Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890

7. Public Schools and Teacher Training

Public Schools and Teacher Training ~"~- - - - - - - - , ' ' ' _ ,.L---_ _ __ _ _ _-.l,'" ALTHOUGH the AMA aggressively founded common schools .; I & in the South, its leaders had always believed that education => was a public responsibility, and the need for tax-supported training was painfully obvious by the end of the war. Even with Bureau support, northern societies could not reach all needy youth. Moreover, many students had progressed sufficiently to warrant graded and secondary schools. Such institutions required more teachers and greater expenditures. The association hoped public funds would support at least primary education so that northern benevolence could be concentrated on secondary schools and teacher training . In 1865 the AMA issued a call for a national system of education to include recently liberated slaves and southern whites. Ignorance, said the AMA, was the parent of crime, pauperism, wretchedness, and even disunion. Since it was the government's duty to protect its citizens from these vices, the government should establish a system of schools which would "reach every child born within the Union." A system of education that embraced both black and white children would be especially fitting at the moment, the association added. It would "solve many questions now under discussion [the black's role in American society], promote the union and loyalty of the states, prevent future rebellions, and tend to consolidate and bless the country."l Association leaders realized that a national system of schools was unlikely, but state-supported education was a distinct possibility, especially after passage of the Congressional Reconstruction acts. The AMA continued to expand its own schools while at the same time strongly encouraging "the result for which we have all been laboringnot simply the immediate education for "a few pupils, but the establishment of a permanent public school system." The AMA, more than other northern Protestant evangelical missionary societies, adhered to 109 110 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION the principle of working with states in building up common schools. It, more than others, avoided the practice of grafting primary parochial schools onto its churches.2 In some southern states association agents were instrumental in the enactment of public school legislation. John Silsby was the most prominent member of the committee which wrote the educational article for the Alabama Constitution of 1867. Francis L. Cardozo drafted the South Carolina public school law while he was superintendent ofAvery Institute of Charleston. The association's superintendent at Macon, Georgia, John A. Rockwell, helped write the school bill submitted to the Georgia legislature in 1867 and served on the state board of education . C. Thurston Chase in Florida and Samuel S. Ashley in North Carolina, both AMA agents, became superintendents of public instruction . Several agents became county superintendents of schools. The association further supported the budding public schools by withdrawing from the field when public funds were available, by giving, renting , or selling its property to local school authorities, and by sharing school expenses with state and local boards.3 The AMA knew that founding public schools would be difficult and would require constant vigilance and support. At its 1869 annual meeting it resolved "that a system of common public school education is essential to the welfare of the people of the south; that the disposition manifested at the South to repudiate that system calls for continued efforts on the part of friends ofeducation and humanity to sustain public schools, and especially normal schools, open to all persons, without respect to previous condition or color."4 The AMA claim that in many places its teachers "laid the foundations of a common school system for their districts or states" may be exaggerated, but the association, together with the Freedmen's Bureau and the AFUC, played a prominent role.5 As early as 1865 the association transferred its Baltimore schools to the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of Colored People, saying: "Ifthe main object is accomplished, it hardly matters by whom it is done."6 It withdrew its support from the District of Columbia schools in 1867 when it learned they could be sustained by public funds. Association schools were turned over to the city officials in Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, in 1867. Soon afterwards, Chattanooga schools were incorporated into the city system. The Reverend Ewing O. Tade, AMA agent, was placed in charge of both white and Public Schools and Teacher Training 111 black schools. In Memphis the Lincoln Chapel School, with seven grades...