African American Education: A Historical Overview

William Seraile, Ph.D

In light of current concerns about the plight of black males: their astronomical rate of incarceration, their high drop out rates from public high schools, and their scarcity in the nation’s colleges and universities, it is important to place the education of African Americans in a historical context. 

Antebellum Education
Before emancipation, only about twelve per cent of African Americans were legally “free” although that designation carried with it the baggage of racial discrimination and second-class status. Their numbers which averaged slightly under a half million in the period from the 1830’s to the eve of the American Civil War, consisted of primarily illiterate individuals who lived and died without learning to read or write. Literacy was forbidden to virtually all slaves and even so-called free blacks were unable to readily obtain an education in southern states. Conditions were somewhat better in the North where few free persons of color resided. In New York City, for example, progressive whites, mainly Quakers, sought to provide an education. Whites in Manhattan established African Free Schools in 1787 to educate the city’s black youth. These schools were a training ground for many of the early nineteenth century religious and anti-slavery leaders including James McCune Smith, a leading physician and radical abolitionist before his death in 1865, Theodore S. Wright, a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Ira Aldrich, a famed actor, abolitionists Charles L. Reason, Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet, and the Rev. Alexander Crummell, an Episcopal minister who resided for a time in Liberia. 

Not all black youngsters could attend school as their labor was needed to support their families in an era before the adoption of child labor laws. Evening schools, lyceums,
and literary societies sought to informally educate the youth as well as working class adults. Manhattan’s antebellum black newspapers urged readers to emulate whites and seek education beyond the rudimentary level. Still, the vast majority of African Americans were bereft of education until after the Civil War.1862-1900

The Civil War rapidly brought about change in America. Most notably was the destruction of the southern institution of slavery. Even before the last shots were fired, concerned white and black individuals ventured to Union occupied areas of South Carolina to teach children and adults. Sponsored by evangelical Protestant churches, these dedicated individuals braved personal hardships and possible reprisals to spread knowledge among the freed persons. Charlotte Forten, an African American woman from a wealthy Philadelphian family, ventured to the sea islands of South Carolina where she found children “eager to learn.” Her observations and those of others who labored in the vineyard were documented by hundreds of thousands of letters to the northern office of the American Missionary Association. 

The complete abolition of slavery in 1865 led religious bodies to organize schools of higher education for the freed persons. Colleges such as Fisk University were established to provide black youth with a curriculum patterned after that offered by Harvard and other prestigious northern institutions of higher learning. While many schools of higher learning adopted the classical (liberal arts) curriculum, some black educators-notably Booker T. Washington- believed that an industrial (vocational) training was best suited for those who had to forge a living. Washington argued that it was better to know how to make a brick house than to have a piano and a French dictionary in a shack without glass windows. His advocacy of industrial education received tremendous support from white philanthropists who agreed with him that Negroes should start at the bottom and work their way up. In later years, Washington’s educational philosophy would be severely criticized by W. E. B. Du Bois and others who saw the training of the mind as a weapon of liberation against white racism. 

Washington’s willingness to accommodate the South’s racial policy made him popular with conservatives. Lacking both power and finances, most African Americans had to acquiesce to southern racism and “keep their place.” Their place as it pertain to public education meant segregated schools. But segregated schools did not mean that blacks controlled theirs. City and state treasuries provided funds for education which always meant an unequal share was provided for the colored schools. White school boards decided on teaching standards, the length of the school year, the financing and the curriculum of the segregated colored schools. Teachers who stepped out of place and challenged the white power structure were summarily dismissed. Progressive Americans who deplored the racial climate were virtually unable to protest when the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was constitutional. 

1900-1954 Education for African Americans during this period remained segregated in many regions of the nation. Southerners maintained a rigid system of segregation in virtually all areas of public life. Not only schools but libraries, park benches, bathing pools, water fountains, play grounds, hotels, restaurants and stadiums were segregated. Many schools in big northern cities practiced de facto segregation where housing patterns kept black youngsters in overcrowded and inadequately financed school districts. In the early twentieth century, so-called Negro colleges were black only in name. The all black student populations were under the absolute control of white presidents, administrators and staff. It would take student revolts in the 1920s to bring about change at Howard University, Fisk University, Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, Florida A & M, and Lincoln and Wilberforce Universities. It was during this period of rebellion that many of these institutions hired black administrators and faculty. 

During the 1930s and the following decade the federal courts chipped away at the façade of segregation in higher education. A few individuals gained admittance to formerly all white institutions of higher learning but it would take the unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1954, Brown v. the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas to show the South that the federal government would use its power to desegregate public schools. 1955-1980: The Civil Rights Era Segregationists resisted the Supreme Court’s 1955 decision to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” Southern governors refused to comply. Some closed all white schools to avoid integration. Some, like Governor Faubus of Arkansas, used the national guard in the 1957-1958 school year to keep nine black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High School. It was only the intervention of President Eisenhower who sent in federal troops that allowed the nine to enroll. Nevertheless, Faubus closed down Little Rock’s high schools the following year. Outraged whites who did not want their daughters to attend school with black boys organized White Citizens Councils throughout the South. 

The Councils, composed of businessmen, used intimidation to keep the public schools “lily white.” White administrators who favored integration found banks foreclosing on loans. Politicians, fearful of reprisals at the polls, refused to comply with the Supreme Court’s decree. Violence ensued in many cities as mobs gathered to physically confront integrationists. It finally took the withholding of federal funds to force southerners to accept school integration. During the 1970’s white northerners opposed busing as a means to integration and the nation saw in their faces the same hostility and anger displayed by southerners a decade earlier. Although busing led to some integration, true integration was minimize when some schools separated children by ability. Whites were placed in gifted classes (regardless of their true intelligence) which kept them away from the black (allegedly slower) children. In New York City, many white children have been able to avoid integrating with black students by enrolling in specialize gifted high schools such as Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Prep, Hunter College Elementary and High School and the addition of four schools connected with colleges in the City University of New York system. Today, schools in many cities are more segregated than they were in 1954. 

Affirmative Action
The latter 1960s was a period of unrest as the cry of Black Power, urban riots, the establishment of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense; the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) left the nation divided. The federal government decided that the gap between whites and blacks would get wider unless some affirmative action was taken to improve the lives of African Americans. The development of an affirmative action policy for college admission, hiring and contracts has been bitterly debated for the past four decades. The inadequate ghetto schools have left many African Americans academically unprepared. The establishment of special compensatory programs such as SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) in New York City helped many racial minorities enter the City University of New York campuses. An affirmative action program in the nation’s elite public and private colleges and universities has increased diversity on those campuses. 

Whites who believe that their denial of admission was attributed to affirmative action legally challenged the decision of professional schools as well as some major elite public institutions from that admitted supposedly less qualified minority applicants. Overlook in the argument that less qualified candidates were admitted is that fact that whites are major beneficiaries of affirmative action in higher education. Whites with high SAT scores, outstanding I.Q. scores and great recommendations often lose out to other whites who have lesser scores but who are admitted as athletes, legacies, geographical determination and other factors that count as diversity. These whites do not stand out whereas a person of color at a prestigious institution is more visible due to skin color. For example, women with high scores are denied admission at prestigious private institutions that want more males to balance the gender make up of the student body. 

No one questions the male’s intelligence unless he is a racial minority. Legacies or those whose family members attended the institution are accepted even though it may mean a denial of admission to a so-called better qualified person. An applicant from Idaho has a better chance of getting into Harvard than a brighter student from Boston which is near Harvard’s campus. Unless America shows greater commitment to racial diversity on its college campuses, it will harm its chances to truly compete in a global market society. To continue deny greater educational opportunities to African Americans is to deprive this nation the best minds that can be developed to compete with the rising economies of China and India and one day, perhaps, Africa.

The Challenge Facing Black America
Black America has faced many challenges since their arrival on America’s shores.
They have fought to overcome slavery and racial segregation. If they are to survive well into the twenty-first century, they must overcome the huge gap that separates them from others. Although the challenge of this century may well continue to be the “problem of the color line” as W. E. B. Du Bois defined the past century, African Americans must collectively find a way to excel in education as they have done in sports and entertainment. The challenge of the twenty-first century is to master computer literacy. The failure to do so would put people back to the days when they were denied the ability to read and write. Their destiny will be in the hands of others and continued exploitation will surely follow. But education for liberation can not succeed as long as the exodus of young black men to the nation’s prisons remains unabated. No people can advance when more of their young men are in prison than in college. This calls for think tanks composed of scholars, religious leaders, community activists and parents.