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2 Captains and Cohorts Following the adoption of the 1875 constitution, Alabama’s General Assembly enacted new legislation relating to the public schooling system. This specified the roles and responsibilities of various office bearers and, by so doing, indicated an organizational structure that was highly decentralized and roughly pyramidal with an elected state superintendent at the peak. If it were not quite a case of L’État c’est Moi, the “State Superintendent of Education” and the “Department of Education” were, for all practical purposes, one and the same. As late as 1914 the entire department comprised the superintendent, an officer entitled “Chief Clerk,” and five clerical or administrative staff.1 Under the school law of 1876, the state superintendent was legally bound to “devote his time to the care and improvement of the common schools and the improvement of public education,” and to diffuse as widely as possible by “addresses and personal communication, information as to the importance of public schools.”2 He was supposed to visit each county annually to inspect schools and to encourage the holding of teachers’ institutes but most of his duties were fiduciary and administrative. The statutory prescription of the role seems to have been based on some template of educational administration not modified to suit the expenditure constraints of successive Bourbon governments , the demands of the office, or the geographic reality of Alabama’s huge area and sparse settlement. Most state superintendents stated emphatically in their reports that it was just not feasible to visit all counties annually and also conduct departmental business.3 Even office business could not be conducted without resources. John O. Turner (state superintendent, 1894–1898) actually had a circular printed headed “MUST STOP,” and this was mailed to anyone seeking information. It explained inquiries could not be answered—there were just too many.4 One of the principal roles of the state superintendent was to appoint upward of sixty county superintendents. This task was fraught with controversy owing to rambunctious local disputes and politicking. The superintendent’s 26 Captains and Cohorts decision often had to be made after receiving letters of both fulsome praise and scurrilous denunciation in relation to the same candidate. In 1877 LeRoy F. Box (state superintendent, 1876–1880) faced such a dilemma when he had to choose between reappointing P. Brown Frazier, the incumbent superintendent in DeKalb County, or considering the merits of a new contender, George Lowry. Claims, counterclaims, and shifting alliances all had to be weighed. One writer described Frazier as “almost destitute of firmness of character and as little qualified to the business as anyone.” Frazier was apparently involved in a dispute with a committee member’s neighbor.5 State superintendents were rarely able to solve neighborhood quarrels but these were referred to them anyway. In 1883 Henry Clay Armstrong (state superintendent , 1880–1884) was contacted by a Mr. H. J. Martin, who was spokesperson for some angry residents of Winston County.Their superintendent was said to have “trampled upon their rights as free American citizens”owing to his decisions. Martin realized Armstrong might not wish to get involved but requested he might “cite a law that would free us from his tyranny.”6 The county superintendent occupied the next level in the notional organizational pyramid. The position was held for two years and combined the roles of administrator, receiver of public moneys, steward for school lands, and payroll officer. In the school law of 1879 fourteen sections dealt with the role of the county superintendent. None dealt with educational policy making or school supervision, although the county superintendent was responsible for appointing and providing oversight for arguably the most important educational official—the township (school district) superintendent—whose role will be discussed below. He also had to preside over a “county educational board”—actually just himself and two teachers.7 Though rather a thankless role with mundane duties, few resources, and inadequate remuneration, the position of county superintendent was sought after and fought over. This was because it conferred upon its incumbent prestige and status. Although a regard for position and status might seem a contradiction in a culture shaped by frontier individualism, as the writer W. J. Cash observed in his well-regarded cultural analysis, The Mind of the South, “crackers and farmers” accorded such entitlements to their “captains” in the public arena because they associated the “master class, not with any diminution of their individuality but with its fullest development and expression.”8 For many years after the...

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