THE POLITICS AND CULTURE OF LITERACY IN GEORGIA, 1800-1920 Bruce Fort Atlanta, Georgia B. A., Georgetown University, 1985 M.A., University of Virginia, 1989 A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Corcoran Department of History University of Virginia August 1999 © Copyright by Bruce Fort All Rights Reserved August 1999 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the uses and meanings of reading in the nineteenth­ century American South. In a region where social relations were largely defined by slavery and its aftermath, contests over education were tense, unpredictable, and frequently bloody. Literacy figured centrally in many of the region's major struggles: the relationship between slaveowners and slaves, the competing efforts to create and constrain black freedom following emancipation, and the disfranchisement of black voters at the turn of the century. Education signified piety and propriety, self-culture and self-control, all virtues carefully cultivated and highly prized in nineteenth-century America. Early advocates of public schooling argued that education and citizenship were indissociable, a sentiment that was refined and reshaped over the course of the nineteenth century. The effort to define this relationship, throughout the century a leitmotif of American public life, bubbled to the surface in the South at critical moments: during the early national period, as Americans sought to put the nation's founding principles into motion; during the 1830s, as insurrectionists and abolitionists sought to undermine slavery; during Reconstruction, with the institution of black male citizenship; and at last, during the disfranchisement movement of the 1890s and 1900s, with the imposition of literacy tests. This study examines each of these episodes in turn, focusing especially on how iii the ideology of literacy was contested and redefined, how the ability to read and write came to stand for moral, social, and civic worthiness, and how that perception of worthiness was, by the end of the nineteenth century, cynically and perversely twisted into a justification for disfranchisement under the guise of what was blandly and misleadingly termed "qualified suffrage." The capricious manner in which literacy tests were administered made a mockery of the ideals of an informed citizenry. White Democrats sometimes drew on the language of principle as they wrote the disfranchisement laws, but they had their eyes fixed firmly on the bottom line: their goal was to solidify their political and racial domination by eliminating black voters from the rolls. Disfranchisement left the political process atrophied and hollow in the Southern states for the next sixty-five years. IV CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. v1 LIST OF TABLES .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. vu LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. .. .. .. .. .. .. vm ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1x Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM OF LITERACY IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH........................... 1 2. THE PARSON'S FLYING LIBRARY: MASON LOCKE WEEMS AND THE SOUTHERN BOOKTRADE, 1800-1825 . .. 28 3. LETTERS AND THE LAW OF BONDAGE: THE STRUGGLE OVER SLAVE LITERACY. .. .. .. .. .. 77 4. "IN THEIR OWN TONGUE AND TONE": WHITE READING AND WRITING, 1820-1865 . .. .. 141 5. "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER": EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP DURING WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. .. .. .. 191 6. THE FIRST GENERATION OF FREEDOM: ATLANTA UNIVERSITY AND THE CAMPAIGN FOR BLACK LITERACY IN THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 . .. .. 231 7. LITERACY TESTS AND THE IDEOLOGY OF "QUALIFIED SUFFRAGE": UNDERSTANDING DISFRANCHISEMENT IN GEORGIA . .. .. .. 265 WORKS CITED . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 283 V ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. The Rev. Mason Locke Weems ........................... 30 2. Slave woman posing with a book, 1853 . 78 3. Man reading book with shotgun outside Atlanta slave market . 126 4. Jennie Akehurst Lines ................................. 170 5. Frontispiece of Jennie Akehurst Lines's journal 176 6. Julia and Loula Kendall ................................ 181 7. Young girl and older woman reading, 1890. 234 VI TABLES Table Page 1. Literacy Tests Used to Restrict the Suffrage in the South . 271 2. Table 2. Literacy Tests Used to Restrict the Suffrage Outside the South . 272 Vil ABBREVIATIONS AHC Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Ga. American Historical Review AU Atlanta University Department of Archives and Special Collections, Atlanta, Ga. Bulletin of Atlanta University Emory Special Collections Department, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. Georgia Historical Quarterly GDAH Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga. Journal of American History Journal of Southern History U.Ga. Hargrett Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. VIJI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS If this study demonstrates nothing else, it stands as proof positive that the notion of scholarly solitude is a myth. While I have enjoyed my days working alone, roaming through the stacks of libraries, digging through boxes at the archives, and hunched over the keyboard of my computer, I have been surrounded by colleagues, family, and friends who have inspired and sustained me with their ideas, imagination, energy, and patience. While nothing I know how to write can do justice to the fullness of the support I have felt, I have long looked forward to the opportunity to thank the many people who have contributed to my efforts. My advisor, Edward L. Ayers, has an extraordinary combination of qualities that have made him this project's greatest ally from its inception. Always attuned to the subtlest shades of human experience, he is driven by passion for the people whose lives we study. He somehow manages to be rigorous but not rigid, empirically minded but also a great believer in instinct. He has read draft after draft of this dissertation, cheering me along and challenging me to new levels of achievement, as proposals molted painstakingly first into conference papers and then into chapters. The other members of my committee--Reginald D. Butler, Alan B. Howard, and Joseph F. Kett--brought a high level of energy and engagement to their readings of this dissertation. I have had many helpful discussions about this project with Alan IX Howard, and Joe Kett read and wrote extremely thoughtful comments about an early draft of the first chapter. The librarians and archivists at the University of Virginia, Atlanta University, the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, Emory University, Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Archives and History, and the Atlanta History Center helped me find solid ground, easing my way through their labyrinthine collections. The interlibrary loan staffat the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library was consistently professional and persistent. Many people have read and commented on various drafts of this dissertation as it has taken shape: members of the Southern Seminar at the University of Virginia, especially Rebecca Edwards, Scot French, Peter Kastor, and James Lewis; those who have read and commented on papers I have presented at conferences along the way, especially Eric Anderson, James D. Anderson, James L. Leloudis, William A. Link, and Marjorie Spruill Wheeler; and those with whom I have corresponded and conversed about various aspects of this project, including Fitzhugh Brundage, Bill Carrigan, Glen Gendzel, Glenda Gilmore, David Godshalk, Michael Perman, and John Willis. I have been struck again and again by the generosity of my colleagues. Janet Cornelius mailed me a huge sheaf of her notes on slavery, Ron Zboray offered an extremely close and helpful reading of the first chapter and wrote pages of careful and contructive comments, and Chris Scribner saved me a trip to Nashville by taking notes for me at the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. X Several friends have encouraged me through their moral support and by their example, especially Nick Cullather, John Flower, Megan Holden, and Keith Revell. Dane Johnson, whom I have known since we were teenagers, took precious time away from his own research and teaching to read the entire manuscript, an act of friendship that I knew I could count on and that I am eager to repay. Friends outside of university life have given me perspective on the process of scholarship, and have actively participated in this project in various ways: Drew Galloway, Brigid Galloway, Kathryn Kolb, Lee Cuthbert, Val Deale, Martha Deale, and David Fay. Brigid Galloway, an admirably disciplined and talented writer, put me on a merciless schedule and read an early draft of the entire manuscript. It goes without saying, but must be said, that while this manuscript has benefited incalculably from the ideas of others, the omissions and errors that remain are of my own making. Members of my immediate family sustained their enthusiasm for this project e¥en when mine faltered. My first exposure to the history of the American South was on my grandparents' front porch in Verbena, Alabama, where my grandparents, Frances and Jimmy Fort, told me the stories of their lives. Through their recollections, I began to see even as a child that there is no such thing as an ordinary life, that our memory of the past remains immediate, personal, and powerful, and that our lives are forcefully but subtly intertwined. My grandfather, Bill Hamilton, listened carefully to my ideas about a history that he had seen much of firsthand, and