By Dr. Elizabeth Ann Saunders
It’s so astonishing to think that in the South, before the Civil War, you could have a finger cut off if you were caught trying to learn to read if you were a slave. However, that did not stand in the way of some African Americans achieving literacy. In her book “Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom” Heather Andrea Williams writes “In slavery, the very act of learning to read had become a secret form of resistance, but in its aftermath freed people transformed the act of being literate from an act of secrecy to one of life’s necessities.”
Williams tells the story of slaves who received their instruction in “pit schools,” so named as such because they were “pit[s] in the ground way out in the woods away from the master’s surveillance.” She also writes about slaves who “hid spelling books under their hats to be ready whenever they could entreat or bribe a literate person to teach them.”
Thousands of slaves were able to learn to read and write despite the dangers and difficulties. African Americans who couldn’t read frequently sought out those who had improved their literacy and convinced them to teach them. In addition, northern missionary organizations sent qualified teachers and constructed their own schools to accommodate African American children.
Teachers were soon overwhelmed with students, Williams writes. “One missionary teacher in Athens, Georgia, described limiting her school to two hundred students, only to have one father plead to have his two children allowed in. “Do let them come if you please, m’am, and if you can’t teach them even a little, just let them sit and hear what the rest learn,” she recalled him saying. “They’ll be sure to catch it.” The teacher relented and allowed those children, and many more, to join the school.
Educational opportunities for African American families were severely limited. Students nonetheless persevered. They frequently astonished white teachers from the North who had arrived under the presumption that, even though African American children were not inferior intellectually to white children, generations of slavery had diminished their abilities.
According to “In Slavery and the Making of America,” in the absence of formal education, slaves in both the rural and urban South often found alternative paths to learning. On plantations the pursuit of education became a communal effort — slaves learned from parents, spouses, family members, and fellow slaves and some were even personally instructed by their masters or hired tutors. Slaveholders were motivated by Christian convictions to enable Bible-reading among slaves.
Writing was rarely taught. Writing was regarded as a status symbol that many members of society, including slaves, did not need. This is because many people were unable to write until they learned how to read. “During the time of his enslavement and since he escaped the clutches of those held who held him in slavery,” runaway Wallace Turnage “learnt” to read and write. It is believed that the slaves who helped him escape to various locations taught him: For instance, he might have been taught how to read directions to the next town.
As early as 1710 slaves were receiving Biblical literacy from their masters. Enslaved writer Phillis Wheatley was taught in the home of her master. She ended up using her skills to write poetry and address leaders of government on her feelings about slavery.
There is evidence that slaves secretly practiced reading and writing. Writings were found carved into slates near George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. According to Bly, “houses once occupied by Thomas Jefferson’s black bond servants were uncovered with 237 unidentified slates, 27 pencil leads, two pencil slates, and 18 writing slates.” This demonstrates that when they had time alone, most likely at night, slaves were practicing their reading and writing skills in secret. Additionally, they believed that slaves wrote in the dirt because it was easier to conceal than writing on slates. The newly acquired skills were then passed on to other slaves.
The regular practice of hiring out slaves also helped spread literacy. As seen in Frederick Douglass’ own narrative, it was common for the literate to share their learning. As a result of the constant flux, few if any plantations would fail to have at least a few literate slaves.
Numerous slaves learned to read by themselves. Some slaves listened in on the lessons of white children. Slaves also studied the letters and words in newspapers and other printed materials. Frederick Douglass, raised in Maryland between the 1820s and 1830s, represents the best-known example of learning in secret. Left alone to look after the master’s house, he employed his own version of fugitive pedagogy. He spent his time “writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas’s copy book, copying what he had written.” Douglass wrote in the margins of the Webster Spelling Book, populating these in-between spaces with words he appropriated and mimicked, turning them toward his own semantic and political ends.
Frederick Douglass spoke for thousands in bondage when he wrote: “Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper.” Douglass added, “She seemed to think that here lay the danger.
Douglass discusses the difficulties he faced as a slave and the heroism with which he escaped to the free state of Massachusetts. I found the way he taught himself to read and write and how he used those skills to make a difference in the lives of millions of people to be a particularly fascinating aspect of his story. Douglass knew that reading would lead to his freedom, and he was determined to learn how to read: “I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.” So how did he do it? Douglass carried a book with him anytime he was sent out for errands, and if he had extra time, would make friends with young white boys, and ask them for lessons.
Douglas said, “The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. Sometimes the boys would offer lessons for free, and other times Douglass would pay them for lessons with bread. “This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.” — Frederick Douglass.
Literate slaves passed their skills on to others and enslaved parents often taught their children when far removed from the master or overseer; some slaves held underground “schools” in secret hiding places— often deep in the woods—late at night or very early in the morning before or after the workday. “I have seen the Negroes up in the country going away under large oaks, and in secret places, sitting in the woods with spelling books,” former slave Charity Bowery of North Carolina told an interviewer decades after Emancipation. In sum, African Americans were very creative in finding a way to learn to read and write because they knew that literacy was key to knowledge, freedom, and personal power.
The antiliteracy laws were one of the roadblocks in the fight for literacy. African American antiliteracy laws date back further than the founding of the United States. White colonists begin drafting a Negro Act to restrict slave privileges because they were uncomfortable with the growing number of African Americans. The Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina resulted in the finalization of the Act and its approval. Reading and writing were included among the prohibited activities in this code, which was intended to enhance surveillance of enslaved individuals. Slaves would no longer be allowed to learn to read, grow their own food, gather in groups, or earn their own money. The exclusion of African Americans from educational opportunities predated the establishment of a nation.
Before the end of the Civil War, the education of African American slaves in the United States was a criminal endeavor. Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, white people in the South found ways to maintain their accustomed power over black people through a combination of laws, social customs, and mob violence. This system, known as “Jim Crow,” separated people of color from whites in schools, housing, jobs, and public gathering places.
In 1896, the Supreme Court decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson established separate public schools for black and white students. The decision also deprived African American children of educational advantages. “Coloured schools” had to make do with very little financial support and limited resources. The “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy vs Ferguson became the legal precedent for over 60 years. This meant that every time a similar case of segregation came up, judges in courts across the country would look to Plessy vs Ferguson to guide their decisions. Of course, segregation did not lend itself to equality. The Equal Protection Clause in Plessy vs. Ferguson required that all citizens be treated equally by the law, but nowhere did it say that all citizens had to be integrated to ensure equal conditions. Because of this, the Supreme Court felt that “separate but equal” accommodations were constitutional. The “separate but equal” doctrine essentially legalized state-mandated segregation.
Despite efforts to improve education, many aspects of African American education in the South at the beginning of the 1900s were subpar. Schools in the South were divided by race. There was a disparity between the two school systems. Public funding was greater for white-only schools. African Americans were enrolled in schools at a lower rate. Because they were needed on the farm, African American children were frequently excluded from school. A lot of their parents were sharecroppers. Sharecroppers’ children had to work alongside their parents to plant and harvest crops. If the white owner of their farm decided that African American children were needed for work, he might take them out of school even if they weren’t needed for work. Additionally, there were fewer African American students enrolled in public schools. This was especially true in the small towns in the rural areas because most of them didn’t have much money. The majority of African Americans in the South at that time lived on farms and in rural areas. Schools for children in rural areas were scheduled around the cotton harvesting season. The majority of African Americans who did go to school were in the fourth or lower grade. After fourth grade, many students quit school. As a result, not many African Americans would enroll in college for a very long time.
In their quest for education, many African Americans occupied school buildings with leaking roofs, sagging floors, and windows without glass. If African American children had any books at all, they were hand-me-downs from white schools. African American schools were overcrowded, with too many students per teacher. African American teachers did not receive as much training. On top of that, the salary for African American teachers was so low that it was hard to find fully qualified ones.
Yet, the quest for education of African American students, teachers, and parents never faltered. They welcomed the support of the Freedmen’s Bureau, white charities, and missionary societies. The Rosenwald Foundation was the most important of these. It gave over four million dollars to help build nearly 5,000 African American schools throughout the South. They were called “Rosenwald schools,” because the money to start them came from Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932). Booker T. Washington and Rosenwald first met in 1911 and agreed to work together to construct public schools for African American students. Rosenwald did not simply give money to people to build schools. He required people in each locality to show how much they wanted the school. They had to raise money or contribute labor. They also had to convince the local government to contribute money. By the time of Rosenwald’s death in 1932, about one-third of African American students in the South were attending Rosenwald schools. In addition to 4,977 schools, Rosenwald contributed to 217 homes for teachers, and 163 machine shops where students learned practical skills. Another source of support was in 1867 when the Peabody Fund was established. The Peabody Fund provided monies for construction, endowments, scholarships, and teacher and industrial education for newly freed American slaves. An additional source of support came from Anna T. Jeans, a Quaker. Her post-civil war legacy was a cadre of Black women teachers across the South who educated African American children, established schools, and helped launch the African American teaching field in the nation. In fact, the Jeanes Fund was one of four funds that merged in 1937 to form the Southern Education Foundation. The others were the Slater Fund, the Peabody Fund, and the Randolph Fund (which was named for Virginia Randolph, the first Jeanes Supervisor).
The struggle for fair and equal education for African Americans was long and hard, but much progress was made through the efforts of the Brown I and II court cases and legislation. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown case that segregation in the public schools was unequal. After the NAACP returned to the Supreme Court in Brown II, the Court ruled that desegregation should proceed with “all deliberate speed.” Despite the continuous legal actions of civil rights lawyers, this term did not reflect the depths of resistance as most children still attended segregated schools in 1964. This year also marked the passage of the Civil Rights Act. This groundbreaking legislation made desegregation a pre-requisite to school funding. A year later, congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act, a component of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty that appropriated money to public schools to fund educational programs and resources for poor children. This funding could also be removed if school systems did not desegregate.
The court cases and legislation alone did not transform American society. Changing laws does not always change minds. But today, thanks in part to the victorious struggles of African Americans in their quest for an education, support from the various philanthropical funds, the court cases and legislation, most Americans believe that a racially integrated, ethnically diverse educational system is a worthy goal, though they may disagree deeply about how to achieve it.
When the Supreme Court of the United States overturned school segregation, it helped advance the cause of human rights in the United States and set an example for other nations. The American dream of ethnic diversity and racial equality under the law is a dream of liberty and justice for all.
