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11. Black Teachers and Missionaries
- The University of Alabama Press
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Black Teachers and Missionaries [34.237.245.80] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:58 GMT) ]( MYSELF am a Colored woman, bound to that ignorant, de- :xc graded, long enslaved race, by ties of love and consanguinity: ~ they are socially and politically 'my people'" was Sara G. Stanley's stated reason for joining the AMA as a freedmen's teacher. The twenty-five-year-old Stanley was only one of many northern blacks who rushed to aid their recently freed fellows. It has too frequently been assumed that the crusade to educate former slaves was a white movement. Blacks were intimately involved in freedmen's education as teachers, often as pioneers in opening schools in areas where whites could not or would not go. Mary Peake, the association's vanguard instructor in the South, was black and she was already teaching when Lewis C. Lockwood secured permission for her to operate her school openly. The first white teachers usually were aided in the classroom by local freed people. Mary Green assisted Charles P. Day at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in 1862 until she became ill. Her place was taken by Lucinda Spivery, who had been freed by her white father and given "a fair English education" by her aunt. Day believed her "considerable teaching ability" qualified Spivery to become a full-time instructor . At least fifteen advanced students had served as assistants or monitors at Norfolk by November 1863. Six of them had been paid small amounts, while the others had received only rations as compensation . After the monitors went on strike for higher wages, William H. Woodbury, Norfolk superintendent, agreed to pay them one dollar a week and rations. 1 The monitors and assistants had been employed by teachers in the field because they badly needed help, but from the beginning the AMA sought eligible blacks who desired to become teachers and missionaries . As well-educated, available black teachers were necessarily scarce, the association operated under the tacit principle that blacks would be given positions when possible, even though they might be 189 190 CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION less well prepared than white candidates. Black friends encouraged the association in its hiring policy. When the Reverend Leonard A. Grimes visited Union-occupied areas in the South in 1863, he pronounced himself "delighted and highly pleased with the noble work" the AMA was doing "for the salvation and the education and elevation" of freedmen, but added pointedly that he wished to see among its appointments "some good faithful colored preachers and teachers."2 The first northern black agent the AMA sent South was Boston carpenter John Oliver. After hearing contraband William Davis speak of the condition of fugitives fleeing to Virginia, Oliver unsuccessfully applied to the recently formed Boston Educational Commission for a position as contraband teacher. Association agent William L. Coan charged that the commission objected to hiring blacks. Oliver then wrote the AMA of his desire to teach and assist fugitives. "With my knowledge of both slavery and the slave and the condition in which the former has left the latter," he stated, "I believe that I would be of great service to that people." Oliver arrived in Virginia in May 1862 and was sent to Newport News. He soon was operating two schools on alternate days and a night school. From Newport News he went to Portsmouth, where he taught school, organized a benevolent society, and tried to protect contrabands from Union soldiers. Secretary Whipple commended Oliver for his "moral and christian character" and his devotion to the work, but suggested that he had weakened his usefulness by trying to do too much. Unfortunately Oliver enraged military officials by his constant criticism of their treatment of contrabands. When he offered to resign as a result, the association accepted, Whipple said, because it was paying him more than some much better educated white teachers who were preaching as well as teaching.3 Oliver was soon followed to Virginia by a small corps of better prepared and more efficient teachers. By late 1862 Thomas DeS. Tucker was living and teaching with Charles P. Day at Fortress Monroe. William D. Harris, Clara C. Duncan, Sara G. Stanley, Blanche V. Harris , and Mary Watson, all quite able, arrived shortly afterwards. In early 1864 Secretary Whipple visited the Norfolk schools. All were "good," he reported, but the best was taught by Blanche V. Harris. Generally black and white teachers worked together, but in Norfolk Woodbury decided to establish a school run completely by blacks as...