Black teachers in the Jim Crow South

¶ … Education and also Being a Negro…Seems…Tragic: Black Teachers in the Jim Crow South," Adam Fairclough traces the history of African-American education since the Civil War. According to Fairclough, black educators played a major role in the education and empowerment of African-Americans. The journey from illiteracy to political empowerment was not easy and was riddled with setbacks. However, Fairclough's thesis is that education for blacks by blacks was crucial to remedying the effects of generations of enslavement.

The primary purpose of Fairclough's research is to counterbalance the "overemphasis on of previous historians on the work of northern white missionaries," (p. 66). To prove the thesis, Fairclough gathers evidence from primary sources and recorded historical data. For example, Fairclough notes that by 1862, several blacks were teaching in Union-occupied Virginia. After the end of the Civil War, Savannah would at some point have more black teachers than white teachers. Fairclough cites specific historical examples and references to particular people integral to black empowerment such as the people who become community leaders, educators, and politicians. Finally, Fairclough relies on empirical evidence including survey data. On page 81, Fairclough mentions a 1930 survey of 250 students at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. The survey showed that not one African-American student wanted a career in agriculture. Fairclough cites the survey to substantiate the point that Booker T. Washington's proposal of "industrial education" and the proposed rural education of southern blacks only upheld white supremacy.

However, Fairclough argues that even the mediocre programs of Booker T. Washington led to an eventual betterment of the black community. Fairclough argues the following three points in "Being in the Field of Education and Also Being a Negro." First, Fairclough claims that the southern black community took education seriously as a means to eradicate poverty and social oppression. Second, Fairclough claims that white supremacy and institutionalized racism continued to thwart the education of African-Americans in the south. Third, black education and all-black schools represent a controversial and ambiguous lineage in the American education system. Ultimately, though, Fairclough contends that in spite of these setbacks, education became a crucial component in promoting civil rights.

Immediately after the Civil War, education was viewed as a panacea to the problems plaguing the southern black community. According to the author, African-American educators brought "missionary fervor" to their work in the nineteenth century (p. 65). Education was always recognized as being an important tool for empowerment, a key to overcoming oppression and eradicating poverty. Blacks also preferred teachers of their own race over whites. Therefore, white missionaries from the north were systematically turned away and replaced by African-American educators. The effort to create an educational system by blacks and for blacks reflected the determined pride that characterized the newly freed black community. Moreover, the emphasis on black education also pointed to the segregated social conditions of the south.

Fairclough's second main point is that white supremacy reigned in the south until the Civil Rights movement. In fact, black political, social, and economic welfare actually worsened at key moments in history. White southerners relished the notion that blacks would run their own schools without the interference of socially liberal white Yankees. Black educators in the south found that schools did little to promote the practical advancement of black communities. African-Americans continued to earn less than their white counterparts even after they achieved the same level of educational attainment. Continued white supremacy led to a gradual mistrust of black educators and of black education in general. Cynicism poisoned the potential of education to uplift black communities.

Black-only schools became a symbol of as well as a form of resistance to white supremacy. Ironically, all-black schools were depended on white money for their survival. Booker T. Washington more than any other figure in history epitomizes the sordid compromises that African-Americans and African-American educators made to achieve their goals. Wooing whites meant sacrificing dignity and surrendering certain educational goals. Some blacks who had light skin or who could pass as white would attend white schools and assimilate into white society. Black educators who became versed in the white system had an increasingly hard time reaching out to poor blacks in the rural south who viewed them with distrust. Black educators became synonymous with Uncle Toms. The contribution of all-black education to the empowerment of black communities remains as ambiguous as Booker T. Washington himself, according to Fairclough.