Been in the Storm So Long (108 page)

No visit to postwar Charleston was thought to be complete without calling on Cardozo and being guided through this showcase of the black educational effort in the South. To maintain that reputation, his critics would charge, he had begun to discriminate as carefully in the selection of pupils as in the assignment of teachers. By his own estimate, 200 of the 438 students in November 1867 were freeborn Negroes. Earlier that year, however, Sarah W. Stansbury, who had previously taught in Cardozo’s school, expressed her immense relief over being transferred to a new post. “This
is more like missionary work than any I have done since coming here. The children are all ex-slaves which is more than can be said of Mr. Cardozo’s school—his own class and Mrs. Chippenfield’s are composed, I should judge, entirely of freemen’s children, so many of whom
owned slaves
before the war.” What led to her break with Cardozo, she added, was his insistence that students who failed to pay their monthly tuition fees be sent home, thereby making the school even more exclusive. Still another former teacher charged that in the distribution of clothing gifts from the North, Cardozo had favored the children of “the
colored
people,” who were best able to purchase such clothing, over “the
freed
people,” who were by far the most needy. “I wish to do all I can for the
suffering
of any class,” she wrote in protest; “but I am not willing to labor or beg for the ‘free browns,’ in a manner that will help to make the difference between them & the freed people, even greater than it was in slavery.” Whether these various charges were valid or not may be less important than the characteristic way in which Cardozo dealt with them—he asked for the dismissal of both teachers.
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Like many of the missionary teachers and ministers, Cardozo assumed an active role in the community, aggressively defending the rights of blacks and warning against the “treacherous” class of whites seeking to regain political control of the state. Both his fame as an educator and his vigorous advocacy of civil rights propelled him into the political arena, and in 1867 he agreed to become a candidate for the constitutional convention. The way in which he chose to acknowledge the nomination was also characteristic. “I have no desire for the turbulent political scene,” he wrote a friend in the North, “but being the
only educated colored
man here my friends thought it my duty to go if elected, and I consented to do so.” That position ultimately launched a political career that culminated in his election as secretary of state of South Carolina.
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Although no doubt appreciating the talents of a Cardozo, the white officers and superintendents of the freedmen’s aid societies might have also taken pains to note how truly exceptional he was compared to other black teachers. That was no less than what Cardozo himself would have conceded. Even if grudgingly, however, school officials came to recognize the strategic value of black teachers, both as examples for their people and because they were considered less likely than northern whites to incur “abuse and insult” in the interior counties. But in hiring black teachers, especially those who were native to the South, school administrators sometimes frankly confessed that they were sacrificing quality for color. The superintendent of the freedmen’s schools in Montgomery, Alabama, defended the employment of three black instructors even though they were “inexperienced and defective in their mode of teaching.” “We use them,” he explained, “because they are of service to our cause. It is our policy to convert colored pupils into teachers as fast as possible. It is cheaper if not so beneficial and it has good effects in many ways.” That explanation would not have impressed G. L. Eberhart, the state superintendent of freedmen’s
schools in Georgia. Like Cardozo, he advised “the most exacting care” in selecting black teachers. Unlike Cardozo, he expressed little confidence in their potential. “I am becoming daily more impressed with their total unfitness to assist in the moral and mental elevation of their own race. It appears as if Slavery had completely divested them of every moral attribute—every idea that leads to true moral rectitude.”
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When the freedmen’s aid societies and their educational representatives in the South scrutinized black candidates for teaching positions, their concern was not limited to questions of educational background and preparation. The experience with some black teachers made it incumbent upon the supervisors to avoid hiring anyone who might cause divisiveness within the harmonious “family” of teachers by agitating questions of social equality and fraternization. No matter how well qualified, a teacher who might be a source of controversy and embarrassment quickly outlived his or her welcome. In Wilmington, North Carolina, a freedmen’s school official who would soon become the state superintendent of public instruction lavished considerable praise on one of the black women in his jurisdiction as “an excellent teacher and a faithful Christian.” But he could neither tolerate nor understand her adamant refusal to be boarded with a black family rather than in the Mission House where the white teachers resided. “This is a delicate matter and must be handled in a delicate manner,” he reported. Although anxious to hire qualified black teachers, he thought it unwise and inexpedient for them to come to the South in the company of white teachers or to board with white teachers.

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.”
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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.
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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 they were even aware of it. Too often, it appears, the sensitivities of black teachers were simply sacrificed to appease the sentiments of native whites and the ambivalent racial attitudes of some missionary educators. Whether subjected to the scowls of local citizens or to the paternal demeanor of co-workers, the black men and women who undertook the education of their southern brethren often had to rely on the inspiration of the classroom and the encouragement of the black community to sustain their efforts. “Sometimes we get discouraged and think we had better resign,” Blanche Harris confessed at one point. “And then we know that we must suffer many things.”
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The problems faced by the black teacher again pointed up the subservient role blacks were often forced to play in movements designed to assist their own people. Before the Civil War, differences over objectives, priorities, and roles, as well as growing concern over white patronization, had driven black abolitionists into independent agitation and organization, culminating in Martin R. Delany’s emigrationist movement and Frederick Douglass’ break with William Lloyd Garrison. The need for black activists to establish their own position and voice had also resulted in the National Convention of Colored Citizens in 1864. Although ideological and tactical
differences between black and white activists may have been less marked when it came to educating the freedmen, the problem of how much responsibility should be assigned to blacks in that effort persisted, as did the need to define a relationship between the largely white freedmen’s aid societies in the North and independent black activity in the South. “We do not object to any one coming South to teach, or superintend the education of our colored youth,” a black editor wrote from Natchez in 1865, “but we would like to understand how it is that these missionary teachers desire so much to control all the school funds and property.” When local blacks raised the money among themselves to purchase property for a school, as they did in several communities, why should they not exercise a larger voice—even the determining voice—in how that money was spent? Nor could this editor understand why the missionary societies presumed to send people to the South “who, while in the North make loud pretensions to Abolition, and when they get in the South partake so largely of that contemptible prejudice that they are ashamed to be seen in company with colored men.”
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From the very outset, in fact, the movement to educate the freedmen had been biracial. The entrance of Union troops into a community often set in motion efforts among the black residents to collect sufficient funds to build a school and hire a teacher. When the blacks in Maiden, West Virginia, the town to which Booker T. Washington and his family migrated after emancipation, discovered that a newly arrived eighteen-year-old black youth from Ohio knew how to read and write, they immediately hired him as a teacher and paid him whatever they could collect among themselves. In Natchez, the tuition fees collected from the pupils’ parents sustained six schools for freedmen taught by black teachers; the black residents of Helena, Arkansas, voted to ask the Freedmen’s Bureau to tax them for the support of schools for their children; in Nashville and Savannah, within weeks of Union occupation, blacks had organized their own school systems. In nearly every part of the South, reports of self-sustaining black schools suggested an impressive effort with a minimum of outside assistance. Nor should the commendable and extensive activity of the freedmen’s aid societies obscure the effort mounted by the black churches, some of which preferred to establish their own schools side by side with those maintained by the white societies.
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What relationships these independent black efforts should enjoy with the northern benevolent societies posed a recurring problem, and the experience of Savannah in this regard suggested an all too familiar resolution of the problem. When the black citizens of that city convened in the aftermath of Union occupation, they heard the Reverend James Lynch and other dignitaries urge them to organize among themselves and develop their own programs and courses of action. Acting on this call, they formed the Savannah Educational Association to establish in turn a system of schools for the freedmen which would be managed and sustained by the community. But when the Reverend S. W. Magill, an agent of the American Missionary Association, came to Savannah and assessed the situation, he
was appalled that neither the black board of education nor the black teachers possessed any experience in the management of schools or in teaching. “What a field opens before the benevolent!” he informed a northern officer of the Association. “It will not do of course to leave these people to themselves.… I fear they will be jealous & sullen if I attempt to place the management in the hands of our white teachers. But this must be done to make the schools effective.” Ultimately, that was accomplished, but not until the director persuaded the black trustees to place confidence in their white friends. “It is a great point gained that they are convinced by their experience that they are not Sufficient of themselves.”
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What transpired in Savannah suggested the forcefulness of a common assumption underscoring the missionary effort in the South—that black people emerging from the debilitating thralldom of bondage would require for some time the counsel and direction of their white allies. Even as they advised blacks to depend more on their own efforts and sought to inculcate black children with the virtues of self-help and self-reliance, these same “friends” might withhold their support or fail to encourage independent black efforts, question the wisdom and expediency of such efforts, or oppose them outright if they threatened to undermine their own authority. Observing this phenomenon as early as 1864, a black critic had to wonder why societies established for the relief and education of the freedmen, in which blacks initially played a prominent role, invariably fell into the hands of white managers, many of whom seemed to mistrust “the ability of colored men to do anything without the aid of the Saxon brain.”
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