The Afro-American Education throughout the History of the United States

32 Pages·2015·0.44 MB·English

FACULTAD de FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS
DEPARTAMENTO de FILOLOGÍA INGLESA
Grado en Estudios Ingleses

TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO

The Afro-American Education throughout the History of
the United States

Lucía GONZÁLEZ RODRÍGUEZ

Tutor: Jesús Benito Sánchez Bernardino

Curso: 2013/2014

ABSTRACT

Afro-American segregation has been one of the most controversial issues in the United
States since slaves’ Emancipation was approved by the President Abraham Lincoln in
1865. Since then, the Afro-American community has fought in order to get the equality
between black and white people in all the spheres of the society. Education has been one of
the most important topics. This work tries to give a perspective of the Afro-American
education and all the obstacles that black people have had to face to obtain the same
education as white people since the slaves’ liberation until today.

Segregation, Inequality, Afro-American people, Afro-American education, Educational
institutions, Higher Education

La segregación de los Afro-Americanos ha sido uno de los temas más polémicos en los
Estados Unidos desde que fue aprobada la Emancipación de los esclavos por el presidente
Abraham Lincoln en 1855. Desde entonces, la comunidad Afro-Americana ha luchado para
conseguir la igualdad entre blancos y negros en todos los ámbitos de la sociedad. La
educación ha sido uno de los temas más importantes. Este trabajo pretende ofrecer una
perspectiva de la educación de los Afro-Americanos y los obstáculos que la raza negra ha
encontrado para recibir la misma educación que la comunidad blanca desde la liberación de
los esclavos hasta hoy en día.

Segregación, Desigualdad, Afro-Americanos, Educación Afro-Americana, Instituciones
educativas, Educación superior.

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INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION 2

2. THE TRANSITION 4
2.1. The Free African Society 6
2.2. The Reconstruction 7
2.3. The Ku Klux Klan 8
2.4. Rutherford B. Hayes 9
2.5. Jim Crow’s Laws 10

3. EDUCATION 11
3.1. Elementary and higher Negro education 11
3.2. Morril’s Act 13
3.3. Julius Rosenwald Fund 14
3.4. Educational Institutions for black people 16
3.5. Brown V.Board of Education 20

4. CURRENT SITUATION 23

5. CONCLUSION 24

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY 27

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1. INTRODUCTION
Throughout American history, the social status of the Afro-American people has changed
the most notably in its latest history. One thing that many people do not know is that the
first Afro-Americans that arrived in the United States were not slaves, who constituted an
important part of the population of this country and they also performed a significant role in
the cultural development of this territory. There was a big difference between the number
of slaves that lived in the South and those that lived in the North.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were about 27,817 slaves living in the
USA but only 5,206 of them were located in the North while the remaining 22,611 lived in
the South,1 many of whom tried to escape and go up north in order to get a better life.
The number and the use of slaves rose due to the growth and expansion of the colonies and
thus, the Afro-Americans became the principal source of men as cheap labour. This
community was a vital and essential motor for the economy of the United States for over
two hundred and forty years.
This sector of the society used to work in the plantations of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco
or at the master´s house, among other places. Their working timetable was usually from
sunrise to sunset with an average of fifteen or sixteen hours a day and although not all the
slaves were treated in the same way, many of them were badly beaten up and punished by
the white men. Being lashed was one of the most common punishments for them. The
master owned not only the slaves’ work but also their own lives.
Slaves had a poor diet; they usually ate salt meat, chicken and rarely some vegetables.
Their meals were based on carbohydrates, which was the reason for many of the illnesses
such as the measles or the smallpox that slaves used to have. Masters provided slaves with
their clothing but most of them were barefoot.
Slaves’ lodgings could be very different: there were “houses” in urban places and on farms.
Those that lived on farms usually had nearby buildings where they slept and they could
share the kitchen; others lived in the attic or even in the basement of the master´s house.
When the slaves increased in number and they started to create families, their kind of

1 Carmona, “El racismo sigue vivo en Estados Unidos”
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housing had to be changed. Therefore, it was necessary to build separate lodgings for them
so that they could live as family units; their shelters were separated from the master´s house
and the majority of them only had one or two rooms.
However, these people´s education and training was practically non-existent. It is estimated
that less than 10% of American slaves could read in 1869. According to white men, black
people had a very low intelligence quotient (IQ). This common belief meant that the
education for black people was delayed thousands of years and the same happened with the
development of the human race.
Maybe this issue about the education regarding this sector of the American population is
one of the most controversial topics in the history of the Unites States. There are some
records dating back from the sixteenth century that already include some complaints against
slavery and several arguments in favour of the Afro-American education.
When slavery came to an end, the social status of the black inhabitants changes completely
in the country from a theoretical point of view since previous slaves are also considered
citizens. It was forbidden to prevent them from any civil rights just because of the colour of
their skin. Nevertheless, their social and economic relationship with the white men kept on
being very similar to the former one and the educational topic does not change up to speed.
In the following pages, I will talk about how the Afro-Americans’ life develops thanks to
their emancipation, trying to analyse the problems they had to face in the Southern states in
order to be a part of the American society and how those changes and that progress will
also be reflected in their education.
Principally, we will pay our attention to the education of Afro-American people and we
will show its development without forgetting what this progress has meant for the Afro-
American people. Above all, we will focus on those facts and outstanding personalities who
played a decisive role in the education of the Afro-American people, with its both positive
and negative effects.
The educational development of Afro-American people in the United States is closely
related with different important events that took place in America after the slaves’
Emancipation in the year 1863.

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2. THE TRANSITION
When the American Civil War ended in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was approved.
As a result of this new legislation, slavery was abolished completely in every territory of
the United States. The president Abraham Lincoln had already announced the slaves’
emancipation in 1863, during the Civil War. This statement had two parts ; the first one,
which said that all the slaves had to be liberated in the American Confederated states, was
presented in 1862 and the second part included the names of the ten different states where
it was going to be carried out. The states that belonged to the Union did not need to obey
this rule at the beginning but later on, they also had to fulfil it.
Despite this fact, thousands of slaves were set free from the very first day that the
Amendment came into effect even though the liberation did not take place all of a sudden.
It is estimated that 20,000 slaves became free men and women and about four million had
already been liberated two years later. However, slavery was not an illegal institution,
which allowed it to continue to exist until 1865.

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The following image shows the census of the United States in the year 1860. We can see
the number of slaves and free people in each state in 1850 and ten years later. This picture
is a chart that was published on Harper´s Weekly, a weekly newspaper.

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One year later, the Fourteenth Amendment was presented on 13th June. This modification
of the American Constitution proposes the Law of the Civil Rights, which states that every
black person must be considered a citizen and, therefore, they have the same rights as the

2 “Slave Census”
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white people. In spite of the fact that the president, Andrew Johnson, who was a democratic
man, vetoed the law, this eventually came into force.
However, the situation of the Afro-American people did not change too much, not even
after their liberation. As we said before, the situation was not the same in the Northern
States and in the Southern States, and this kept on happening after the Civil War. The black
population was not accepted the same way in the South as in the North of the United States.
For instance, there were black people associations in the North that give us an evidence of
this difference.

2.1. The Free African Society
An example of this existing inequality between the North and the South was the Free
African Society of Philadelphia, which was something inconceivable in a Southern state.
This society had already started with those black men and women that had got their
freedom and emigrated to the North in 1787, whose steps would be followed by many
others after the abolition of slavery.
The Free African Society wanted to help the black people that lived in Philadelphia. Its
leaders, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, who were free black men, hoped to create a
religious organization that took care of the spiritual, economic and social needs of the Afro-
American people of the city. There were already 2,000 free black men and women in
Philadelphia in 1790, a number that increased a lot after the Emancipation.
The main aim of the Free American Society was to look after the orphans and widows; it
also provided medical attention to the ill people as those who suffered from the yellow
fever in 1793. The work performed by the FAS in this situation was really huge; the
members of the society gave a hand as well as the nurses and the assistants.
We cannot ignore either the role of the Free African Society in the education of the Afro-
American people; ten schools were built for the black people in Philadelphia thanks to this
society.
But while the Afro-American situation was better in the North, Afro-American people
found serious difficulties in the South to have the same rights as white people. The
Reconstruction period was a hard time for the Southern Afro-American people.
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