• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1393 0

“I have seen many an absurdity in my lifetime,” remarked a Louisiana legislator upon viewing his first black pupils, “but this is the climax of absurdities!” Once white Southerners grew accustomed to such sights, if they ever could, they would differ about the benefits and dangers black education posed. Voicing a position that would gain a respectable hearing in some circles, a magistrate in Sumter, South Carolina, argued that the same concern for public safety which had once required Negroes as slaves to be kept ignorant now required that Negroes as freedmen be enlightened in the responsibilities of citizenship.68

Consistent with this theme of accommodation, the “better class” of whites suggested that with “the right kind of teachers,” the newly freed slaves could be taught a proper deference for their superiors, fidelity to contracts, respect for property, the rewards of industriousness, and other virtues calculated to ensure an orderly transition to free labor. That prospect could induce a Florida planter to believe “the best way to manage the Negroes now is to educate them and increase as far as practicable their wants and dependence upon the white man.” With an equal appreciation for proper priorities, a planter in North Carolina informed a freedmen’s educator that “a due observance of law and order, an improvement in morals, and decent respect for the rights and opinions of others—properly inculcated & impressed on the minds of the Freedmen,” would no doubt be tolerated in his community, though he cautioned the official not to expect “any demonstrations of delight.” Rather than openly oppose the education of the freedmen, then, some whites insisted on withholding their judgments until they could begin to ascertain the results. While “decidedly in favor” of black parents educating their children, a newspaper in Waco, Texas, made it clear that “we do not approve their sending their children to school from a mere hifalutin idea of making them smart and like white folks.”69

Even if the education of the freedmen was a laudable objective, calculated to impress upon them their new duties and responsibilities, many native whites remained skeptical of the experiment and confidently predicted its failure. “I do assure you,” a white woman advised one teacher, “you might as well try to teach your horse or mule to read, as to teach these niggers. They can’t learn.” The laws prohibiting the instruction of slaves, she explained, had been aimed at the house servants and urban blacks. “Some of these were smart enough for anything. But the country niggers are like monkeys. You can’t learn them to come in when it rains.” Of course, the inferior mental capacity of Negroes had long been a staple of the proslavery argument, confirming as it did their inability to look after themselves and their need to defer to the superior judgment and wisdom of their owners. To think now that the minds of black people might be susceptible to classroom instruction not only contradicted theories which had the highest academic standing but posed more immediate and more troublesome questions. If this experiment should prove successful, how would it affect the proper subordination of blacks in southern society? If their ambitions were heightened, how could they remain satisfied with their low economic, social, and political position? Inflated with ideas of their own importance and capability, would they not certainly become even more discontented and impudent? “The cook, that must read the daily newspaper, will spoil your beef and your bread,” a southern educator noted; “the sable pickaninny, that has to do his grammar and arithmetic, will leave your boots unblacked and your horse uncurried.”70

Whatever accommodations whites might make to black education, such apprehensions never really subsided. The warning sounded by a white educator late in the century only echoed concerns that were frequently expressed in the post-emancipation years. “Suppose our educational schemes succeeded,” he asked; “suppose we elevate him as a race until he has the instincts and