Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865–1890. by Hilary Green (review)

For all of the attention devoted to education during Reconstruction, there is surprisingly little on the establishment and persistence of public schools. Much more interest has been given to the origins of freedpeople's schools through the efforts of northern missionary associations, the Freedmen's Bureau, and local networks. And while the scholarship clearly acknowledges that the establishment of public schools in the South was a lasting achievement, few have bothered to closely examine what happened to those schools after they were first set up. Hilary Green's new book, Educational Reconstruction, fills this gap.

Green's main argument is that African Americans ensured the permanence of education for themselves and for their children. This was no small accomplishment, particularly in light of the many political and economic reversals that African Americans confronted during and after Reconstruction. In the two decades after the Freedmen's Bureau withdrew local support for black schools, urban African Americans preserved, protected, and expanded these schools, often without much political power, and they demonstrated a remarkable tenacity in seeking out alliances and modifying strategies to ensure that the African American schoolhouse persisted.

The book is a comparative study of schools in Richmond, Virginia, and Mobile, Alabama, but the payoffs of this comparative approach are few. The trajectory of schools in both cities is largely the same. After the Civil War, freedpeople collaborated with outsiders to establish schools; then, with military reconstruction and the enfranchisement of black men, state-supported public schools were created. But these new schools were not secure, and African Americans fought to maintain them and provide adequate funding while trying to lessen the disparate treatment that black schools and black teachers faced. The biggest difference between these two cities was the Readjuster movement in Virginia, which injected new resources into African American schools in the early 1880s at a time when Mobile's schools suffered from neglect and inequity, but these gains were only temporary. The problem is that there is not enough of a contrast to merit a dual analysis. As a result the narrative is often repetitive and disjointed.

Green effectively plumbs the depths of city and state educational records, newspapers, Freedmen's Bureau educational records, American Missionary Association papers, and other assorted documents about teaching and schooling. This source base facilitates a detailed and balanced assessment of educational initiatives, but it is a bit narrow for the larger ambitions of the book. The main reason for the persistence of black schools, Green argues, is that African Americans shared a vision for citizenship that included an affirmative right to education. To fully explore this expansive vision, other realms of public policy and political mobilization needed to be explored. We learn, almost in passing, that Virginia's and Alabama's Reconstruction constitutions enshrined free, public schools as a right of citizenship, yet it is unclear how black Richmonders and black Mobilians contributed to this important intervention. Similarly, we learn that the Readjusters hired more African American teachers and principals and increased funding for Richmond schools, but the role of black voters in electing Readjuster candidates on a platform committed to fully funding public schools is absent.

Nevertheless, the political pragmatism of black Mobilians and black Richmonders in local struggles is one of the book's strengths. They made alliances with condescending white northerners, accepted white teachers at normal schools, and altered their protests to gain favor with state and local education officials. They were especially adept at petitioning, providing steady pressure on elected leaders at a time when access to the ballot box was substantially narrowed. All this, Green contends, was part of a larger plan to make African American education a legitimate institution. At times this meant accepting that black teachers would be underemployed and working with racist educational leaders. But the long-term goal was always kept in sight, even in the midst of unrelenting opposition...