Page 44 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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The Development of African American Nationalism
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illegal.They considered “schools dangerous and revolutionary.” In 1860, less than 3
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percent of African Americans were literate in the South. Before the Civil War, only
28 African Americans were graduated from colleges and universities with bachelor de-
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grees; in 1895 there were 1,100 Blacks who were college graduates.
Political and
economic “modernization” during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the
first half of the twentieth century transformed America from agrarian to industrial
capitalism. These politico-economic changes created new conditions for racial rela-
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tions. The federal government engaged in what historians call the First Reconstruc-
tion (1865–1877) by sponsoring,with northern missionary societies,the establishment
of Black higher educational institutions. Both the Freedmen’s Bureau and northern
missionary groups laid the foundation for the major colleges and universities, such as
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Atlanta, Howard, Morehouse, Dillard, Leland, Shaw, Fisk, and Hampton Institute.
There were a few colleges founded before and after the American Civil War; for
instance, Lincoln University was established in 1854 in Pennsylvania by the Presby-
terian Church, and Wilberforce University was established in 1856 in Ohio by the
Methodist Episcopal Church. Furthermore, African American religious institutions
created schools, and between 1865 and 1869 in North Carolina, for instance, Black
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churches established 257 schools. Although the Freedmen’s Bureau coordinated and
financed schools in cooperation with the educational activities of northern mission-
ary groups, it was the northern missionaries that developed a formal system of schools
and colleges for Blacks in the South. J. B. Roebuck and K. S. Murty demonstrate that
“several benevolent societies sent missionaries into the South to uplift the freed slaves
and their children through religion, education, and material assistance. The AMA
[American Missionary Association] alone was responsible for founding seven black
colleges and thirteen normal schools between 1861 and 1870.” 93
Furthermore,African Americans had a very strong commitment to educate them-
selves despite White hostility.They formed societies, raised money, and founded pri-
vate schools.According to Roebuck and Murty,“After 1865, they formed a network
of so-called Sabbath schools (also called African schools . . .) which were in session
throughout the week. Classes in these and other private self-supported elementary
African schools met in church basements, private homes, warehouses, pool rooms, and
shacks. . . . Blacks desired to take full advantage of their freedom; to them, education,
religion, and property were the means to gain personal respect, economic security, and
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social progress.” With the help of northern churches and missionary societies and the
Freedmen’s Bureau, more than two hundred Black private institutions were founded
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in the South between 1865 and 1890. After the Freedmen’s Bureau was dissolved in
1877, a number of philanthropic foundations joined missionary agencies in funding
schools in the South. However, these philanthropic organizations never attempted to
challenge White supremacy and financed programs that mainly benefited White soci-
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ety. With the establishment of Black schools and colleges, professional and intellec-
tual groups emerged and began to transform scattered resistance into the Black
national movement.
Former slaves were not given the “forty acres [of land] and a mule” each that they
were promised during the American Civil War; the system of segregation was legal-
ized and institutionalized by the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that
accepted the racist philosophy of “separate but equal.”The federal government legally
sanctioned the separation and exclusion of African Americans from cultural, political,
and economic opportunities. This segregation denied Blacks citizenship rights that