Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865–1890 by Hilary Green (review)

In her study of African Americans' struggle for quality public schools in Richmond, Virginia, and Mobile, Alabama, Hilary Green convincingly argues that Reconstruction in education did not truly end until the Blair Education Bill's demise in 1890. Until then, urban black people had effectively pressed local and state government officials for educational improvements. Although success came in small increments, black community activism helped preserve fragile public school systems during times of political and economic uncertainty and prepared African American citizens for the difficult decades to come. Through a careful examination of periodicals, speeches, personal correspondence, and the records of missionary and secular organizations, Green has pieced together a remarkable account of how black southerners acted as guardians of free public education, which they regarded as critical to full citizenship, after the departure of the Freedmen's Bureau and the return of Democratic rule.

Black citizens very quickly realized the importance of maintaining cordial relations with their white partners in education. In Richmond, activists were fortunate to have Freedmen's Bureau officials and city superintendents who championed black schools, which served as a model for the rest of the state; their reports generated publicity and gave many white people a favorable view of black education. White officials were also invaluable in creating access to teacher training. Ralza Morse Manly, superintendent of education for the Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia, oversaw the founding of the Richmond Colored Normal School, which he donated to the city of Richmond in 1876. After repeated requests from black Mobilians, the American Missionary Association opened a normal school in its Emerson Institute in 1873. These training programs produced not only qualified applicants for positions in black schools but also community leaders whose competence belied racist justifications for discrimination. Black citizens employed a variety of tactics to increase school funding and encourage schools to hire black teachers. They pressured school officials with petitions, withdrew their children from public schools in protest, and made education an issue at the polls; the obstacles they faced were precursors of troubles to come. Political factionalism and a state constitution that enabled inequitable funding hindered progress in Mobile, while financial difficulties from the Panic of 1873 led the Richmond school board to eliminate the eighth grade and to implement double sessions in schools for both black and white students. Furthermore, officials most often responded to a space shortages by building new schools for white students and using the older buildings for black students.

By providing a municipal view of African Americans' roles in shaping southern public schools during and after political Reconstruction, Green sheds important light on the factors that determined the extent of educational progress. The reader may wish at times for broader historical context; for example, it would be interesting to know if the long-standing feud between western and eastern Virginia over the lack of a state educational system affected white Richmonders' responses to Reconstruction-era reforms. When Green does widen her analysis in the epilogue, she makes a compelling case for considering 1890 as the endpoint for educational Reconstruction. When the Republican-controlled Congress failed to pass the Blair Bill and provide federal support for southern schools, it was clear that the national party no longer considered the African American plight a central concern. Equally important, the white officials who created and implemented educational policy increasingly turned to Booker T. Washington rather than their local black constituents for direction. As the rise of white supremacist demagoguery and violence made alliances with white people ever more difficult to maintain, the patience, tenacity, and diplomacy that black community activists had acquired through their decades of postwar activism became especially useful.