Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [373]
We are charged with endeavoring to bring about a condition of social equality between the blacks and the whites—we are charged with teaching the blacks that they have a right to demand from the whites social equality—now, if they can point to Mission families or teachers homes where there is complete social equality between colored and white, they have proved, to their own satisfaction at least, their assertion. They can say that if not in theory, we do in practice, teach social equality.
White teachers in any event could do more for the freedmen than black instructors, since “the colored people themselves, have more confidence in white teachers than in those of their own color.”93
The question of where to quarter black teachers only pointed up the larger and persistent problem of how much social fraternization to permit and how far native white feelings and prejudices needed to be appeased. If black teachers assigned to the South had any way of knowing what to expect in this regard, that might have helped to ease tensions somewhat or at least given them the opportunity to reconsider their mission. Not until Blanche Harris and her sister had departed Oberlin for their new teaching posts in Natchez did the school official who accompanied them make it clear that public sentiment would not allow him to treat them in Mississippi as he had in Ohio. Although the two young black women in this instance preferred to board with a black family, “as we knew our influence would be greater if we were to board with our own people,” they were asked instead to move into the Mission House, where they would room not with their white fellow teachers but with the domestic servants; moreover, Blanche Harris understood that her relations with the white teachers were to be kept at a minimum. “My room was to be my home,” she observed in a letter protesting her treatment. Upon consulting with some of the local black residents, the Harris sisters resolved to rent a room in town rather than subject themselves to the double standard practiced in the Mission House. Before too many weeks had passed, however, they concluded that the school officials were determined to have them teach elsewhere in the county—or anyplace but Natchez.94
If some black teachers found it difficult to accept distinctions in living quarters between themselves and their white co-workers, still others came to resent the superintendents who treated them with exaggerated praise, but evaluated their classroom performance differently from that of their white peers. Outright hostility could be debilitating, but too much love from their co-workers might be equally demoralizing if it assumed the tone of condescension. To be confined to the least important positions or to be sent to the countryside while the choicer assignments in the cities were reserved for the better-educated whites also proved to be sources of friction, and some black teachers found the easy familiarity white superintendents presumed with them grating. How much longer, asked one discouraged black, would “our finely educated ladies” permit the same official to address them by their full names and title in Boston but only by their first name in the South? Such problems may have had their antecedents in the abolitionist movement, but few teachers took any comfort from that thought, if