Among the Negro Schools.
In the good old times, before the advent of Farragut and Butler, the
statutes of Louisiana declared teaching slaves to read and write a
“crime, having a tendency to excite insubordination among the servile
class, and punishable by imprisonment at hard labor for not more than
twenty-one years, or by death, at the discretion of the court.” When
asked, therefore, to visit the negro schools of New Orleans, I was not
unduly sanguine in my expectations. Reverend and Lieutenant Wheelock, a
keen, practical Yankee preacher, acting as secretary to the “Board of
Education for Freedmen,” instituted by General Banks, was guide.
* * * * *
The first school-house to which we were conducted was an old store-room,
the second story of which had been used as a hall for the Knights of the
Golden Circle, and still bore on its walls the symbols of that hollowest
and most insolent of Southern humbugs. Rude partitions divided the
store-room, and separated the three different grades of the primary
school.
[Illustration: _Negro Schools of New Orleans.—Page 246._]
In the first we were received by a coarse, ill-dressed, rude-looking
man, who evidently sprang from the poor white trash. Ranged along the
wall as we entered were a dozen or more boys, reading as boys do read,
in the Third Reader—with many a pause and many a tracing of hard words
with a great fore-finger that blurs everything it touches. Among the
class was a bright, fair-haired boy, who would have been called handsome
anywhere. Seated behind the little desks were some large, coarse girls,
seemingly eighteen or twenty years of age, conning their spelling-books.
The hot air was languidly stirred by the hot breeze from the street
windows, which brought in with it the sound of boys at play on the
pavement; and one did not wonder at the noise and general inattention
that prevailed.
The next room was ruled by a woman as coarse and slatternly as became
the neighbor of the man whose school we had just left. A little fellow
made some noise to displease her as we entered, and she bowled him
against the wall as one would bowl a ball down a ten-pin alley. Children
were at work mumbling over charts hung against the wall, and professing,
with much noisy show of industry, to be spelling out simple sentences.
But their zeal did not prevent surreptitious pinches, when the
slatternly school-mistress’s back was turned, nor a trade of “five
alleys for a bright-colored glass one,” on the sly. I think such scenes
are not unknown even in model Northern schools.
The teacher in the third room was as great a contrast to the two we had
just seen as was her school to theirs. She was smart, bright, looking
for all the world like a Lowell factory girl of the better class; and
her pupils, though by no means quiet as lambs, were in fine order. Their
faces had evidently been washed systematically; long labors had forced
upon their comprehension the advantages of clean aprons and pinafores;
and they appeared attentive and noisily anxious to learn. This teacher
seemed capable of giving an intelligent opinion as to the capacities of
her scholars. She had taught at the North, and she saw no difference in
the rapidity with which whites and blacks learned to spell and read.
There were dull scholars and bright scholars everywhere. Some here were
as dull as any she ever saw; others were bright as the brightest. And
she called out a little coal-black creature, who had been in school
eight days, and was apparently not more than as many years old. The eyes
of the little thing sparkled as she began to spell! Eight days ago she
had not known her letters. From spelling she went to reading, and was
soon found to have mastered every sentence on the charts hung about the
walls.
The more advanced scholars were found in the old hall of the K. G.
C., up stairs. Here, where once schemes for taking Cuba, or
perpetuating slavery in the South, were discussed, forty or fifty
boys and girls, lately slaves, stood before the platform where the
knights had ranged themselves for initiation, and peacefully recited
their lesson in the Fourth Reader! Where once the Knight Commander
sat, stalked now a loose-jointed, angular oddity from one of the
Middle States—narrow-headed, and with ideas in proportion, which he
seemed in nowise fitted to impart. Nigger school-teaching was
manifestly not the respectable thing to do in New Orleans; and the
Board seemed to have been put to sad straits sometimes for teachers.
The reading was bunglingly done, but the teacher didn’t read so very
much better himself. On spelling the class did better. In geography
they had learned by rote the answers to the common questions; and
they could point out with considerable accuracy, on the outline
maps, New Orleans and Louisiana, and the Mississippi River and the
Gulf of Mexico. But one woolly-headed urchin brought his teacher to
grief and wrath, by selecting Cuba as the proper location for
Iceland; matters were nowise improved by the further transfer of
Asia to the exact latitude and longitude of San Francisco. Yet, with
all the allowances, it was a fair average school. Boys and girls,
ranging in age from twelve to twenty, read the Fourth Reader
passably; some of them had a fair conception of geography, and they
had even made an entrance on the mysteries of grammar. Arithmetic
seemed to be all plain sailing till they reached long division. Here
the process became too complicated, and they were sure to blunder in
the multiplication of the divisor by the dividend, or to add where
they should subtract, or to bring down the wrong figures at the
wrong time. Was it the fault of the stupid teacher? or was their
previous progress due to their imitative faculties, and did they
fail now simply because they had reached a point where reasoning
powers of their own were needed? It is the question which touches
the marrow of the whole discussion about the average negro capacity;
but the time has been too short and the experiments have been too
incomplete as yet to furnish satisfactory data for its solution.
The next school to which we were conducted was kept by a middle-aged
negro, in gold spectacles, and with amusingly consequential air. His
assistant—what would not the Opposition journals have given for such a
fact during the late political campaign?—was an English girl, young and
lame, who seemed to have gone to work here, “among the niggers,” very
much as she would have gone to work among the pots and kettles, simply
because a living was to be earned, and this way to earn it happened to
offer. The negro principal had a short, sharp way of dealing with his
pupils; and strap and ferule lay convenient for immediate use beside the
books upon his table. He explained that many of his pupils were
“contrabans,” from the plantations, or negroes that had been “refugeed”
from the Red River country; and their experiences in slavery had been
such that they knew no motive for obedience but the fear of punishment.
“Coax ’em and they’ll laugh at you; you’ve got to knock ’em about, or
they won’t think you’ve got any power over ’em.” The theory seemed to
have made a pretty good school, whether by virtue of the ferule or in
spite of it.
The children were having their noon recess when we entered, and the
school-room was perfectly quiet. At the sound of the bell they came
trooping noisily to the door, and in a few moments the black tide had
overflowed all the desks. A Fourth Reader class was called up, which
read well—quite as well as the average of such classes anywhere. Now and
then one noticed a curious mouthing of the words and a quaint
mispronunciation that the forms of the ordinary negro dialect would not
account for. In these cases the children were of French parentage, and
were learning a language as well as the art of reading. “The children
are taught exclusively in English,” the Board of Education say
sententiously in their report. “Bound by the strong ligament of a common
tongue, they will never foster the subtle enmity to national unity that
lurks in diversity of speech.”
The exercises in arithmetic that followed disclosed the same slower
progress in this than in other branches, which had already been observed
in the schools previously visited. A few questions of a miscellaneous
nature showed that the scholars were by no means destitute of general
intelligence; and especially that they had a very keen appreciation of
the fact that they had once been slaves, but were so no longer.
We were treated to a special performance before we left—reserved for the
closing of the school, except upon grand occasions. An astonishing
youth, with wool growing down almost to his eyebrows, beneath which
gleamed cunning eyes that alone relieved the face from an expression of
utter stupidity, took his place in the aisle in front of the teacher’s
desk. The hum of the school suddenly hushed, and all eyes were fastened
on the droll figure. The woolly head gave a bob forward, while the body
seemed to go through contortions caused by some inward pain. As the head
ducked down the second time and came up with snapping eyes, the opening
of the song was ejected, and the shrill voice was soon drowned in the
roar that joined in from the whole open-throated throng.
Such singing may never be heard elsewhere. The nearest approach a
Northern reader is ever likely to make to it is when he hears the
enthusiastic chorus at some noisy camp-meeting about the time the
“power” is supposed to be “coming down, coming down.” The song was
nothing—a rhyming effort of the gold-spectacled teacher himself, I
believe, rudely setting forth the joy of the slaves at the great
deliverance, and ending in a refrain of thanks and prayer for “Honest
Abe.” But the negroes, too, have learned to worship the rising rather
than the setting sun. “Honest Abe” was very well in his way; but if the
schools were to be continued and the teachers paid, there would be more
present need of help from his successor. And so the song had been
already patched; and the refrain came thundering in for “Andie J.” After
all, there is a good deal of human nature in negroes!
Some rickety, tumble-down buildings on an out-of-the-way corner had been
secured for another school, which we next visited. A motherly old
negress here had her brood of little ones gathered about her, learning
in concert the alphabet from the chart which she held in her lap. Up the
row and down it she led them with the little pointer, which looked as if
it might be chosen a double duty to perform. Now one was singled out to
name a letter selected at random from some other chart; then the pointer
flitted from top to bottom and back to middle of the alphabet, and the
shiny-faced urchins eagerly shouted the responses, or winced as the
pointer descended threateningly near some naughty hand that was
wandering into foreign pockets.
In another room, a bright, lady-like young quadroon, who was similarly
occupied, smiled a pleasant greeting as we entered. She had been at the
fair at Pierre Soulé’s. With ample means and a pleasant home, she
volunteered to do this work of duty to her race; and the neat, orderly
school-room, with the quiet ways and clean faces of her little charge,
not less than their prompt answers, told her success.
In one of the rooms in this building a row of picaninnies, ranging from
four to fourteen, stood up to recite in the First Reader. At their head,
painfully spelling his way through a sentence as we entered, was an old
man of sixty, with white wool and a wrinkled face. He wore a pair of
huge brass-rimmed spectacles; but they would not stick on his
bullet-shaped head without further contrivance, and so he had tied a bit
of packing-cord into the ends of the brass temples, and around his head.
I asked the old man what he wanted to learn to read for.
“Reckon if it’s good for white folks, good for me too.”
“But you’re so old, uncle, one would think you wouldn’t care for such
things any more.”
“Reckon if it’s good for chil’en, can’t be bad for old folks.”
Subsequent talk showed that the old man had a Bible, and wanted to learn
to read it, and, further, that he believed, as soon as he could read, he
would be entitled to vote. Precisely what good that would do him he did
not seem to understand; but he worked away industriously over his
well-thumbed First Reader, and scarcely gave a second look to the
visitors, at whom the children were staring with all their eyes. It was
a trifling thing, doubtless, and the old man may have been very silly to
be thus setting himself to children’s tasks, in the simplicity of his
desire to learn what he knew white folks had found good for them; but to
me there seemed nothing more touching or suggestive in all the sights of
New Orleans.
We saw no other old men in the schools, and few young ones beyond the
age of twenty; but the teachers said the cases were quite numerous in
which the more intelligent scholars were instructing their parents at
home. In all such instances the parents were sure to enforce regular
attendance on the part of their children, and the influence of the
school became reflex, first on the scholars, from them to the families,
thence back to the school again.
The few schools spoken of above may be taken as a fair specimen of the
system in operation in New Orleans in June, 1865. It was soon destined
to give way to the reaction of public feeling, which already began to
influence the affairs of the department. But it had now been carried on
for fourteen months. Few, even of the most advanced, had, at the
beginning, been able to read the simplest sentence. Now there were
classes in geography, grammar, and arithmetic, and a very fair
proportion of the fourteen thousand seven hundred and forty-one scholars
could read quite intelligently. The gate of knowledge had been opened to
them; there was little likelihood that hereafter a General commanding
would be able to stop the spread of these dangerous arts of reading and
writing, by an official notification that the opening of schools for
negro children would be very hazardous and unwise.[33]
So rapid was the progress that, on the 1st of January, 1865, the
scholars had advanced so far as to be thus classified:
Writing on slates, 3,883; writing in copy-books, 1,108; studying
grammar, 283; studying geography, 1,338; studying practical
arithmetic, 1,223; studying mental arithmetic, 4,628; reading,
7,623; spelling, 8,301; learning the alphabet, 2,103.
And from the beginning of the experiment down to the 1st of June, 1865,
there had been a regular increase of eleven hundred and fourteen
scholars and fourteen teachers per month. Two thousand new scholars had
come into the schools in May alone; in April there had been fifteen
hundred. The expense of this entire system was about one-half what it
cost to support a single regiment in the field. This expense was to be
met by a tax on the property within the lines of military occupation;
General Banks’s order explaining, for the comfort of dissatisfied
tax-payers, that henceforth labor must be educated in the South in order
to be valuable, and that if they didn’t support the negro schools, they
would find it hard to secure negro labor.
Judging, both from personal observation and from the testimony of the
teachers and the Board of Education, I should say that the negro pupils
are as orderly and as easily governed as any corresponding number of
white children, under similar circumstances. There is, I think, a more
earnest desire to learn, and a more general opinion that it is a great
favor to have the opportunity. There is less destruction of books, less
whittling of school furniture, less disposition to set up petty revolts
against the teacher’s authority. The progress in learning to read is
exceptionally rapid. I do not believe that in the best schools at the
North they learn the alphabet and First Reader quicker than do the
average of these slave children. The negroes are not quicker-witted, but
they are more anxious to learn. In writing they make equally rapid
progress, and where the teachers are competent they do well in
geography. Arithmetic presents the first real obstacles, and arouses
painful inquiries as to the actual mental capacity of this
long-neglected race.
But, up to this point, the question of negro education is no longer an
experiment. In reading and writing I do not hesitate to say that the
average progress of the children of plantation hands, as shown in every
negro school from Fortress Monroe around to New Orleans, is fully equal
to the average progress of white children at the North.
The experiment of high schools is about to be tried among them, under
the auspices of a voluntary organization, mainly made up and sustained
by themselves. Its constitution was adopted a fortnight or more before
our visit, and such men as Thomas J. Durant were uniting with the
negroes in an effort to get the enterprise properly started.
* * * * *
On the Sunday after our visit to these schools, we were taken to see a
Sunday-school, made up largely of the same scholars, although conducted
under the auspices of Mr. Conway, a business-like preacher, in charge of
the Freedmen’s Bureau in the city. The building into which we were
conducted had been, in former times, a medical college. Ranged upon the
seats, which arose, amphitheater-like, half-way to the ceiling, sat row
after row of closely-crowded, smiling, black-faced, but bright-eyed,
Sunday-school scholars, as clean, as smiling, and as prettily dressed as
one would see almost anywhere in our Northern rural districts. On the
higher benches, where the larger scholars sat, were a few young ladies,
tastefully attired in white. At that distance, one had difficulty in
seeing that their faces were not of the pure Anglo-Saxon tinge; but,
neat and pretty as they looked, they were only niggers, and nigger
Sunday-school teachers at that.
A graduate of Amherst met us as we mounted the platform once occupied by
the demonstrator of anatomy. He was a sober, sedate figure, in
professional black, and, with his dignified ways, might have been taken
for a Southern Doctor of Divinity, if you did not look at his face. That
was as black as his coat. His son, a handsome, graceful young fellow
(always barring the black face and the kinky wool), took his seat at the
piano. The sober representative of Amherst rapped on the table, and
tapped the little bell, till the children slowly and gradually mastered
the almost irrepressible torrent of whispers and laughter. But the
bell-taps sounded clearer and clearer; silence at last reigned. A hymn
was read; the young negro at the piano softly touched the keys for a
moment, and then the whole rich, joyous nature of the children gushed
into a volume of melody that rose and swelled till the very air of the
old lecture-room was vocal with praise. It was like listening to the
grand peals of Plymouth Church itself.
There followed a little address, with, perhaps, a trifle too much of
talk about their liberty, and too little of how it should be made
profitable; too much about the prejudices against them, and too little
about the means for an improvement which should conquer prejudices; too
much about the faults of their masters, and too little about their own.
But this seems to be the general strain; and perhaps, after all, it may
be necessary, in some such way, to gain the confidence of the children
before you can instruct them. Occasional questions kept alive the
interest, and the lustily shouted answers showed an intelligence that
plainly took in the full meaning of the speech.
“What great man freed you all, and was then taken home?”
Surely, if the murdered President could but have been present, beside
his old associate, at that scene, he would have thought the shouts that
brought back his name the sweetest praise the lips of mortals ever bore
him.
“Are you really free now?”
“Yes, yes.”
“What would you do if anybody should now try to take your freedom away?”
It was fine to watch the play of surprise and apprehension across the
animated faces. “We’d fight,” exclaimed a sturdy fellow, twelve or
fourteen years old. “We wouldn’t let them,” said many more. “The
soldiers would stop it,” murmured the most. That, alas! seemed still the
main hope of these submissive, long-enslaved people. They had not
reached—not even the oldest of them—the conception of organized effort
to protect themselves. “The soldiers would stop it.” That was all.
-----
Footnote 33:
General Emory so admonished Rev. Thomas Conway, months after our
occupation of the city. The idea seemed to be, that the Rebel
population could not have their feelings agitated by efforts to teach
their negroes, without great danger of popular disturbances!