Education and Equality

The African Free SchoolEmma Willard

Freedmen’s Schools

The New York African Free School 1787-1835

Boys studied mathematics and cartography, because jobs at sea were available for young black men.

Students studied lettering, drawing and painting.

And most of all, they learned to think well, write well, and speak well. In 1824 student James McCune Smith made this speech to welcome General Lafayette back to the America.

Emma Willard and Her Plan for Female Education

“But reason and religion teach that we too are primary existences . . . the companions, not the satellites of men, …Education should seek to bring its subject to the perfection of their moral, intellectual, and physical nature . . in order that they may be the means of the greatest possible happiness of which they are capable, both as to what they enjoy and what they communicate.”

Emma Willard

REPUBLICAN MOTHERS“If the improvement of the American female

character, and that alone, could be effected by public liberality,. . .such improvement of one half of society, and that half, which barbarous and despotic nations have ever degraded, would of itself be an object, worthy of the most liberal government on earth; but if the female character be raised, it must inevitably raise that of the other sex; and thus does the plan proposed offer, as the object of legislative bounty, to elevate the whole character of the community.

“As evidence that this statement does not exaggerate the female influence in society, our sex need but be considered, in the single relation of mothers. In this character, we have the charge of the whole mass of individuals, who are to compose the succeeding generation.”Emma Willard

“The equal share that every citizen has in the liberty and the possible share he may have in the government of our country make it necessary that our ladies should be qualified to a certain degree, by the peculiar and suitable education, to concur in instructing their sons in the principles of liberty and government.”

“Let the ladies of a country be educated properly, and they will not only make and administer its laws, but form its manners and character.”

Benjamin Rush

The Freedmen’s Schools

“to plant a genuine republicanism in the Southern States”—American Freedmen’s Union Commission

General O. O. HowardCommissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau:

“The prevailing thought was: The slaves are becoming free; give them knowledge—teach them to read—teach the child!”

“. . . Education was to be the permanent cure for all existing ills.”

•At the end of the Civil War, 4 million African Americans freed•1865: 1,405 educators teaching 90,778 students•1870: 4,239 schools, 9, 307 teachers, 247,333 students

American Freedmen’s Union Commission:“The school houses are crowded, and the people are clamorous for more.”

Louisa Jacobs, teacher:“I wish you could look upon my school of one hundred and thirty scholars . . .

Louisa Jacobs, teacher: “I wish you could look in upon my school of one hundred and thirty scholars. . . .”

THE END….

of Freedmen’s Bureau: 1872

of Reconstruction: 1877