; and JacquelineGoggin, Carter G. Woodson:A Lifein BlackHistory (Baton Rouge, 1993). 44Aaron Brown,"An Evaluation of theAccredited Secondary Schools for Negroes in theSouth" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Chicago,1944), 60-64; TennesseeState Planning Committee, Program for Public Education in Ten- nessee(1936), box 411 (microfilm:reel 39), TennesseeDepartment of Education,RG 92 (TennesseeState Archives,Nashville, Tenn.).

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agreedto finance and support lawsuits, to be litigatedby the NAACP, challengingdis- criminatorysalary scales that awarded white teachers far better pay.45 Theircampaign for pay parity required black teachers to sue their employers and to confrontwhite officials in federalcourtrooms. It also meant rejecting the pater- nalismof thewhite state agents of Negroschools who, because they were paid by theRockefeller-funded General Education Board, were far more helpful to blacks thanmost other state officials. Black teachers worked closely with these men, often involvingthem in thedetailed planning of associationaffairs. The NAACP'S confron- tationalapproach also riskedalienating the northern philanthropic foundations, whichpreferred the gradualism of theCommission on InterracialCooperation. It thustook courage for black teachers to throwin theirlot with the NAACP: theywere puttingtheir jobs on theline. Those who did so bitterly(but usuallyprivately) denouncedthe traditionalists as "Uncle Toms," "pimps," "stool pigeons," and "'yes,yes' whitefolks men." Yet even in Mississippi, most teachers backed the NAACP's strategy.46 The salariescampaign, eventually successful throughout the South, forged an alli- ancebetween black teachers and the NAACP. In Louisiana,the Colored Teachers Asso- ciation(later the Louisiana Education Association) financed all theeducation suits litigatedby the NAACP LegalDefense and Educational Fund ("Inc. Fund"). Similar alliancesformed in NorthCarolina and elsewhere.Moreover, for every dollar that blackteachers sent to theAmerican Teachers Association, the Inc. Fund received ten cents.Although limited in scope, the salary equalization suits constituted the opening salvoof a legalbattle that in 1954 producedthe NAACP's mostimportant victory, Brownv. Board of Education. But the litigation also illustrated some of the risks of tak- ingwhite officials to court.Irate school boards fired many of theplaintiffs and dis- missedseveral teachers' leaders, including Lutrelle F. Palmer,president of theState TeachersAssociation of Virginia,and Noah W. Griffin,his counterpart in Florida.47

15Vernon McDaniel, Histowyof the State TeachersAssociation of' Texas(Washington, 1977), 43; Ralph J. Bunche,"The Programs,Ideologies, Tactics, and Achievementsof Negro Bettermentand InterracialOrganiza- tions,"1939, pp. 115-18, 121-22, 131-32 (microfilm:2 reels),Carnegie-Myrdal Papers (Schomburg Center); Notes of GeorgiaNAACP meeting,July 16, 1955, folder19, box 33, JohnW. Davis Papers(Moorland-Spingarn Library);Adam FairClough,Race and Democracy:The CivilRights Struggle in Louisiana,1915-1972 (Athens,Ga., 1995), 88. M. H. Gassawayof Anderson,South Carolina, provides an earlyexample of a teacherbeing exiled for leadinga branchof theNational Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP). "ModernExiles," Crisis,19 (Dec. 1919), 70-72. 46 MarkV. Tushnet,The NAACPs LegalStrategy against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill, 1987), 58-65, 77-81, 88-104; Dixon to Superintendents,Sept. 20, 1932, box 1, series12-6-62, Division of Negro Education,Georgia Department of Archivesand History;Guy Wellsto Dixon, Oct. 19, 1932, ibid.;Walter T. J. DempseyJr. to Dixon, Nov. 10, 1932, ibid.;James L. Grantto RobertL. Cousins,March 11, 1941, box 3, series 12-6-71,ibid.; Cousins to Grant,Feb. 26, 1941, ibid.; Leslie Perry,"Visit to MississippiState Teachers Confer- ence,"Nov. 4, 1944, memoto WalterWhite and ThurgoodMarshall, in Papersof theNational Association for the Advancementof ColoredPeople, ed. JohnH. BraceyJr., Sharon Harley, and AugustMeier, part 3: Campaignfor EducationalEquality, series B, LegalDepartment and CentralOffice Records, 1940-1950 (microfilm,19 reels,Uni- versityPublications of America).Mrs. B. D. McDaniel to White,Sept. 29, 1944, ibid.; "WalterChivers Says- Attention,Again, Georgia Teachers," Atlanta Daily World,March 12, 1941; Fairclough,Race and Democracy,63. In Georgiathe white director of Negroeducation, John C. Dixon, helpedsave the state teachers' association from collapseduring the depths of thedepression. 47J. RupertPicott, History of theVirginia TeachersAssociation (Washington, 1975), 110-20; GilbertL. Porter and LeedellW. Neyland,Histoiy of theFlorida State Teachers Association (Washington, 1977), 64-65; Fairclough, Race and Democracy,62-63, 71; RaymondGavins, "The NAACP in NorthCarolina during the Age of Segrega- tion,"in New Directionsin CivilRights Studies, ed. ArmsteadL. Robinsonand PatriciaSullivan (Charlottesville, 1991), 105-25; Perry,History of the Azerican TeachersAssociation,263-64.

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When theNAACP won itsfirst courtroom victories against racial discrimination in education,black teachers in the South finallygained some real bargainingpower. Alarmedby the prospectof court-orderedintegration, governors appointed com- missionsto considerways of improvingpublic schools.Action soon followed. Assistedby tax revenues generated by thepostwar boom, state legislatures appropri- ated substantialsums to replacewooden schools with brick buildings and to build blackhigh schools where none had existedbefore. In Louisianathe per capita sum allocatedto black childrenincreased from $16 to $116 between1940 and 1955, from24 percentof theamount spent on whitechildren to 72 percent.South Caro- lina earmarkeda $75 millionbond issue and a 3 percentsales tax forequalizing blackschools. In 1950 evenMississippi started an ambitiousschool-building program.College presidents used the threat of integrationto gainadditional resources. JamesE. Shepardsaw the budgetof North Carolina State College grow from $23,000 in 1934-1935 to $171,000ten years later. Louisiana gave Southern Univer- sitya law school.Florida gave Florida A&M graduateprograms in pharmacy,nurs- ing,and education.Texas finally gave its black citizens a university-two,in fact.48 Black teachersnow linkededucation and equalitywith a new explicitness.An exchangewithin the Governor'sCommittee on HigherEducation for Negroes in Alabamarevealed the determination of blackteachers to pressthe issue. When the committeediscussed "providing adequate education for Negroes," the blackmem- berscontended that "adequate" meant "equal." The whitesmembers demurred. "I would not say equal," said one. "Thereis no way to getyour complete equality," agreedanother. H. C. Trenholmof AlabamaState College refusedto concedethe argument."But the law says[what is] availableto one shouldbe availableto all.... The Statehas a moralobligation to provideit in someway."49 The NAACP'S decisionto abandonequalization for integration involved a strategic decisionto attackJim Crow at whatappeared to be itsmost vulnerable point. Given its (virtually)consistent opposition to legallyimposed segregation, the decision was entirelyconsonant with the organization's basic philosophy. As WalterWhite put it, segregationwas "economicallyunsound and . .. worksagainst the development of mutualrespect and understanding."Moreover, given the centralrole of JimCrow laws in perpetuatingracial discrimination, it is difficultto see how blacksin the Southcould have destroyed white supremacy without attacking segregated schools.50 Still,the shiftfrom equalization to integrationproduced profound misgivings amongblack educators. Du Bois arguedthat "most Negroes would prefera good schoolwith properly paid coloredteachers, to forcingchildren into white schools

48 TrumanM. Pierceet al., WVhiteand NegroSchools in theSouth: An Analysisof Biracial Education (Englewood Cliffs,1955), 164-78; Numan V. Bartley,The New South,1945-1980 (Baton Rouge, 1995), 148-51; August M. BurnsIII, "GraduateEducation for Blacks in NorthCarolina, 1930-1951," Journalof SouthernHistory, 46 (May 1980), 195-218; MichaelL. Gillette,"Heman L. Sweatt:Civil RightsPlaintiff," in BlackLeaders: Texansfor TheirTimes, ed. AlwynBarr and RobertA. Calvert(Austin, 1985), 170; Neylandand Riley,History of Florida Agriculturaland MechanicalUniversity, 250-64; Fairclough,Race and Democracy,109. 49"Transcript of Meetingof theSub-Committee of Governor'sCommittee on HigherEducation for Negroes in Alabama,"March 12, 1949,Trenholm Papers. 50Whiteto AnsonPhelps Stokes, Nov. 2, 1939, folder11, box 31, Phelps-StokesFund Papers.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BlackTeachers in the Jim Crow South 87 whichmet them with injustice and discouragedtheir efforts to progress."And he predictedthat "if anyoutside power forced white and coloredchildren in thesame schools,the result would be turmoiland uprisingas would utterlynullify the pro- cessof education."He was correcton thesecond point, and probablyright about thefirst. Moreover, many blacks, especially in theDeep South,viewed their schools and collegeswith pride; built at greatpersonal cost, they provided jobs, leadership, and communityfacilities. For black southerners, integration was a leap in thedark.5' The NAACP promisedto do everythingin itspower to preventteachers from being intimidatedand dismissed,but it was uncompromisingin itsview that the elimina- tionof segregatedschools should take priority over the career interests of blackeducators.Thousands of blackteachers might indeed lose theirjobs whenintegration occurred;in highereducation, said White,"colored people . . . mustbe willingto giveup theirlittle kingdoms." As theNAACP lawyerWilliam Ming put it,"there are fatalitiesin all social change."Such statementswere hardly likely to reassureblack teachers.Moreover, the integrationof the Universityof Louisvillein 1950, which led to theclosure of LouisvilleMunicipal College and thedismissal of fiveof itssix teachers,was not a happyprecedent. Fred Pattersonwarned that black teachers wouldnot greetintegration with "a waveof enthusiasm."After Brown, recalled the formerNAACP lawyerConstance Baker Motley, the association met "unspoken oppo- sitionto racingin thereand gettingthe schools desegregated." Moreover, by 1956 repressivestate laws caused black teachers to resignen massefrom the NAACP.52 The strengthof blackfaith in educationand theabsence of blackpolitical leadershipin theage of segregationmeant that the aspirations of therace fell heavily upon theshoulders of teachers.Yet as MichaelFultz has noted,"No othergroup of Afri- can Americanprofessionals . . . receivedso muchpublic criticism by membersof theirown race for their alleged failings." As thecivil rights movement unfolded, crit- icismsof blackteachers multiplied.53 The NAACP was angeredwhen black state colleges devised Jim Crow graduate programs,even afterthe Browndecision; it was annoyedand frustratedby black teachers'lack of enthusiasmfor school integration.The studentsit-in movement feltbetrayed by the black college presidents who bowedto segregationistpoliticians and expelledstudent leaders. The reportsof civilrights organizations were peppered with complaintsthat black schoolteachersfailed to support protestsagainst segregation-youngcivil rights workers routinely dismissed them as "themost Uncle Tom grouparound." Many activists concluded that education had becomedivorced

51 W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essaytoward an Autobiographyof a Race Concept(New York,1940), 20 1; W. E. B. Du Bois, "A Philosophyof Race Segregation,"Quarterly Review of Higher Education for Negroes,3 (1936), 190-92. 52WalterWhite, "Some TacticsWhich Should SupplementResort to the Courtsin AchievingRacial Integra- tionin Education,"Journal of Negro Education, 21 (Winter1952), 340; "NegroTeachers and theElimination of SegregatedSchools," ibid., 20 (Spring1951), 135-39; untitleddiscussion, ibid., 21 (Winter1952), 302; RufusB. Atwood,"The PublicNegro College in a RaciallyIntegrated System of HigherEducation," ibid., 352-63; F. D. Patterson,"The PrivateNegro College in a RaciallyIntegrated System of HigherEducation," ibid., 363-69; Jack Bass, "Interviewwith Constance Baker Motley," June 21, 1979, p. 73, JackBass Oral HistoryCollection (Law Library,Tulane University, New Orleans). 53 Fultz,"African American Teachers in theSouth," 416.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 TheJournal of American History June2000 fromits original goals of democracy,equality, and socialuplift, that teachers had becomea self-interestedclique of middle-class professionals.54 Suchjudgments find confirmation in a largebody of historicalscholarship that rejectsthe education-as-empowerment thesis,arguing that the schooling provided forblack southerners was too inadequate and misguided to have decisively advanced thestruggle for equality. As IdusA. Newbyconcluded after studying South Caro- lina,black schools and colleges tried to inculcateconservatism and conformity: The civilrights movement took place despite them, not because of them.Historians of thecivil rights movement have acknowledged the influence of individualteachers butdownplayed the role of teachers in general.John Dittmer thus wrote of Missis- sippi,"As a group,black teachers in the 1 950s refused to take a stand,and the move- mentof the early sixties passed them by."55 GlennEskew's recent study of civilrights activism in Birmingham,Alabama, supportsthe notion of a fundamentaldiscontinuity between institution-building effortsduring the age of segregationand the anti-institutional protests of thecivil rightsmovement. Eskew noted that the indigenous protest movement led byRev. FredL. Shuttlesworthbetween 1956 and 1963,the Alabama Christian Movement forHuman Rights (ACMHR), drewits support from a handfulof black ministers and a smallbut loyal following of predominantly working-class black people. When the ACMHR and theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), led byMartin LutherKing Jr., launched the protests that rocked the nation in 1963,they found thebulk of the black middle class arrayed against them. When SCLC organizer James Bevelurged children at ParkerHigh School to join in thedemonstrations, principal R. C. Johnsonlocked the school gates in a futileeffort to stopthem. In short,the civilrights movement represented a sharp break with the past-a repudiationof existingblack leadership rather than an extensionof it.56 Nevertheless,the discontinuity argument should not be pushedtoo far. The soci- ologistDoug McAdamhas pointed to theimportance of blackcolleges, along with churchesand the NAACP, inproducing the black insurgency of the civil rights movement.The historianRobert J. Norrell showed the crucial importance of Tuskegee Institutein shapingcivil rights activism in Tuskegee,Alabama. In his studyof Greensboro,North Carolina, William Chafe explored the role of schoolsand col- legesin nurturinga democratic spirit that influenced the generation of 1960.57

54 MiriamFeingold to Folks,Aug. 19, 1963, reel2, MiriamFeingold Papers (microfilm, State Historical Soci- etyof Wisconsin,Madison, Wisc.). Similarcriticisms of teachersare scattered throughout the records of theStu- dentNonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the NAACP. "5Wyatt-Brown,"Black Schoolingduring Reconstruction," 146-63; Butchart,Northern Schools, Southern Blacks,and Reconstruction,9, 53-54, 166-67; Spivey,Schoolingfor the New Slavery;I. A. Newby,Black Carolin- ians:A Historyof Blacks in SouthCarolina from 1895 to 1968 (Columbia,S.C., 1973), 82-94, 102-11, 258-73; JohnDittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi(Urbana, 1994), 75. 56 GlennT. Eskew,But for Birmingham: 'The Local and NationalMovements in theCivil Rights Struggle (Chapel Hill, 1997). 57 McAdam,Political Process and theDevelopment of BlackInsurgency, 100-103, 120-39; RobertJ. Norrell, Reapingthe Whirlwind: The CivilRights Movement in Tuskegee(New York,1986), ix-x; WilliamH. Chafe,Civili- tiesand CivilRights. Greensboro, North Carolina, and theBlack Struggle for Freedom (New York,1981), 20-24.

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The menand womenwho led theracial revolution of the 1950s and 1960s often testifiedto theinspirational influence of theirteachers. Occasionally, those teachers werewhite people, reminders of thegreat northern crusade, launched during Recon- struction,to educatethe freedmen.Rosa Parksattended Montgomery Industrial Schoolfor Girls, a privateinstitution staffed by elderly white women. "What I learned best,"she remembered,"was that I was a personwith dignity and self-respect,and I shouldnot set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black."Shuttles- worth,who attendeda smallelementary school in Oxmoor,Alabama, in the 1930s, derivedthe same kindof inspirationfrom his blackteachers that Rosa Parkshad gained fromher whiteones. "I believedin them and theybelieved in me," he recalled."These were the people from whom I learnedto analyzethings."58 In the 1930s,when Andrew Young attended Valena C. Jonesjunior high school in New Orleans,a strongethos of racialpride suffused black education.Young recalledmarveling at the blackcelebrities, "from Joe Louis to MarianAnderson," who wereinvited to hisschool by the principal, Fannie C. Williams.Williams, who headed the school for thirty-threeyears and taught long afterher formal retirement-shedied in 1980 at age ninety-seven-wasone of the outstanding teachersof herday. "Miss Williamswent about hertask of upliftingthe raceand bringingunruly boys and girlsunder control with great gusto and . . . legendary determination."59 At the same time,the activistsof the 1960s recognizedthe limitationsof their education. Angela Davis recalled that her teachersencouraged competitive individualism-"Workhard and you will be rewarded"-an upliftethos that turneda blindeye to structuralracism. Young had similarmemories. Black teachers "seemedto believethat the path to freedomwas to be foundin mannersand diction as muchas intelligenceand morality.It was an illusion."The schoolsoperated on theassumption that blacks would adapt to segregation,not challenge it. Tom Dent, who in the 1940s attendedGilbert Academy in New Orleans,perhaps the best pri- vateschool for blacks in theSouth, remembered the excellence of his teachers,but noneof themever suggested the possibility of protestingagainst Jim Crow. Even at HowardUniversity, the flagship of blackeducation, "we never thought about inten- tionallyviolating the segregation laws."60 At the heightof the studentsit-in movement, the state college presidents who stifledstudent protests were subjectedto a barrageof criticismfor placing the interestsof JimCrow institutionsover the cause of integration.The historian GeorgeR. Woolfolk,who knewmany of thempersonally, believed that such men

58 Rosa Parkswith Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story(New York,1992), 49; ThomasJesse Jones, Negro Educa- tion:A Studyof thePrivate and HigherSchools for Colored People in theUnited States (2 vols.,Washington, 1916), II, 77-78; LewisW. Jones,"Fred L. Shuttlesworth:Indigenous Leader," in Birmingham,Alabama, 1956-1963: TheBlack Struggle for Civil Rights, ed. David J.Garrow (Brooklyn, 1989), 118. 59AndrewYoung, An EasyBurden: The CivilRights Movement and theTransformation ofAmerica (New York, 1996), 18-19. FannieC. Williamsserved as presidentof theAmerican Teachers Association in 1930. 60Davis, Angela Davis, 92-93; Young,Easy Burden, 30-33; Tom Dent, SouthernJourney: A Returnto the Civil RightsMovement (New York,1997), 12-13, 329-31.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 90 TheJournal of American History June2000 weredominated by an amoral"survival psychosis" that resulted in "intellectualand spiritualsterility." Contemporaries often overlooked the fact that some of them, suchas WarmothT. Gibbsof NorthCarolina A&T, resistedpressure to expelstu- dents.Other college presidents had shielded faculty members involved in thecivil rightsmovement-H. C. Trenholmof AlabamaState quietly encouraged the Montgomerybus boycott; George W. Goreof Florida A&M supportedthe bus boy- cottin Tallahassee.61 The civilrights movement would have found it edifying and inspiring had more blackeducators taken heroic public stands. Yet we should assess contemporary criti- cismsof blackteachers with caution. Complaints about Uncle Toms were often the snapjudgments of young activists who neither knew nor cared about the history of blackcommunities in theSouth. Moreover, courage and commitmentcan take manydifferent forms: black activism during the age of segregation was neither more norless heroic than black activism during the civil rights movement. In theheyday ofwhite supremacy, deferential behavior by blacks did not prove cowardice, lack of idealism,or corruption.The pursuitof improvedschools within the framework of racialsegregation was the only realistic educational strategy available to southern blacksuntil the 1940s. Evenif black educators, as wasoften the case, became so accustomedto working withinthe confines of JimCrow that they found it impossibleto viewtheir own activitiesobjectively, their perspective should not be dismissedout of hand.As JohnD. Boydof AlcornState University put it, "I thinkcivil rights can be approachedfrom more than one angle.I amtrying to helpthe child for opportu- nitiesto come."In addition,some black reservations about school integration turnout to havebeen well founded. Integration has often been a massivedisap- pointment.In manycities the schools integrated only to resegregate.Even when blackand whitechildren attend the same schools, the educational benefits have oftenproved elusive.62 "What,exactly, was wrong with the old black public schools that for years served theirconstituencies so well despite the deprivations and theisolation of segregation?"asked Tom Dent in 1997."There is inescapableirony in thefact that those olderschools provided much of whatis lackingin today'spostsegregation schools: thedesperately needed psychological support . .. [and]a senseof thehistorical con- tinuityof theeducational experience of theirrace through the existence of the schoolitself." We shouldbeware of romanticizingthe segregated black schools of theJim Crow era. But as Thomas Sowell, Vanessa Siddle Walker, and David S. Cecelski

61Adolph L. Reed, "Crisison theNegro Campus," Nation, Feb. 10, 1962, pp. 111- 13; David Riesmanand ChristopherJencks, The Academic Revolution (New York,1968), 434; Smith,Black Educatorin theSegregated South,155-62; Perry,History of theAmerican Teachers Association, 315-18; Fairclough,Race and Democracy, 266-69; Woolfolk,Prairie View, 330; JoAnn GibsonRobinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and theWomen Who StartedIt (Knoxville,1987), 50-52; Edwin F. NorwoodJr., George W. GoreJr., and EmmettW. Bashfull,tran- scriptsof testimony,Feb. 5, 6, 18, 1957, FloridaLegislative Investigating Committee, Florida Bar Association, NAACP InvestigationFiles (StateArchives, Tallahassee, Fla.); Chafe,Civilities and CivilRights, 95; Dent, Southern Journey,33-34. 62 "PatrolRouts New Marchat Lorman,"Jackson Clarion-Ledger, April 6, 1966; Bartley,New South,422-23.

This content downloaded from 159.178.22.27 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:46:13 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BlackTeachers in the Jim Crow South 91 haveinsisted, some of thoseschools were indeed excellent. Integration came at a cost;whether itmerited that cost was not-is not-clear.63 Fora blackteacher in theSouth, Myrdal noted, "The temptation to sellout the groupand to look out for his own petty interest is great." There were certainly some teachersfor whom the strategy of "doubleagent," to useGlenda Gilmore's simile, ledto corruptionand betrayal. The duplicityof suchteachers is documentedin the recentlyopened files of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. Indeed, from Du Bois's1903 critiqueof Washington,through Langston Hughes's 1934 attack "Cowardsfrom the Colleges," through Ralph Ellison's withering portrait of Dr. Bledsoein InvisibleMan, to the sit-ingeneration's contemptuous dismissal of "UncleToms," betrayal and bad faithhave been constant refrains in discussionsof blackteachers.64 Yetmost black teachers did not allowthe demands of accommodationismto obscuretheir larger purpose. For half a centuryand more, they struggled toimprove blackeducation within a politicalsystem anchored on blackdisfranchisement. The incrementalgains they achieved did not destroy white supremacy; by the 1 960s they seemedpathetically inadequate. Yet as JamesD. Andersonhas insisted, "There was nothingnaive about a beliefin learningand self-improvement as a means to indi- vidualand collective dignity. It wasnot the end of theirstruggle for freedom and justice;only a meanstoward that end."65 In a momentof frustration,H. C. Trenholmonce lamented that "being in the fieldof educationand also being a Negro,it seems to meto be tragic."The tragedy of blackteachers was the larger tragedy of Jim Crow. Seeking to comfortFelton G. Clark,then being vilified for expelling the leaders of thestudent sit-in movement at SouthernUniversity, a friend and fellow Southern alumnus, the principal of a high schoolin Los Angeles,made the essential point. "Yesteryear many decisions were madewhich seemed undesirable and spineless. As we havegrown older . .. we can seewhy these things were done and at what a highcost to theindividuals who were nobleand strongenough to makethem."66

63 ThomasSowell, Education: Assumptions versus History: Collected Papers (Stanford, 1986), 7-37; VanessaSid- dle Walker,Their Highest Potential: An AfiricanAmerican School Community in theSegregated South (Chapel Hill, 1996); David S. Cecelski,Along Freedom Road: HydeCounty, North Carolina, and theFate ofBlack Schools in the South(Chapel Hill, 1994), 173-74; Dent, SouthernJourney, 326. 64 Myrdal,American Dilemma, 881; Gilmore,Gender andfim Crow, 177-90; ZackJ.Van Landigham,"NAACP, Taylorsville,Mississippi," Nov. 14, 1958, file 80, series3, State SovereigntyCommission Papers, Mississippi Departmentof Archivesand History(Jackson, Mississippi); Langston Hughes, "Cowards from the Colleges," Crisis,41 (Aug. 1934), 226-28; RalphEllison, Invisible Man (New York,1972), 34-148. 65Anderson,Education of Blacks in theSouth, 285. 66 "Transcriptof meetingof theSub-Committee of Governor'sCommittee on HigherEducation for Negroes in Alabama,"March 26, 1949, TrenholmPapers; Brice E Taylorto FeltonG. Clark,Oct. 23, 1960, FeltonG. ClarkPapers (Southern University, Baton Rouge, La.).

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