Chapter 6: African American Education

1865

  • Civil War Ends-Common School era

  • Horace Man dies in 1865 and dies in Ohio

  • Begins the influential era of Reconstruction

  • Towards end of Civil war, Lincoln shifted from fighting to preserve the Union to fighting to abolish slavery.

  • 4 million African Americans are freed

Three Reconstruction Amendments passed:

  • 13th Amendment: Abolished slavery

  • 14th Amendment: Citizenship for freed slaves. Equal protection clause.

  • 15th Amendment: Suffrage for African American males.

Black Belt: 623 Southern counties in the United States across 11 states with higher than average population of African American communities. These areas are characterized by worse off employment, education, and housing.

1867

Reconstruction: A period of time when the North focused on rebuilding the South following the end of the Civil War.

  • Troops from the North were sent to the South to enforce federal law.

  • Troops kept the peace and enforced reconstruction

Suffrage: The right to vote extended to African American males.

Money for Education: For the first time money was given to public education for African Americans in the South.

Black Codes:

  • Laws set to undermine the gaining equality of African Americans.

  • Jim Crow laws set to enforce segregation and separated the races.

  • Separate but Equal established and deemed constitutional by Plessy v. Ferguson.

  • Pig Laws: laws in the South that more harshly punished black Americans for crimes where a white man might receive a lesser punishment.

1877

Depression: When the North suffers an economic depression they are more worried about themselves which shifts their focus from reconstruction to themselves.

Rutherford B. Hayes: Makes a promise with the South to remove troops from the South. He wins with support from Southern Whites.

These both lead to a period in time called Redemption in the South.

Redemption led to all gains during Reconstruction being eliminated for African Americans in schooling.

1890

  1. Right to Vote: Mississippi Plan enacts literacy tests and poll taxes which significantly hinders black peoples right to vote. We see a significant drop in voter registration among black men at this time.

  2. Money for Black Education: A shift from Per-capita allocation of money to schools. Palmer came up with a plan that passed that changed who allocated funds from the state Superintendents of education to local (majority white) school boards. This led to almost a completely dismantled African American Public Education System in the South.

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington was born during the Reconstruction era. The education he received was good because money had been allowed to flow into black Public schools.

Believed in these Key Ideas:

  • Believed that for African Americans to excel they’d need vocational education.

  • Believed in the theory that the “black” race was less evolved and thus needed to “catch up” with the white race.

  • Didn’t largely attribute African American oppression to systems of racism but less evolved.

  • Established the Tuskegee Institute which still persists today to educate generations of leaders.

  • Born a slave in Virgina and went to school during Reconstruction before Redemption.

W.E.B DuBois

Serves as a foil to Booker T. Washington in his beliefs. DuBois was a writer and author. He published materials that exposed racist crimes by mob violence while at the NAACP.

His main beliefs were:

  • Believed in education that would cultivate the brain rather than just vocational education.

  • He was a teacher and obtained his Ph.D from Harvard.

  • Attributed African American setbacks to racist systems and systemic racism.

  • Born free in Massachusetts.

Words to Know

  • 13th Amendment: Abolished Slavery.

  • 14th Amendment: Established citizenship for all former slaves and all Americans moving forward. Also established equal protection under the law.

  • 15th Amendment: Gave black men the right to vote.

  • Black Belt: A series of majority black counties in in the South.

  • Palmer Plan: House Bill 504 that changed the allocation of funds for schools. Solomon Palmer the State Superintendent of Education shifted the allocation of funding from himself to white school boards.

  • NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

  • Plessy v. Ferguson: Established the doctrine of Separate but Equal that allowed segregation to undermine the 14th amendment.

  • Brown v. Board of Education: A case brought before the Supreme Court that invalidated segregation in public schools and repealed the doctrine of separate but equal.