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what was education like in the early 1800s.

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what was education like in the early 1800s.

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The education of African American children during the 1800s .Around the late period of slavery's after 1800, was unreliable in Texas and other southern states.

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The education of African American children during the 1800s .Around the late period of slavery's after 1800, was unreliable in Texas and other southern states.

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Formal education for these children was practically nonexistent for African Americans. 

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Formal education for these children was practically nonexistent for African Americans. 

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There education basically were just job training in a variety of occupations.

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There education basically were just job training in a variety of occupations.

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The education of African American children during the late period of slavery, after 1800, was sporadic and unreliable in Texas as in other Southern states. Formal education was practically nonexistent for African Americans. Education most often consisted of on-the-job training in a variety of occupations. Before the Civil War most people believed education of African Americans would lead to discontent and rebellion. A few did support instruction and often volunteered their services. According to the census of 1850, 58,558 African Americans, representing 27.5 per cent of the population, lived in Texas. Fewer than 1 percent, or 397, were free, of which 217 were believed to be literate, 20 were in school, and 58 were illiterate adults. There are no actual statistics available on the 58,151 enslaved African Americans, but available data indicate that a portion of the slave population had been instructed in the basic rudiments of reading and writing.

In 1865 the United States Congress instituted the Freedmen's Bureau. The bureau's primary function was to supervise and coordinate a vast educational enterprise located in Texas, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. The bureau supervised schools offering classes from the elementary level through college. These schools provided a formal curriculum of arithmetic, reading, writing, history, and geography. In addition, a practical curriculum of civics, politics, home economics, and vocational training was provided. Most teachers were supplied by the American Missionary Association, with the majority initially coming from the Northern states. Soon thereafter, a few Southern Whites and educated African Americans were recruited to teach in these schools. In January 1866, Texas began with ten day and six night schools for Black children. There were ten teachers with a total enrollment of 1,041 students (many of whom were adults). Six months later, on July 1, 1866, the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas had ninety schools (including day, night, and Sabbath schools), forty-three teachers, and 4,590 students attending. John W. Alvord, the first and only inspector of schools and finances for the bureau, described Texas schools during this period as prosperous. He found that Texas freedmen's schools had needed only minimal assistance from Northern states and attributed this to what he perceived as the minimal impact of the Civil War upon the economic base of Texas. By the end of 1870 there were eighty-eight schools (both day and night) in Texas, eighty-five teachers of whom forty-four were African American, and 4,478 students. In addition, there were twenty-seven Sabbath schools with twenty-eight teachers (twenty-three were Black) and 1,350 students.

The advent of schools staffed by Northern White missionaries was not acceptable to all the Southern White population. Some persons, alarmed by mandatory acceptance of African Americans in state politics, were vehemently opposed to the Freedmen's Bureau and exhibited their resentment by burning schools and intimidating the missionary teachers. This attitude was not universal in Texas. The Texas teachers' convention of 1866, for example, passed a resolution urging training for the newly freed African Americans of Texas. Divergences of opinion and fluctuating attitudes were most distinctly revealed in legislative enactments from 1866 to 1876. The Constitution of 1866 provided that the "income derived from the Public School Fund be employed exclusively for the education of White scholastic inhabitants," and that the "legislature may provide for the levying of a tax for educational purposes." African Americans were taxed for "the maintenance of a system of public schools for Africans and their children." The Reconstruction legislature of 1870, by eliminating segregation, gave Texas a single educational system in which all children shared, but in 1873 and 1875 the state legislature repealed most of the laws of the Reconstruction period.

In 1871, Texas organized a public school system. The succeeding system, formed under the Constitution of 1876, reestablished the segregation of races but make impartial provision for each. Between 1873 and 1893 at black state conventions, African Americans from all sections of the state met to express their opinions, to delineate their needs, and to shape educational policies. Most significant were the Waco and Brenham conventions and the first meeting at Austin in 1884 of the Colored Teachers Association ( see TEACHERS STATE ASSOCIATION OF TEXAS). The state Board of Education conducted its first survey of Black schools in 1921. At that time 6,369 pupils were enrolled for secondary work, the majority being in city high schools. By 1925 there were 150 institutions in Texas offering one or more years of high school work for African Americans; included in this number were fourteen city high schools, six or more country high schools, and high school departments in every junior and senior college. In the 1920s to 1930s the average length of the school term for Black children was only about four days shorter than that for White children. However, Texas spent an average of $3.39 or about a third less for the education of African-American students than for White students. During the same period, Black teachers were paid significantly less than White teachers ($91.60 a month, compared with $121.03). In 1940 there were 222,715 Black pupils in 116 accredited Texas high schools, twelve of which were rated by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Approximately half of the 6,439 teachers had degrees.

The early 1950s marked several changes. These included improvements in school buildings and facilities, equalization of teachers' salaries, and an increase in funds for classroom instruction and libraries. The Texas Association of New Farmers of America, the African American equivalent of Future Farmers of America, had chartered chapters in 178 high schools, with a membership of more than 9,000 high school boys studying vocational agriculture. The operating headquarters for the New Farmers of America program in Texas was at Prairie View A&M University. The NFA state adviser was also stationed at Prairie View, where the staff of the school of agriculture, in cooperation with the state staff in agricultural education, sponsored and planned jointly such activities as the annual state NFA convention and state livestock and poultry judging contests. They also participated in various fairs, shows, contests, and conventions at local, district, state, and national levels.

The United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) outlawed segregated education and consequently had tremendous influence on programs of education for African Americans. Texas was one of the leaders in desegregation throughout the South. Two Black students had been admitted to previously all-White schools in Fiona, Texas, before the 1954 decision. Shortly after the 1954 decision, the San Antonio school district became one of the first districts nationwide to comply. San Antonio had the advantages of good race relations and an articulate policy statement. This desegregation process began in September of the 1955-56 school year. Though San Antonio's desegregation of its schools moved quite smoothly, other school districts, such as Houston's, were amazingly slow. In 1964 Texas accounted for about 60 percent of the desegregated school districts in the South and for more than half of all African American students attending integrated schools in the South. The progress of civil rights legislation and the process of school desegregation effected many changes in the education of Black children in Texas. In 1965 the New Farmers of America was merged with the Future Farmers of America. The annual state conference of African American teachers of vocational agriculture was discontinued. A similar change was made in the Four-H Club work of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service and in conferences of extension agents. Sponsorship of segregated participation in various fairs, shows, and contests was discontinued. By 1967, in the process of initial adjustment to the transition, the number of African Americans teaching vocational agriculture had declined 20 percent and the number in agricultural extension had declined 8 percent. This change was more than matched, however, by the increased employment of African Americans in professional positions that were formerly occupied almost exclusively by Whites.

From Reconstruction to the present in Texas, conflicts have abounded on the subject of educating Black children. The questions of what the schools should teach and who should control them have been foremost. Arguments persist about the effects of the quality of educational environments and resources on African American students' achievements on standardized tests such as the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. Although Black students overall have greater difficulty than White students with the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test, many educators attribute the problem to poverty and lack of educational resources. Legislation in the 1990s equalizing school financing may mitigate the problem. Another issue is that in many urban areas of Texas, resegregation appears to be occurring. In 1989, 63 percent of Black students in Texas still attended predominantly Black schools; this was exactly the national average (only ten states had higher percentages). It is impossible at the moment to assess the long-term consequences of this phenomenon. See also EDUCATION, HIGHER EDUCATION.

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The education of African American children during the late period of slavery, after 1800, was sporadic and unreliable in Texas as in other Southern states. Formal education was practically nonexistent for African Americans. Education most often consisted of on-the-job training in a variety of occupations.

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Misty Doane

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, educating African Americans was not a priority of the white majority in the United States. Much of the country, especially the South, had firm laws against educating African Americans in order to protect the institution of slavery (Stowell). The dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the early part of the century brought with it the need for a cheap, educated labor force (Stowell 1922).

According to Frank Gilyard, early African American education in Berks County occurred in churches. The original meeting minutes of the Reading Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church from November 7, 1836, describe plans for building the church itself, which included a schoolroom. In Hopewell Furnace, William "Black Bill" Jacobs, the African American who had the longest employment at the Furnace (sixty years), claimed that "in his boyhood he had attended school in 'Lloyd's Baptist Church'" in Bethesda, Maryland (Walker 1974, 314).

Though some African Americans came to Hopewell already educated, those who weren't had an opportunity to be educated in Hopewell Village alongside the children of their white neighbors. Wilkinson Hill, an African American laborer who worked at Hopewell Furnace in the 1840s, may have arrived with the ability to read and write already, and records show that at least two of his children attended the "subscription school," a school people paid to attend. Another African American employee at Hopewell Furnace, Benjamin Hill, a hostler (stable boy), was paid to attend the Hopewell Village School from 1830 to 1834 (Walker 1974, 315-17).

By 1834, African American churches in Reading had been teaching Sunday school for nearly eleven years. Many Sunday schools included reading as part of the curriculum, for reading the Bible was believed to be requisite for a good Christian. In 1823, Reverend John F. Grier opened Reading's first African American church, the First African Presbyterian Church, and supervised Sunday school there until he died in 1829. In 1834, sixteen-year-old Augustus T. Boas, who was white, became the first superintendent of the African Colored Sunday school at First African Presbyterian Church (McClellan 1957-58, 18).

Though Pennsylvania's Free School Act was enacted in 1834 and Reading opened its first public school for white children the following year, Reading didn't open its first public school for African American children until May 8, 1854. The school was located in the basement of the Second Presbyterian Church until it moved to a one-story building on North 10th Street between Walnut and Elm. The school, part of an African Methodist Church known as "The Ark," was taught by an African American teacher, and had equipment and materials inferior to those of white schools. (McClellan 1957-58, 19).

When Reading school directors in 1873 called for a more modern building for the African American school, the A.H. Phillippi School was built. It housed forty-one students on two floors; the upper floor housed primary students taught by a Miss Ware (an African American), while the older students were taught by principal and teacher Samuel G. Hubert (an African American) on the lower floor (Haupt 2002, 6).

Mr. Hubert lost his job after the Reading School District moved to integrate the schools. On December 23, 1876, the school board passed a resolution that threw "open the public schools of the city to colored and white children alike" (McClellan 1957-58, 20). The resolution also called for A.H. Phillippi School to close and for its students to report to assigned integrated schools. Forty-one students reported for the examinations that would place them in the appropriate grade at the new school. Of those, thirty-six were placed in primary grades, five in secondary, and none earned places in the "Intermediate Grammar" or high school level (McClellan 1957-58, 20-21). The fact that none qualified for high school was probably due to the "separate but not equal" level of the curriculum and the scarcity of supplies in the African American school. Into mid-century, African Americans could not find jobs in their fields because of discrimination, so students were discouraged from enrolling in college preparatory, commercial, or pre-nursing courses. Yet although only a few African Americans attended school between 1890 and 1920, many who did went on to become successful professionals.

The 1800s were a pivotal time for African American education in the country, with Pennsylvania a leader. The beginning of the century saw little to no schooling available to African Americans; it ended with the integration of public schools. Education for African Americans was not yet even remotely equal to that provided for whites, but for those who believed that education was fundamental to progress, free public education was nothing short of a major victory.

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African American Education in the 19th Century

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Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, educating African Americans was not a priority of the white majority in the United States. Much of the country, especially the South, had firm laws against educating African Americans in order to protect the institution of slavery (Stowell).

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African American children's education was not a priority of the white people in the united states. They had firm laws against educating those children. they wanted to protect the institution of slavery 

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African American children's education was not a priority of the white people in the united states. They had firm laws against educating those children. they wanted to protect the institution of slavery 

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The 1800s were pivotal time for African American education. Even after segregation education was nothing , not even as equal to that than education provided to the white people.

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The 1800s were pivotal time for African American education. Even after segregation education was nothing , not even as equal to that than education provided to the white people.

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Before the beginning of the large-scale entry of Black students into white universities in 1965-66, the academic world itself scarcely noticed Blacks. -Allen Ballard, The Education of Black Folk While some universities would require federal urging to open their enrollment to black students, these were primarily larger state universities.

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During the Reconstruction Era, African Americans in the former slave-holding states saw education as an important step towards achieving equality, independence, and prosperity. As a result, they found ways to learn despite the many obstacles that poverty and white people placed in their path. African Americans' commitment to education had lasting effects on the former slave-holding states. As voters and legislators, they played crucial roles in creating public schools for blacks and whites in the Southern and border states in the late 1800s.

In Sharpsburg, Maryland, a small church known as Tolson's Chapel was at the center of local blacks' efforts to educate themselves and their children. African American Methodists built Tolson's Chapel in 1866, just two years after the end of slavery in Maryland in 1864. For much of the period between 1868 and 1899, this modest building near the site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam served as both a church and a school. The history of the schools housed in Tolson's Chapel illustrates how African Americans across the former slave-holding states created and sustained schools during Reconstruction.

African American Education in Sharpsburg, 1864-1869

As African Americans built lives as free people in a free society during Reconstruction, they eagerly sought opportunities to learn. Before Emancipation, whites generally denied or restricted African Americans' access to education in an effort to justify and maintain slavery. Learning to read therefore became a symbol of freedom for African Americans in the former slave-holding states. African Americans had other reasons for making literacy a priority after slavery ended. Many hoped that education would improve their economic circumstances and offer some protection from fraud and exploitation. They also saw education as important preparation for participating in civic life.

African Americans faced significant challenges in their efforts to create schools during Reconstruction. One problem was a shortage of qualified teachers. In the early years of Reconstruction, local African Americans who could already read and write shared their knowledge with family, friends, and neighbors. In Sharpsburg, Maryland, for instance, David B. Simons, a literate African American and trustee of Tolson's Chapel, likely taught some children and adults in the town in the mid-1860s. However, given the small number of literate African Americans in most communities in the former slave-holding states, there were not enough local teachers to meet the demand. In addition, black communities often struggled to afford to pay a teacher's salary.

In hopes of getting financial assistance and more qualified teachers, African Americans in Sharpsburg and many other communities turned to the federal government's Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Established by Congress in March 1865 , this agency was commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau. Since the underfunded Bureau had limited money and staff to devote to building schools, it worked with Northern benevolent organizations and African American communities to place Northern teachers in freedpeople's schools in the Southern and border states. Northern benevolent organizations such as the American Missionary Society and the American Freedmen's Union Commission recruited and paid teachers. The Freedmen's Bureau then assigned the teachers to schools and provided them with transportation. The local African American community typically contributed room and board for the teacher as well as a building to house the school.

Thanks to the enthusiasm and persistence of the black community in Sharpsburg, the Freedmen's Bureau twice assigned a teacher to this small town in western Maryland. In April 1868, the Freedmen's Bureau sent Ezra Johnson, a white man from Pennsylvania, to Sharpsburg to teach. Johnson opened what he called the American Union School with limited financial assistance from Northern benefactors. John J. Carter, a black man, came to Sharpsburg to teach in the summer of 1869. The Presbyterian Home Mission paid his salary. African Americans in Sharpsburg provided room and board for both men.

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African Americans and Education During Reconstruction: The Tolson's Chapel Schools (U.S. National Park Service)

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During the Reconstruction Era, African Americans in the former slave-holding states saw education as an important step towards achieving equality, independence, and prosperity. As a result, they found ways to learn despite the many obstacles that poverty and white people placed in their path.

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During the Reconstruction Era , December 8, 1863 – March 31, 1877 African Americans in the former slave- holding states saw education as an important step towards achieving equality.

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During the Reconstruction Era , December 8, 1863 – March 31, 1877 African Americans in the former slave- holding states saw education as an important step towards achieving equality.

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The African Americans found ways to learn . Spite of.  the many problems and trouble they could've got  into by the white slave owners.

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The African Americans found ways to learn . Spite of.  the many problems and trouble they could've got  into by the white slave owners.

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African Americans commitment to education had lasting effects on the former slave holding states.

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African Americans commitment to education had lasting effects on the former slave holding states.

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As voters and legislators , they played crucial roles in creating public schools for blacks and white in southern and border states in the late 1800s.

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As voters and legislators , they played crucial roles in creating public schools for blacks and white in southern and border states in the late 1800s.

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As African Americans built lives as free people in a free society during the reconstruction , they eagerly sought opportunities to learn before emancipation , whites generally denied or restricted African Americans access to education in an effort to justify and maintain slavery .

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As African Americans built lives as free people in a free society during the reconstruction , they eagerly sought opportunities to learn before emancipation , whites generally denied or restricted African Americans access to education in an effort to justify and maintain slavery .

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