life as a teacher for the freed people
The teachers, coming from diverse backgrounds, put in a vast amount of time and effort to educate the freed people. They also experienced situations of Southern white resistance for their willingness to help a struggling race. No matter what background the teacher came from, “southern white teachers suffered precisely the same sorts of opposition and violence that northern white teachers faced; black teachers suffered the same level of violent resistant as white teachers.”(1) Regardless of the diversity among teachers, black students were still capable of exceling in arithmetic, spelling, and reading through their efforts. It was actually proven through a “recent study of Reconstruction…and its aftermath that a central value of the freed people’s schools was their student experience with interracialism.”(2) However, those that opposed of this kind of teaching in the South made sure these teachers felt threatened and isolated.
In early 1866, a white resident of Nixonton, North Carolina named Alfred. W Morris chose to teach the freed people of his community but was forced to close the school after only six weeks. He reported being afraid of the lack of safety because of the “threatening state of public feeling” towards his work.(3) Another instance of opposition towards white teachers was when the Ku Klux Klan broke up the Clarksville, Texas, school built by Charles Goldberg in 1867 forcing him to escape to Arkansas for safety.(4) P.H. Gillen, a white teacher in Maxey, Georgia, encountered threats from Whites to be murdered and have his school burned down.(5) Although these individuals could not relate to the freed people on matters of race, white teachers and supporters related to them through the passion for education and equality. The freedmen’s desire was even noticed by a former slave owner and Confederate veteran named Robert Lindsey who said that he “never saw people more anxious nor Schollars labor harder to learn.”(6)
In addition to the opposition against white teachers, black teachers faced the same kind of danger, and often times even more harmful violence. According to William A. Jones, a black teacher in Mississippi, he was shot at numerous times and wounded once within his first two years of teaching. Regarding his journey back home to Elmira, New York for his father’s funeral, Jones reported that he “was persecuted in every shape imaginable. My tormentors even persecuted me up to the moment that I got on the cars.” As a result of this misfortune, Jones never returned to Mississippi and decided to teach in Georgia and Texas instead.(7) Tennessee was another southern state where freed people and its teachers experienced cruel violence. In Rutherford County, the Ku Klux Klan ended Samuel Lowry’s school and ordered him to leave the county. Approximately an hour west of Rutherford in Franklin County, a school was burned down eight days after being built by freedmen and its teacher, ex-slave William Smith, was threatened by enemies of black education in 1869.(8) In Dresden, Tennessee, two students of Fisk University founded a school in the spring of 1869. During the upcoming fall, they recalled waking up at gunpoint, tied together at the neck being “dragged more than a mile into the woods” and beaten “with whips and heavy rods.” As the two student teachers ran for their lives, bullets were following their escape.(9)
Despite the odds against them, there were some schools that succeeded in different areas. Teachers were some of the many individuals that contributed and witnessed to this success. Miss Wilson, a black teacher from Portsmouth, Virginia, described her gratifying experience like this:
My desire was to teach. I opened a school in my home, and I had lots of students. After two years my class grew so fast and large that my father built a school for me in our back yard. I had as many as seventy-five pupils at one time. Many of them became teachers. I had my graduation exercises in the Emanuel A. M. E. Church. Those were my happiest days.(10)
Through these few factual accounts, we can still imagine the large picture of how difficult it was to make a difference in the freed people’s lives. They made social sacrifices and risked their lives to be a part of a good cause. Despite the adversity against them, these inspiring individuals displayed courage by doing their very best to provide the education the freed people greatly valued and desired.
In early 1866, a white resident of Nixonton, North Carolina named Alfred. W Morris chose to teach the freed people of his community but was forced to close the school after only six weeks. He reported being afraid of the lack of safety because of the “threatening state of public feeling” towards his work.(3) Another instance of opposition towards white teachers was when the Ku Klux Klan broke up the Clarksville, Texas, school built by Charles Goldberg in 1867 forcing him to escape to Arkansas for safety.(4) P.H. Gillen, a white teacher in Maxey, Georgia, encountered threats from Whites to be murdered and have his school burned down.(5) Although these individuals could not relate to the freed people on matters of race, white teachers and supporters related to them through the passion for education and equality. The freedmen’s desire was even noticed by a former slave owner and Confederate veteran named Robert Lindsey who said that he “never saw people more anxious nor Schollars labor harder to learn.”(6)
In addition to the opposition against white teachers, black teachers faced the same kind of danger, and often times even more harmful violence. According to William A. Jones, a black teacher in Mississippi, he was shot at numerous times and wounded once within his first two years of teaching. Regarding his journey back home to Elmira, New York for his father’s funeral, Jones reported that he “was persecuted in every shape imaginable. My tormentors even persecuted me up to the moment that I got on the cars.” As a result of this misfortune, Jones never returned to Mississippi and decided to teach in Georgia and Texas instead.(7) Tennessee was another southern state where freed people and its teachers experienced cruel violence. In Rutherford County, the Ku Klux Klan ended Samuel Lowry’s school and ordered him to leave the county. Approximately an hour west of Rutherford in Franklin County, a school was burned down eight days after being built by freedmen and its teacher, ex-slave William Smith, was threatened by enemies of black education in 1869.(8) In Dresden, Tennessee, two students of Fisk University founded a school in the spring of 1869. During the upcoming fall, they recalled waking up at gunpoint, tied together at the neck being “dragged more than a mile into the woods” and beaten “with whips and heavy rods.” As the two student teachers ran for their lives, bullets were following their escape.(9)
Despite the odds against them, there were some schools that succeeded in different areas. Teachers were some of the many individuals that contributed and witnessed to this success. Miss Wilson, a black teacher from Portsmouth, Virginia, described her gratifying experience like this:
My desire was to teach. I opened a school in my home, and I had lots of students. After two years my class grew so fast and large that my father built a school for me in our back yard. I had as many as seventy-five pupils at one time. Many of them became teachers. I had my graduation exercises in the Emanuel A. M. E. Church. Those were my happiest days.(10)
Through these few factual accounts, we can still imagine the large picture of how difficult it was to make a difference in the freed people’s lives. They made social sacrifices and risked their lives to be a part of a good cause. Despite the adversity against them, these inspiring individuals displayed courage by doing their very best to provide the education the freed people greatly valued and desired.