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

13. The AMA and the Black Community

,18' The AMA and the Black Community ~'.r----_ _ _ _ _-------"< ! REEDMEN were contributing partners in the AMA's south- ~ f ~ ern work from the beginning. When the Reverend W. T. Richardson went to Savannah in early 1865 to determine the feasibility of starting schools, he discovered that freedmen had formed the Savannah Educational Association, had collected $730, and had employed several local teachers. After passing a resolution of confidence in the AMA, the SEA invited its cooperation. In several instances the association sent teachers only after blacks had furnished a school building or promised to board the teachers. Dozens of communities struggled to provide board and more if possible. Beaufort, North Carolina , blacks fitted up the schoolroom and bought furniture at great sacrifice. "I assure you there is a willingness to do all they can," George N. Greene wrote. In Carondelet, Missouri, Alma Baker had only thirty students, but parents regularly paid her board bill and rent on the schoolhouse. Before classes started in 1865 they had raised a fund of $400. When Baker tried to secure local white charity, some parents objected. They had been "niggers" long enough, one said; now they wished to be men. In 1869 Thomasville, Georgia, blacks willingly paid ten dollars a week to board two teachers, plus tuition for their children. In addition to paying board and rent, freedmen made direct donations to the association. In 1866-67 they gave $7,756 to the AMA. The amount increased to $13,056 in 1867 and to $21,500 in 1868-69.1 Montgomery, Alabama, blacks asked the AMA for teachers only after they had collected money and arranged to construct a school bUilding. In Marion, Alabama, freedmen led by former slave barber Alexander H. Curtis formed a school corporation and elected a board which secured a school lot. In 1867 the board deeded the property to the AMA. In some outlying areas the AMA sent teachers only if the community agreed to pay tuition to assure their salaries. Newton, 237 238 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION Georgia, parents gladly paid the fee, elected a committee of twelve to canvass the neighborhood to discern the number of school-age children , and formed a benevolent association to pay tuition for orphans. Several Milledgeville, Georgia, parents lost their jobs after voting Republican in 1868 and were borrowing money to pay tuition and the teacher's board. They were "willing to make any sacrifice, that the school may continue," their teacher said. Freedmen assisted and showed their gratitude in numerous other ways. When the teachers arrived in Macon in 1865, they were greeted by members of a welcoming committee who had "swept, scoured and garnished" the mission home. While Carrie Semple was on vacation from her small Florida school, freedmen led by their minister dug trenches to drain the water-filled school lot, cleaned and refurbished the house, and planted trees in the yard. The AMA, other societies, and the Freedmen's Bureau made invaluable contributions to black education. They stimulated the freedmen's desire for schooling, encouraged black self-help, and established hundreds of schools, but they in turn were prompted to make greater efforts by enthusiastic freedmen who were disposed to make great sacrifices to educate their children.2 The AMA also joined freedmen in their attempt to secure land. Initially the association wished to settle contrabands on land to prove their industry and capability and to relieve physical suffering and dislocation . If they could persuade the government to allow blacks to cultivate abandoned plantations in South Carolina and Virginia, AMA officials thought, "all our educational and missionary aspirations generally will go forward and our efforts will, under the providence of God abundantly satisfy the incredulous as well as friends." George Whipple spent several days in Washington in March 1862 trying to effect such an arrangement. Eventually U.S..officials agreed to the association's plan, and Charles B. Wilder, the AMA's choice, was appointed to supervise an agricultural system in eastern Virginia. The AMA strongly advocated the distribution of confiscated and abandoned lands to freedmen and vigorously protested President Johnson's later return of such land to owners. The government, the association claimed, was obligated to guarantee to freedmen "all the rights implied in the use of lands already granted them of lands abandoned by rebel owners, including the produce of the cultivation of the crops." But the AMA wanted more than temporary custody of land for freedmen. It wanted permanent ownership.3 The AMA and the Black Community 239 Association officials envisioned a South filled with small, independent landholders who would be happier, more ambitious, and more stable than landless laborers. Some agreed with Samuel S. Ashley, who said in 1868 that "everyday's experience increases with me the conviction that the next step to be taken in reconstruction is to break up the immense landed estates, and secure homesteads to the landless ." But there is no evidence that they believed this should be done by wholesale government confiscation. Rather, they appealed to northern benevolence. In late 1864 Tappan cooperated in circulating a flyer throughout the North notifying the public that sale of confiscated lands in eastern Virginia would begin 30 January 1865. The flyer was designed to appeal to patriotism, greed, and benevolence. Northerners were urged to buy the land in order to make the area loyal. Moreover , it might be a "profitable investment for the owner, and yet be held for the ultimate benefit of landless whites and blacks at the South." Tappan's idea that wealthy northerners should buy land and sell to blacks on credit provided land for only a small number. Since all of the AMA's income was being expended for relief and education, the association was in no position to implement any large-scale plan to provide land for freedmen, but it made some small efforts in that direction . It consistently advised freedmen to work hard, to be frugal, and to invest in property. In 1865 an AMA agent in Providence, Virginia, formed freedmen into an association to purchase homesteads. Members vowed to deposit their savings in a bank until they had accumulated a sum sufficient to buy land.4 In 1867 more concrete steps were taken when the AMA bought a tract of 175 acres near Hampton, Virginia, which was divided and sold to more than forty families. In 1869 it bought 615 acres in Cateret County, North Carolina, and several hundred acres at Dudley and Haverlock, North Carolina. The tracts were divided and sold to freedmen on five-year terms, and the money received as payment was invested in more land. At each settlement the association began a school and church, hoping to make permanent communities. The plan met with some success. By 1871 several families had purchased plots in Dudley and neatly painted cottages were rising. Eighty acres acquired in Marion, Alabama, became an "enterprising colony" with houses, fences, yards, thriving gardens, and fruit trees. But often black poverty and natural disasters prevented success. In 1870 the AMA bought a 220-acre plantation in Jefferson County, Florida, on which it 240 CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION intended to establish a model village. The plantation was carved into five 40-acre tracts and one tract of 20 acres, each of which was quickly sold for ten dollars down with the remainder to be paid within three years. There was a crop failure the first growing season, and the next year a cotton surplus reduced prices by half. At the end of two years only one man had made an additional payment of three dollars. The association had received a $63 return on its $1,320 investment. Some AMA workers used their own money to buy land for resale to blacks, the association encouraged freedmen to take advantage of the southern Homestead Act of 1866, and it sent teachers to several black established colonies, but its land policy benefited only a few dozen families. The AMA also occasionally helped black businessmen. In 1869 teacher Sarah W. Stansbury informed the association that Ruben Richards, a Cuthbert, Georgia, farmer, wished to open a store to sell to fellow blacks at a reasonable price since white merchants exploited them. Association secretaries shipped produce to Richards from New York on credit, often shopping for seeds, molasses, lard, syrup, crackers, flour, and other goods for him themselves. The AMA thus assisted in establishing a black-owned business, which was rare in Reconstruction Georgia.5 The AMA-black community relationship extended beyond cQoperating in establishing schools and buying land. Though association teachers worked primarily with youth, education was not confined to the classroom. The teachers tried to influence the entire black community. Not only should freedmen be taught the rudiments of citizenship, but vices created and perpetuated by slavery must be eradicated. In their place northern teachers wished to instill their values ofindustry, economy , thrift, temperance, and sexual purity. One of the areas on which the AMA missionary-teachers first concentrated was the institution of marriage. Slave marriages had not been sanctioned by law, and the association energetically urged slave partners to legalize their relationships . Smart and Venus Campbell, who had been married fortyfive years according to slave custom, were remarried in 1863 at the urging of an AMA missionary. Great mass weddings were often performed . David Todd married fourteen "old couples" on Christmas Day 1864 at Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He united fifty-six more couples the following March. Most association teachers constantly lectured on the sanctity of marriage. They were shocked that even some preachers The AMA and the Black Community 241 openly indulged in "concubinage with a plurality of women." Teaching a puritan sexual code remained a major AMA goal.6 The association also attacked snuff, tobacco, and alcohol. Tobacco was widely used by all classes in the South. Teachers succeeded in virtually banishing its use in day schools, but had difficulty with adults in the community. Emma B. Eveleth, a Gainesville, Florida, teacher, feared that they were so addicted they would rather give up food. Alcohol was attacked even more vigorously. The AMA viewed it as a major cause of poverty, idleness, and licentiousness. Blacks were poor, and according to the association, spending for liquor and tobacco helped keep them impoverished. Eveleth reported that "those who use it think they must have it at all hazards even iftheir families suffer for the necessities of life." Teachers and ministers denounced alcohol and drunkenness at school, in the churches, and at public meetings. John Silsby warned Alabama blacks not to drink, adding, "You don't find such men as General Howard ... or the martyred Lincoln, whiskey drinkers." In cooperation with the Freedmen's Bureau, the AMA established scores of temperance societies (the Lincoln Temperance Society being the most common) with thousands of members. Old and young alike were pressured to take a pledge not to use liquor.7 Most teachers organized temperance societies at school and used their students as missionaries to help spread the message to their elders. Eveleth's students acted as spies to report on those who broke the pledge, so that she could visit backsliders and bring them back to sobriety if possible. As with tobacco, the association had greater success in making teetotalers of students than of adults. The AMA failed to end drinking even among its church members. When the Reverend Aaron Rowe was sent to Savannah in 1874 to supervise AMA churches, he reported: "My bro. you have no idea what a terrible work liquor drinking was doing in all these churches before I came here." Several members sold liquor, and others were habitually drunk. Some of the deacons were "dram drinkers," and the Reverend Robert Carter , an AMA black minister, drank with members in their homes. Not only were older freedmen less receptive than students to the teachers' influence, they often resented their self-righteous interference with their personal lives. As a result the AMA's dry crusade often met black opposition. John Scott was alarmed and angered when a North Carolina minister told his students that Scott was in error, that there 242 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION was nothing wrong or immoral about drinking whiskey. Many AMA teachers piously agreed with D. T. Allen, who concluded in 1872 that blacks had little "moral tone" and resisted every effort to "reform the abuses."8 Not content to battle against the vices of tobacco and liquor, AMA personnel became involved in almost every aspect of the freedmen's lives. They gave instruction in domestic arts with emphasis on order, housekeeping, sewing, and maintenance of a proper home environment . Men were told of their responsibility to work and to care for their families. Parents were advised how to raise their children, how to use their earnings, and how to treat each other. Missionaries told freedmen how to worship, and occasionally how to vote. A few agents worried about this paternalism. John G. Fee, who sought AMA and government assistance in helping blacks secure land, said: "There is a danger just here-that after all we are attempting to treat the black man as a 'nigger' not as other men. To get the right use of his bon!:'!s and muscles he must stand as other men-not too much nursing." Others complained that blacks relied on them for counsel on "questions ranging from the cut of a baby's apron, to the validity ofthe title deeds securing to them their little homes." But all too often teachers took pride in black dependence. An Alabama teacher boasted that he and his colleagues exerted an influence for good on freedmen such as no race had previously had an opportunity to do because blacks, "regarding us as their deliverers from the horrors of slavery, look upon us as the very messenger of God, sent to answer their secret prayers, offered up through long years of suffering." He added that he was "surprised every day at the readiness which is manifest in complying with my advice even when it is most against their natural feelings."9 Most teachers advocated black independence, but their actions sometimes inspired the opposite. In some ways they were similar to paternalistic masters. David Peebles referred to Dudley, North Carolina , blacks as "my people." Although many of the teachers were sincere in their desire for black progress, their attitudes strongly suggested a fundamental belief in white superiority. While rendering valuable assistance to freedmen, the AMA and other aid societies ignored an important problem. Or, as Maxine D. Jones concluded in a study of North Carolina, teachers and missionaries often became so consumed with freedmen affairs, so certain of their superior knowledge and The AMA and the Black Community 243 wisdom, so intent upon elevating them and "aiding them in their first steps of freedom that they neglected to allow them to walk or even stand on their own."10 Certainly some freedmen did look upon northern whites as their protectors and leaders. H. S. Beals left Virginia in August 1865 "with painful anxieties, and depressed spirits. I left many of the Freedmen in tears," Beals said. "They were sorely tried & frightened with the intense hatred & cruel violence of the returned rebel soldiers." A Fisk student wrote: "Our good teacher is kind and good to us. Mr. John Ogden is our Gen. in school. He takes a great pride in looking in the chapel every morning at us. We have a good God above us at all times." In 1869 blacks at a public meeting in Milledgeville, Georgia, resolved "that we tender our sincere thanks to the American Missionary Association and all other Benevolent Societies which in the past have aided us in the moral and mental culture of our race, as well as to those noble teachers who have sacrificed the comforts of home and society to come here and teach our children." Esther Douglass thought some of her North Carolina students "loved" her too much. Jennie, a "smart" older student, lived five miles from Douglass, but would walk that distance at any time to do her a favor. Other students were as devoted. Butler Wilson, a black leader and attorney in Boston, said in 1882 that blacks "felt toward the AMA 'as a man should toward his mother.'" Others seemed to believe they had exchanged one master for a more benevolent and distant one. An elderly man, speaking to members of the Marion, Alabama, church, said, "That association man [E. M. Cravath ] way up yonder who we all belong to says he'll send" us a pastor soon.!1 Although some freedmen accepted northern teachers and missionaries ' advice and leadership without question, many did not. They appreciated the aid the AMA and other societies gave them and looked to northern whites for protection from the military and from former masters . Northern white teachers obviously were different from southern whites. They lived with freedmen, advocated full citizenship, taught their children, and reminded them that they were free and must learn the ways of freedmen. The teachers' evident sympathy and concern compelled blacks to view whites in a different light. Yet lifelong habits and suspicions were not easily changed. Despite their gratitude, blacks still saw the missionary-teachers as whites and scrutinized 244 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION them closely for signs of prejudice and desire to dominate. A black delegation told Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase that freedmen would more likely trust blacks than whites, no matter what the origin of the latter. A northern observer concluded that freedmen had "a general suspicion" of whites that lay "deeper than trust in this or that individual . Accustomed to kindness only in the form of an owner's interested protection, they cannot appreciate disinterested effort in their behalf." The freedmen took umbrage at the superior air of some teachers and at being treated as if they had no minds of their own. A Norfolk missionary had little success in his Sabbath school in 1863 because , a colleague said, he was not elected by the church and because of his dictatorial manner. "He does not understand the colored people ," the colleague added. "They are sick of slavery & very sensitive to anything like usurpation-greatly desiring free election." Earlier Charles Wilder had expelled an AMA teacher because his "bad temper & domineering policy" had alienated freedmen. Another Virginia teacher was distrusted because he sold groceries to blacks after school. Even though he sold items at reduced prices, freedmen suspected he was just another exploitative white.12 Freedmen especially resented any hint of color discrimination. Teachers quickly learned that serious disagreements or quarrels with blacks could bring charges of racial bias. When the AMA superintendent at Natchez, Mississippi, treated Blanche Harris and Pauline Freeman differently from white teachers, freedmen immediately came to their support and discussed the issue in their churches. The association 's influence in the black community was badly damaged. Julia Shearman warned from Georgia that there was a "very general distrust of everything white" among the freedmen, and that if they saw "even white missionaries cannot brook to eat with them-then we shall lose influence." Cuthbert, Georgia, blacks were cordial to teacher S. W. Stansbury and were anxious to have a school, but they disapproved of her boarding with a white family. Attempts to appease southern whites by avoiding social contact with blacks often resulted in the loss of black trust. In 1876 a majority of male Tougaloo students petitioned for S. C. Osborn's dismissal on the grounds that he was incompetent and lacked sympathy for blacks. After the president's investigation found many of the charges "either false or frivolous," the students prepared another petition to send to New York. As has al- The AMA and the Black Community 245 ready been seen, community opposition forced the removal of leaders at Talladega and Straight for making racial distinctions, and blacks frequently and publicly charged that Samuel C. Armstrong at Hampton believed in and observed the color line.13 Apparent absence of racial prejudice among teachers did not guarantee that freedmen would unquestioningly accept their guidance. When Alma Baker read a temperance tract to a black Missouri congregation , they strongly denounced it. Mter she informed them that it had been written by a St. Louis black man, however, they retracted some of their earlier statements and listened to her with greater interest . Numerous white missionaries noted that many freedmen were racially exclusive. This did not necessarily mean that white assistance or even direction was unwelcome but, rather, that blacks were suspicious of whites and desired to retain some control over their own destiny. And the longer they were free the more determined they became to define their own goals and the methods of achieving them. Freedmen were adept at accepting aid and advice they wanted and rejecting the undesirable. They gladly sent their children to missionary schools while resisting the teachers' interference in their personal lives. They permitted the AMA to build church houses and pay pastors but continued to worship according to their own lights. Association work was usually most prosperous in areas where the AMA formed coalitions with black leaders, and when it did not "an unhealthful" and "ugly disposition" sometimes arose. The New Orleans community warmly supported the AMA as long as it "kept in view the development ofa capacity for selfgovernment" among them and made them an integral part of its work. When the association began to ignore black leaders, it lost support. Failure to consider freedmen's wishes could lead to violent confrontations. In 1875 Swayne School principal J. M. McPherron barely escaped being attacked by a black mob in Montgomery , Alabama. The mob's stated reason for wishing to punish McPherron was that he had been intimate with a female student. The rumor of intimacy was false and evidence suggests that the vigilantes were motivated more by resentment. 14 McPherron's habit of ignoring blacks and their plans had created dislike so intense that they were ready to seize upon any pretext to get revenge. 15 As already seen, the freedmen's resolve to retain religious independence caused the AMA's church planting programs to fail. Although 246 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION blacks were more amenable to the association's educational plans because such assistance was more badly needed and schools were perceived as a less direct threat to black customs, a similar yearning for some control was visible. Freedmen welcomed aid society schools, yet many of them dreamed of schools taught and directed by blacks. From the beginning some freedmen had requested black teachers. Whites noted with dismay that parents sometimes sent their children to pay schools taught by poorly educated blacks in preference to free schools with well-trained teachers. Bainbridge, Georgia, freedmen bluntly told AMA teacher Lizzie Parsons that they did not want northern teachers and preachers, "for we don't teach right." This attitude, she said, made her work "a constant warfare." Black Amos G. Beman declared that seeing educated blacks conducting schools would be an inspiration to freedmen "such as no words could describe." Black minister Richard H. Cain said: "We must take into our hands the education of our race. Honest, dignified whites may teach ever so well, it has not the effect to exalt the black man's opinion of his own race."16 Although the AMA understood and sympathized with the freedmen 's longings to have teachers of their own color, it apparently never fully appreciated their aspirations to achieve as much control over their lives and institutions as possible. Its officers blamed black attempts to gain ascendancy over schools on ignorant black ministers afraid of losing their congregations and thereby their power, and on black teachers "fearing for bread and butter." Or they viewed it as a laudable but premature ambition. Sometimes the association was correct . Black ministers and teachers often felt threatened by AMA schools, and some blacks wanted to run the schools without either the necessary money or expertise. Nevertheless, the AMA's superior attitude , its insistence on Yankee efficiency, and its impatience with black leaders while they were learning through trial and error created serious tensions. 17 In late 1863 St. Louis blacks at a mass meeting organized a school board to raise funds and conduct free schools in the city. George Candee , an AMA agent, was appointed corresponding secretary and general superintendent. Association schools and teachers became part of the system, and the AMA continued to pay its teachers' salaries. Candee soon became disillusioned with the board. He had thought the board could be persuaded to accept superior teachers regardless of The AMA and the Black Community 247 color, he wrote, but they were more concerned with securing positions for blacks. In order to avoid bruising sensitive feelings, "superior" white AMA teachers were forced to teach primary pupils while blacks instructed advanced classes. By April 1864 Candee had decided "the colored people are exceedingly jealous of the whites-they hate them." Perhaps Candee revealed his true sentiments when he added, "The real interests ofthe colored people are in the hands ofthe whites, but the hearts of the former class are shut to the benefit of the latter ." In June he recommended that the AMA withdraw its St. Louis teachers, since it appeared they would be unable to work with the black board of education. Candee was no doubt influenced by the knowledge that the board was trying to replace him with a black superintendent . The board obviously wanted to retain authority while the AMA furnished the money. It was equally clear that Candee assumed the board could not possibly succeed without white leadership .ls The association was no more diplomatic in dealing with the blackdominated Savannah Educational Association. As in St. Louis, Savannah blacks hoped to operate schools "by their own wit & will" and, in the AMA's view, admit "their white friends only to inferior places & as assistants in carrying out their duties & wishes." The AMA was to provide the funds. Association agent S. W. Magill convinced AMA officers that the SEA was "a radically defective organization." The ensuing struggle between the AMA and the SEA over who should teach Savannah's freed children created a rift that never quite healed. The AMA's perception of the seriousness of the task to be done and its views of efficiency prevented it, with rare exceptions, from financially supporting black-administered and black-taught schools.19 In St. Louis and Savannah, blacks wanted the AMA to support schools established by them, but in some instances blacks attempted to take over institutions already established by the association. A battle for control resulted in the association's Selma, Alabama, school being closed for a year, and Montgomery blacks contested the AMA for direction of Swayne School for years. In 1875 Macon, Georgia, blacks, dissatisfied that Lewis High had so few black teachers, appointed a "Board of Responsible Managers" and suggested to the AMA that the board direct the school and appoint a black principal and half of the teachers. In return the board would collect money to help pay teachers 248 CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION and keep the building in repair.20 College officials at Atlanta University and at Tougaloo were dismayed to learn that some ofthe strongest opposition to giving them state aid came from black legislators who wanted colleges managed and instructed by blacks. Atlanta University in 1870 appointed additional black trustees, hoping to lessen the demand for a separate black college. The AMA resisted Mississippi Governor James L. Alcorn's suggestion that it appoint all black administrators and teachers at Tougaloo. "We should hardly care to be connected even with such an Institution under such management as this will be sure to get at so raw hands," E. P. Smith wrote. Smith doubted that a state black-run college could succeed. "The state will vote the money and the colored trustees will use [it], but it will go principally for the aggrandizement of some Dinah & Sambo, until they have floundered through two or three years-perhaps five-experience of incompetency and then new foundations will be laid and a good Institution set Up."21 Most blacks probably did not wish to seize all AMA schools, but many wanted a greater decision-making role and more black teachers. Indeed, some wanted all instructors to be black. Several association teachers lost their positions in public schools in response to black demands for blacks. Dora Ford returned to Fayetteville, Arkansas, from vacation in 1873, only to learn that the board had appointed a black principal for her school who had immediately fired her and hired one of his students. Freedmen at Washington, Arkansas, prevented Mary Stuart's AMA school from joining the public system. "The 'color line' has been drawn at Pensacola," an association teacher reported from Florida, "and those fanatical colored men who belong to the so-called Equal Rights Club, oppose, by every means in their power, the employment of Northern teachers in public schools." M. W. Martin, a sixyear AMA veteran at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, said black leaders drew "the color line strictly." They told him in 1876: "We can take care of ourselves. We are in the majority in the county. We don't want any Carpet Bagger among us." That same year blacks in St. Augustine, Florida, gained control of the school board and forced all white teachers out of their schools. In Atlanta, the board of education, already hostile to the AMA, was "emboldened" in its attacks "by the effort that many of the colored people of the city are making to have colored teachers substituted for white." Ironically, the blacks' demand for The AMA and the Black Community 249 teachers oftheir own color aligned them with southern whites who also sought to oust northern white instructors.22 The AMA could have muted black criticism ofits schools ifit had been more willing to share control and less reluctant to place blacks in supervisory positions and advanced classes. Many freedmen would have been satisfied if the association had shown them it was ready to advance blacks as soon as they were prepared. Unfortunately it often failed to demonstratesuch readiness, and it too seldom allowed substantial black involvement in running its institutions. As has already been seen, there were blacks who preferred white teachers, and color for many others was not a dominant factor. At an 1865 black convention in Raleigh, North Carolina, a resolution advocating black teachers was defeated by those who argued that it would place still another barrier between the races. In 1874 the trustees of Lincoln Institute in Missouri asked the AMA for a black woman music teacher, but added, "Color is not indispensable ." During the time Storrs School in Atlanta was operated jointly with the city board, the board annually received two sets of petitions from blacks, one requesting black teachers and one asking for northern whites. When in 1875 Frederick Douglass declared that blacks wished to be free of white, "so-called" benevolent societies with their wandering teachers and their second-rate men soliciting funds in the name of blacks, the Philadelphia Christian Recorder, organ of the African Methodist Episcopal church, firmly replied: "We are not prepared to have the American Missionary Association recall its 'second-rate' men and close its seven chartered institutions, its seventeen normal schools and its thirteen other schools." The AMA was appreciated and admired by large numbers ofblacks, and the good-will would have been even greaterifthe association could have understood the black desire to share control of schools and to have black teachers. Freedmen could attain practical knowledge from white teachers. With black teachers, administrators, and trustees, they could also foster race pride and gain practical power. All too often the AMA saw these desires as ingratitude , ludicrous ambition, or racial hostility. In theory the AMA favored black-operated and black-supported schools, but it rarely relinquished control of its own. In its view, blacks were not yet capable of assuming that responsibility. Some blacks began to wonder ifthe paternalistic AMA would ever perceive them as competent.23 Association agents and freedmen were further separated by a cul- 250 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION tural gulf that was seldom completely bridged. Abbie Howe spoke for many teachers when she said offreedmen in 1868: "What a study these people are! Ever pleasing, disappointing and puzzling us." As the years passed, some teachers seemed disappointed and puzzled more often than pleased. Alma Baker claimed that the longer she worked with freedmen the less she understood them. Even the most devoted and compassionate teachers suffered periods of discouragement over the cultural barrier which inhibited their work. The encounter between former slaves and northern whites was one of "a rational nineteenth -century, middle class culture and a premodern one" with beliefs in ghosts, spirits, and conjuring. Teachers taught piety, self-control, industriousness, and individualism. Blacks, on the other hand, had created their own system ofemotional support through the extended family and friends and, as Lawrence N. Powell said, "having by stealth and genius created a folk culture that was expressively rich and essentially communitarian . . . felt no burning need to sacrifice in freedom what had served them so well in slavery." They seized upon emancipation as an opportunity to consolidate their customs and institutions and secure them from outside interference. They cooperated with and accepted northern assistance, yet they wished to work out their own destiny. The AMA, however, was determined to impose its customs and values.24 When freedmen placated the missionary-teachers' cultural biases, they paid a price in damaged sensitivities and infringements upon their freedom. When they refused to appease northerners, the result was often disillusionment and even bitterness. The cultural chasm was not as great between teachers and many urban blacks. Free blacks in Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, and other cities were more familiar with middle-class white culture. The values and ideals ofWilliam O. Weston, Catherine Winslow, and Amelia Ann Shrewsbury, free black teachers at Charleston's Avery Institute, probably were not so different from those of the northern white teachers there. A few such people preferred whites to their former slave brethren.25 But for many, greater familiarity did not mean they appreciated white paternalism and supervision. Savannah had an intelligent, resourceful group of blacks with a tradition of freedom. It was this same group that had told Chase they were distrustful of whites, and the constitution of a local ministerial association specifically prohibited white members. The AMA and the Black Community 251 The freedmen's personal habits alienated northern teachers more than "racial exclusivity." Antislavery literature had taught them that slaves were indolent, immoral, and adept at deception and thievery, but many missionaries were able to see beyond such broad generalizations . A South Carolina teacher claimed observers judged black traits too quickly. Blacks, like any other group, he said, were "made up of a variety of tempers and dispositions as numerous as the colors of Joseph's coat; they are men, moral and intellectual beings, and in almost every stage of development." Prolonged contact enhanced H. S. Beals's evaluation of freedmen. He concluded that some freedmen were beggars and dependent while others showed great intellectual and physical vigor. "I am sure," he wrote, "that ifwe give them all the advantages of education many . . . will come up among the nation's noblemen and mark the age in which they live." After three decades of teaching freedmen, Esther Douglass responded to the question "Are all colored people thieves?" by saying: "I always trusted them and 1 never found them so." Unfortunately some teachers were so overwhelmed by what they perceived as negative characteristics that they tended to see and speak of blacks in stereotypical terms.26 Many of the negative views of freedmen related to the missionary teachers' attitude toward religion and their rigid code of conduct. They found card playing, smoking, drinking, dancing, and recreational activity on the Sabbath repugnant. To many blacks these seemed reasonable methods of relaxation and unconnected with morality. "Lust and liquor are eagerly consuming these miserable remnants ofsin and slavery ", D. N. Walcott reported from South Carolina. "They [freedmen] love idleness, they love whiskey, they love sin." Walcott added that he was speaking of prominent black deacons and church members. Mter eleven years in Athens, Alabama, Mary Wells was temporarily disheartened with the "whole" southern work. Blacks, she said, were gossipy and, "having all their lives been accustomed to an atmosphere of moral impurity, their ideas are so radically different from ours, that were we to judge them by our standards who shall be able to stand." Blacks had a clear concept of what was right and wrong to them, and their notions did not always coincide with those ofpuritanical teachers. Many of the teachers' codes of behavior were too arbitrary to tolerate aberrant conduct by freedmen. The AMA's response to black religion and morals seriously colored its entire attitude toward the freedmen, 252 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION and its attitude further alienated them. In 1875 the AMA attempted to galvanize northern churches into making greater contributions by publishing a pamphlet, The Nation Still in Danger, which depicted blacks and their churches as disgracefully immoral and degraded. John Mercer Langston, black lawyer and longtime friend of the association, accused it ofcirculating "cruel slanders ofan inoffensive and confiding, struggling and comparatively helpless people." An A.M.E. church spokesman branded the AMA's portrait of black churches as an "outrageous lie."27 Few teachers became disillusioned with black youth. It was the adults they despaired of changing, and many never lost their faith in blacks at all. Teachers and missionaries worked, lived, and suffered with blacks in numerous communities. They exulted at black victories and resented white prejudice and abuse. Nevertheless, disillusionment , "ungrateful" freedmen, a changing leadership, and a desire to accommodate southern whites changed the AMA's stance. Black suffrage is an example. The association had enthusiastically supported black suffrage and then used black voting as an appeal for funds for its educational work. Ignorant, inexperienced blacks must be taught how to use the ballot intelligently. Despite laments about black ignorance, the AMA had consistently advocated black political rights. However, there was a change in tone in the early 1870s reflective of the general northern attitude. An 1873 American Missionary editorial confessed that "the success of the freedmen as legislators and politicians had not been very marked." They still were subject to white hatred and contempt . Moreover, the "ignorance of the colored man is not removed by election to office; nor is honesty promoted amid the temptation of lobbyists and demagogues." But, the editorial asked, what could have been expected after generations of slavery? In 1874 the AMA pointed out the presumed failure of freedmen in South Carolina and Louisiana where they had the most power. "These colored people are ignorant and depraved and easily made the tools of worse men than themselves ." It was no satisfaction to know that northern legislators were also corrupt, "nor is it any relief to know that we must blame slavery as the remote cause." The Republican Party, the AMA added, was "beginning to be awake to the injury it will suffer if this state of affairs is allowed to continue." The editorial was patently unfair. Little notice was given to the many honest, able black politicians.28 The AMA and the Black Community 253 The association continued to decry southern violence and fraud designed to neutralize black voting strength, but in 1875 it admitted that Reconstruction measures had been badly planned. The country had been busily reconstructing the superstructure while the foundation went untouched. The problem, according to the AMA, lay with black ignorance, white prejudice, and racial antagonism, which could be solved only by education. Ifblacks and poor whites were "cultured and fitted for private prosperity and public duty," they would come to respect each other, and if the North earnestly and successfully engaged in this Christian and unselfish work, then perhaps educated southern whites, despite their prejudices and past hatreds, would follow. While admitting the existence of white hatred, fraud, and terror and the fact that slavery was responsible for presumed black shortcomings, the AMA seemed to be blaming the victims for their problems. In 1876 another editorial contended that if a million voters unable to read the ballot were unleashed upon New England it would cause consternation . "But that million of illiterate voters were suddenly thrown into the South, and nobody at the North seems troubled about it." All of these statements were accompanied by pleas for money to educate blacks. In its fund-raising efforts the AMA had consistently exaggerated both the good and bad aspects of freedmen. Yet this was not mere propaganda. The AMA officials obviously considered black suffrage a failure. They accepted the prevailing view that freedmen legislators "with reckless rascality" had squandered public funds. In spite of their low opinion of black politicians, association personnel fretted over the 1876 election, abuse of black voters, and what a Democratic victory would mean for freedmen. They celebrated Hayes's eventual election and mourned the loss of the last Republican regimes in the South. Walter S. Alexander wrote from Straight University that "the restoration of Bourbon Democracy brings with it impoverishment, distress , persecution and the denial of the most sacred rights of the black race."29 In 1879 Michael E. Strieby rhetorically asked if the country had been wise to give the ballot to ex-slaves in 1867. Yes, Strieby said, because it had saved blacks from being reduced to slavery again, it had given them a sense of self-respect and sustained them during the early years of freedom, and black power had given the South a free school system. But now, Strieby added, blacks were politically conquered and 254 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION the only thing that could be done was to try to protect them in their political rights and enlighten them as to the use, not abuse, of these rights. Only bayonets, he said, could sustain black political power at the moment, and "a far better thing" would "be speedily, steadily and efficiently" training the black voter "for an intelligent and responsible manhood and citizenship." Again Strieby seemed to be faulting blacks for their loss of voting power. If blacks became educated property owners and acquired "a weight of character," soldiers would not be needed to take them to the polls. When freedmen reached such a position , caste prejudice could be conquered and the color line obliterated in politics. The AMA was always naive about the power ofblack education and property acquisition to destroy prejudice.30 Although the AMA conceded that white voters temporarily had everything their own way and that there was little it could do, the association continued to advocate black civil rights. An 1876 editorial in the American Missionary proclaimed that one of the great achievements awaiting the country's second century was caste emancipation. Three years later, after carefully claiming that it was making no appeal for interracial marriages, the AMA condemned a Virginia law which prohibited such unions. The law was especially repugnant because it permitted illicit black-white extramarital relations. If whites were really concerned about miscegenation, the association said, they should punish illicit relations and allow racial mixing only when couples were legally married. The AMA further complained that granting civil rights by formal enactment was "of small importance unless the rights themselves" were honestly allowed and faithfully accepted. It also continued to oppose segregation laws and admit whites to its schools. But the AMA's former staunch egalitarianism faltered in the face of combined southern and northern white opposition and indifference. In 1878 it announced that it did not "afflrm that races any more than individuals, are equal in physical and moral fibre and development." At the same time it stubbornly adhered to its claim that blacks were not inherently inferior and that all people should be "regarded as equal before God and the Law." What blacks needed, the AMA said, was a change in environment and opportunity. Hundreds of black youth who had gone through missionary schools were morally pure, worshiped intelligently, spoke grammatically, and had refined manners. They could achieve "positions of honor, profit and power" equal to whites if The AMA and the Black Community 255 only given the same chance. Moreover, such men and women became a "leaven" in their communities which improved the mass. It was clear, however, that to the AMA, blacks improved to the degree that they became more like Christian, middle-class northern whites.31 By 1880 the AMA obviously was not the same vigorous advocate for blacks that it had been in 1865. It was more cautious-officials probably assumed more realistic-more infected by racial prejudice, even more paternalistic, and increasingly inclined to pacify white southerners by avoiding social contact with blacks, except in schools and churches. It retained great faith in black youth, but was badly disillusioned with adults. The unenviable position of blacks in American society is poignantly pointed up by the recognition that, for all its shortcomings , the AMA was still among the most concerned and progressive white friends the blacks had.32 ...