Schooling the Freed People: Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861–1876 by Ronald E. Butchart (review)

It turns out teachers in the freedmen’s schools were a much more diverse group than most of us thought. Indeed, Ronald E. Butchart so thoroughly dispels the myth of the New England Evangelical white female schoolteacher that this long–held stereotype will likely never recover. The picture he presents is much more complicated. African Americans and southern whites replace northern whites as the primary educators of this new group of students. How these teachers ran their classrooms and viewed their charges had significant implications, as they occupied a middle ground between a black population eager to improve its social standing and a white southern population determined to prevent this outcome.

The foundation for this fascinating and groundbreaking book is the Freedmen’s Teacher Project—a database compiled by Butchart with the goal of discovering as much information as possible about everyone who taught at a southern black school from 1861–1876. At the time of publication, the database included 11,600 people, which Butchart estimates is about two–thirds of the entire cohort.

This impressive amount of new data yields various informative tidbits but none is more surprising than the fact that African–Americans and southern whites constituted the majority of teachers in black schools. This discovery begs a revaluation and new analysis of the purpose, function, and history of black schools during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Butchart does an admirable job of providing new insights and positioning the subject for a host of new questions.

He argues education was crucial to recently–freed African Americans because it embodied a broad definition of emancipation—one that did not merely end slavery but provided access to all of the benefits of white society. Thus, African Americans became extremely enthusiastic students, as demonstrated by their high attendance record and impressive performance on exams. Given this line of reasoning, African–American teachers emerge as best able to provide a full education for their students. Many only had limited educations themselves but their commitment to the betterment of their race overrode this seeming deficiency.

White northerners were similarly sympathetic to the needs of southern blacks but Butchart is skeptical of their motivations and methods. He finds little evidence that many were committed abolitionists and, even if they were, opposition to slavery did not necessarily produce belief in black equality. Furthermore, the evangelical impulse that has been highlighted by previous historians and, in the case of James M. McPherson, held up as the primary reason for the drive and endurance of white northern teachers, does not fare as well under Butchart. He convincingly argues that the number of committed Evangelical teachers was small and their motivations were more derived from a desire to do good works rather than a belief in black intellectual and social equality.

Unsurprisingly, white southerners receive the lion’s share of Butchart’s skepticism. Constituting a large portion of black school-teachers and eventually the majority, most taught primarily out of financial desperation with little interest in their students. A basic adherence to the standard curriculum, limited tenure, and racial paternalism characterized the careers of these southern whites. Although these tendencies surely limited the benefits they could provide their black charges, the enthusiasm and curiosity of black students nevertheless prevailed. Literacy was valuable, regardless of who taught it. In addition, black students were able to reach beyond mere literacy, regardless of their teacher’s commitment, and continued to thrive in their new schools.

Butchart ends the book with an examination of how southern white violence ultimately destroyed the dream of black education and the expansive view of emancipation. His best insight in this chapter is how the success of black students actually hastened the destruction of their schools. Unable to acknowledge black intellectual equality, white supremacists saw black educational success as a result of meddling by teachers and...