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By Root 1441 0

the same newspaper concluded: “The record of the teachers of the first colored schools in Louisiana will be one of honor and blood.” Although many native whites discountenanced attacks on schools, a missionary educator in Grenada, Mississippi, voiced a common belief among teachers that such protests were almost always to no avail. “Tho they [the perpetrators] may be a small minority, the majority dare not move their tongues against them; but must tacitly consent to what they do. The colored people are in perpetual fear of them, & well they may be; for they kill them with almost perfect impunity.” Even where freedmen schools were tolerated, moreover, teachers found themselves treated by these same “respectable” whites with “a studious avoidance,” and many a teacher and superintendent considered the maintenance of their schools dependent on the nearby Federal garrison.74

Despite the fears of educators, the withdrawal of Union Army garrisons did not result in a massive dismantlement of the freedmen’s schools. With each passing year, in fact, additional numbers of native whites came around to the view that the education of blacks—at least on a rudimentary level—had become an unavoidable consequence of emancipation and that the white South had best accommodate itself to this reality. That accommodation would be expedited and the dangers minimized, they suggested to their people, if steps were taken to control the educational apparatus and staff the schools with their own kind. This was not necessarily inconsistent with the belief of some Freedmen’s Bureau educational officers that more native whites should be employed as teachers, since “they understand the negro” and would be in a good position to combat the strong feelings against his education. But others were quick to point out that such teachers would also be in an ideal position to vent their own frustrations on those who had previously been their slaves, and there were sufficient examples to underscore that concern. In one school taught by two native whites, the children were not only whipped frequently but forced to address their teachers as “massa” and “missus.”75

Although some time would elapse before large numbers of native whites could be induced to teach in black schools, the number steadily grew in the immediate postwar years, in part because of the feverish search by some impoverished whites for any kind of remunerative employment. “While I am on the nigger question,” Sallie Coit wrote a friend, “I must tell you that my school for them [Negroes] still flourishes.… I hope I can do them some good. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I put good books into their hands, while if they went to Yankees they would doubtless have books tainted with Abolitionism.” Outright control of the school systems, along the lines suggested by Sallie Coit, would have to await the overthrow of Radical Reconstruction; in the meantime, native whites tried to accommodate themselves to the idea of paying taxes for the support of public schools for both races. “Every little negro in the county is now going to school and the public pays for it,” wrote one disgruntled planter. “This is a hell of [a] fix but we cant help it, and the best policy is to conform as far as possible to circumstances.” Considering other possible reactions, this represented a triumph of sorts for the cause of black education in the South.76

Whatever toleration and public support native whites chose to accord the freedmen’s schools depended in large measure not only on the conduct of the teachers but on maintaining a strict segregation between white and black pupils. “Sir, we accept the death of slavery,” a prominent Savannah citizen explained, as he remonstrated against the proposed admission of blacks to the public schools; “but, sir, surely there are some things that are not tolerable. Our people have not been brought up to associate with negroes. They don’t think it decent; and the negroes will be none the better for being thrust thus into the places of white men’s sons.” Pending the establishment of public