Been in the Storm So Long (105 page)

Fully aware of the pervasive theories in American society which assumed the mental inferiority of the African race, the teachers and supervisors in the freedmen’s schools needed periodically to assess the results of their efforts and to report them to a curious and skeptical public. But measuring success and progress was not always easy, and each teacher had different priorities. For many, the acquisition of basic learning skills—reading and writing—was sufficient proof of success; still others looked to the performance of black pupils in advanced subjects or chose to stress perceptible improvements in physical appearance, demeanor, and personal habits. “We now see civilization stamped on these schools,” a superintendent reported from Fernandina, Florida. “Instead of rags and filth, there is decent clothes and cleanliness; instead of the vacant half-frightened stare and low slavish tone, there is an intelligent eye and more erect bearing, and full tone.” Antoinette Turner, a teacher in New Bern, North Carolina, derived particular satisfaction from the efforts her pupils made to discard “the ‘dis’ and ‘dat,’ so peculiar to them,” while an equally gratified instructor in Maryland noted his success in persuading the adults in his class to discard common nicknames like “Uncle Jack” and “Aunt Sallie” in favor of “the respectable names of Mr. and Mrs. Brown.”
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But the critical question, as every educator understood, came down to a comparison of their pupils with white students in the North, both in the rapidity with which they acquired basic skills and their demonstrated aptitude in more advanced subjects. Few needed to be reminded that the manner in which they decided this issue went to the very heart of their
efforts, indeed to the legitimacy of the “experiment” itself. Nearly every teacher and supervisor made the inevitable comparison, some with greater detail than others. The clear consensus was that black pupils learned as rapidly as the average white child in a northern school. When they proceeded to particularize that observation, however, many of them seemed to suggest an inequality of intellectual talents and perhaps even of capacity. Not unlike the stereotype already formed of black pupils in northern schools, the freedmen were generally thought to excel in subjects entailing rote memory and imitation and to be less proficient than whites in fields of study requiring the application of logic and induction, “powerful reasoning,” and “inventive” and reflective powers. Having made these distinctions, some teachers added that such powers were not beyond the reach of blacks once they were permitted to develop their full potential. In the meantime, black pupils might have taken some consolation in the observations of their teachers that they were more emotional and affectionate than whites, more “graphic and figurative in language,” and clearly superior in wit, cunning, and musical expression. “How musical they are!” more than one teacher would remark, and Mary E. Burdick apparently exploited that faculty every chance she had. “I doubt if the same number of whites could produce half the melody they can in simply singing the multiplication table. I thought it exceeded every thing!”
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To display the talents of their students, both white and black teachers in the freedmen’s schools scheduled periodic programs and recitations, many of them specifically designed to impress the host of northern visitors, officials, and correspondents who descended upon these schools. No day passed without some visitation, Elizabeth Botume observed, and she confessed a low regard for the ways in which the guests often conducted themselves in the presence of her pupils.

In the typical school program, the students recited various exercises, engaged in carefully rehearsed dialogues with their teacher, and culminated the proceedings with a rousing chorus of “John Brown’s Body” or perhaps an old spiritual. And the northern guests would invariably leave the school very much impressed with this “startling” exhibition of black talent.
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But these displays raised a troublesome question. Did the “surprise” and “astonishment” registered by teachers, superintendents, and visitors alike over the intellectual attainments of black pupils reflect a different standard of expectation and measurement than they would have applied
to white pupils? Long before the Civil War, a black newspaper in the North had raised this question in noting the praise lavished on black students by school visitors and wondered if the same performance from white pupils would have excited the slightest attention. If anything, the temptation to magnify black achievements in the classroom would have been far greater in the postwar South, and some teachers frankly thought the emphasis on producing measurable results as quickly as possible was not only educationally unsound but demeaning to black people.

After visiting several freedmen’s schools in North Carolina, Jonathan C. Gibbs, a black minister, thought the pupils were “doing well as could be expected, and some much better than I had anticipated,” but he felt the teachers were doing far too much, “seemingly, for the sake of present impression, rather than for the solid interests of the children. When I remember that in a few years these black children will control largely the future destiny of this southern country and will make it either a hell upon earth or a paradise, I tremble for the responsible trust which has been placed in the hands of these improper persons.”
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That the quality of instruction varied with each teacher was hardly unique to the education of freedmen. For some teachers, the challenge of educating recently freed slaves demanded an understanding and patience they simply did not possess, resulting in a total breakdown in communication and an early return to the North. Nor did the often inadequate living quarters, the shortages of books and materials, and the open displays of white hostility make the life of a freedmen’s teacher any easier. For most of them, however, the level of commitment remained high enough to withstand the inconveniences, the threats, and, in a few instances, the initial suspicions of the pupils and their parents. The white teacher in Beaufort, South Carolina, suspended for using derogatory language in referring to blacks and for habitually using opium was quite exceptional, though such cases no doubt confirmed the black critics who thought some of the teachers academically sound but morally weak. Nor would it be easy to assess the charge of a black preacher in Wilmington, North Carolina, that “some of the teachers were setting the devil into his people.”
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In gauging black reaction to this massive educational effort, far more typical would be the consternation that swept over a black community when a teacher announced his or her departure. Although he loved his “southern friends,” a black student in Augusta, Georgia, wrote his former teacher, he knew
that none of them could have faced up to the ordeal experienced by many of the Yankee teachers.

L
EAST IMPRESSED
by the public displays of black intellectual capabilities were the native whites, many of whom reacted to the educational experiment in their midst with varying degrees of amusement, skepticism, suspicion, and outright hostility. For some whites, the only uncertainty was whether to fear or to ridicule the strange spectacle of black youths and adults, only recently their slaves, marching off to places where they would imbibe lessons from Yankee schoolmarms. “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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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 drives of a white man? … Being trained for office he will demand office. Being taught as a Negro child the same things and in the same way as the white child, when he becomes a Negro man he will want the same things and demand them in the same way as a white man.” That was reason enough to be doubly cautious about the teachers and curriculum in the education of blacks. And if the path from the schoolhouse
led to the courthouse and the white man’s parlor and bedroom, then perhaps this enterprise should be resisted before it gained any foothold in southern society.
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