Fighting for the black Cerebral: black Virginians’ Struggle for Public Education, 1865-1901
Introduction
Public education has been a contested space in American history, as political elites have debated whether and how public funding should be used to educate the nation’s youth (Kaestle 1983). For black Americans in the latter-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, attaining an education has been contested, based on the region (North or South), locality (urban or rural), periodization (ante-bellum, postbellum, and Jim Crow), and uniquely, the status of blacks in the political economy (as enslaved or free laborers) (Anderson 1988). Latter-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century, universal education for black Americans lay at yet another unique intersection of debates—whether blacks’ learning challenged conventional wisdom about their “place” in society. Therein, lies a historical-political question: How do race, (pseudo-)science, and political economy intersect to define the use of public resources to educate black Americans? Moreover, how do these several intersections influence the pattern of political response to black Americans’ demands for public education?
Employing primary and secondary source data, this paper will define more clearly the policy environment during the Reconstruction era and the early beginnings of Jim Crow, in which legislators in the State of Virginia debated public education for black Americans in the state. Questions about funding public education for both white and black Americans were entangled in the post-Civil War discussion about how to redress the state’s debate. An interracial coalition of black and white political actors (elected and non-elected) formed a third-party that promoted the advancement of blacks in society. As this party declined, so did the political influence in the Virginia legislature to promote black political interests, including black public education.
This paper discloses specific Virginia legislators’ rationales and arguments about funding black public education at the elementary and secondary levels, during the 1902 state convention, which is also infamously known for being the convention responsible for disfranchising black male voters, after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Understanding this policy environment in the State of Virginia helps us to determine how, if any, scientific racism affected discourses about funding black public education in the state. That is, how, if any, did the perceived capacity of black intellect affect investments in black public education? Moreover, how did the Southern political economy affect decisions about investment in black public education, when blacks were considered a major source of manual labor, even postbellum? How did coalition-partnerships and party politics influence the power and outcomes of black public education in the State of Virginia?
This paper proceeds, first, with an analysis of the contributions of black Americans to the Southern economy and juxtaposes this with the self-interests of black Americans to be educated. Second, it discusses the role of pseudoscience and Social Darwinism in the construction of race and intellectualism for black Americans in society. Third, the paper discusses the political context of black Americans in the South, during Reconstruction, to provide historical significance to the role of black Americans pursuing universal public education in the Southern region and connecting this claim to Southern states’ readmission into the Union, after Confederate secession Next, the paper focuses on the Virginia context, in order to explore the biracial coalition and, resultant political party, the Readjusters, that facilitated black public education Last, the paper discusses five political orientations of white legislators in the Democrat-dominated, Virginian General Assembly that detracted from black Americans being educated at public expense. Herewith, we discuss how contestation about funding black public education becomes full-circle based on blacks’ “place.” These discussions had less to do with perceptions of black intellect and more to do with thoughts about the expenditure of whites’ taxes and the preferred role of blacks (more as second-class citizens and laborers) and black education (as a distraction and detraction of a “good” laborer) in Virginia’s political economy.
Black Americans in the Southern Economy
Post-bellum, blacks acting as both freewill laborers and citizens meant that they were acting in unchartered ways for “black bodies,” because they were acting more “cerebral” than what black people were supposed to be. black intellectualism and learning focused on non-manual labor challenged scientific racist theories that “proved” black (intellectual) inferiority and relegated blacks’ economic contributions to manual labor-only. Debates about black public education should be demystified through further examination of the context in which they were bandied. Especial to this examination is the consideration of the value and significance of black Americans to the sociopolitical interests of white Southerners—as allies, field hands, or perceived as resource competitors to whites.
Prior to the ratification of the Civil War Amendments, the ruling law of the land that denied black humanity and rights rested in the Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) U.S. Supreme Court decision, which declared black enslaved people to be property and free blacks lacking rights for which they could have standing to (pur)sue. After the Civil War, many Southern whites were concerned about blacks “staying in their (inferior) place,” because black labor was the cash cow of the agrarian South. Enslavers feared black literacy would disrupt the Southern economy, as learned blacks could question the institution of slavery and challenge their enslavement. Literacy could dismantle the peculiar institution, and Slave Codes prohibited educating enslaved people. Indeed, after Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, black people enslaved or free were banned from literacy, especially in the State of Virginia (Dailey 2000), where the resurrection occurred. Education became synonymous with black liberation, and for black Americans after the Civil War, reconstructing society and newly-established black citizenship involved establishing access to education.
Blacks saw educational attainment as an extension of their humanity and political interests, as newly-defined citizens in the postbellum South (Fairclough 2007). Because of black Americans’ steadfast request for public education, public education became a reality for blacks and Southern whites (Anderson 1988). Also, the U.S. federal government (the Union) required Southern states to include “universal education clauses” in their state constitutions, upon re-entry into the Union, after the conclusion of the Civil War. Black Americans pressed the government to provide public education for blacks and whites, as such (Dailey 2000).
In Virginia, post-Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau provided education for black Americans, at a time when a public school system had not even been provided formally for whites in the state. It was the activism of black Americans, who pressed for education in a region that banned it for them, that also moved several Southern states toward discourses about providing public education for blacks and whites. Virginia and the other Confederate states would debate how to include education for blacks, especially as far as whether blacks and whites would be educated in the same schools or in separate schools. In 1868, Virginia ratified a state constitution that provided for public schools to be funded by state taxes. This “Underwood Constitution,” named for the presiding officer of the constitutional convention, John C. Underwood, was also associated with black Americans because it proscribed their suffrage and education.
Opponents of the revised 1868 Virginia constitution refuted the inclusion of a disfranchising clause that would prohibit former Confederates and those who did not assume a loyalty oath to the Union. Controversial as it was, the revised state constitution was not ratified until 1870, and it provided for universal education of blacks and whites, although racially-segregated. In the latter 1870s, it was also because of a biracial coalition of blacks and whites—the Readjusters—that sought policies that were oriented in the interests of black Americans, poor whites, and white agrarians. Moreover, post-Panic of 1873 and settlement of the State of Virginia’s antebellum debt, these persons were the political opponents of the Funders, who supported allocating state funds from the capitation tax that were designated for the public school system established during this era and were, instead, debated to be used to fund the State’s debt.
These Funders, as they were called, became the opponents of the Readjusters, as they supported addressing the debt over expending state funds to sustain the state’s public school system. The patronage system of the Readjusters also benefitted localities with large black populations, as black Americans became major supporters of what became a biracial, third-party. Moreover, in 1870, Virginia approved and funded the first black public high school (Peabody High School, Petersburg, Virginia) in the entire American South.
With the Readjuster leader, Gen. William Mahone, who also was from Petersburg, Virginia and elected as one of the state’s U.S. Senators, a Readjuster-era, elected-governor (1881), Governor William E. Cameron and former mayor of Petersburg (1876-1882), and several, black Readjuster, local city council members, Petersburg gained the “spoils” of the Readjuster movement, including a historically-black university, then, Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute and a public school system with a nine-month schedule, as opposed to a four-month school that was common throughout most of the state (Dailey 2000). Nevertheless, the policy environment in which these accomplishments occurred is not well-understood, especially as far as the ideological thought about black Americans’ education.
Black Intellectualism and the Racial Targeting of Social Darwinism: “Limited” Black Capacity
To be black American during the first two and a half centuries in colonial America and what would become the United States of America meant that one had a defined status that rested in law and custom--either one was a free person or one was enslaved. For those black persons who were free and who lived in the North in the early nineteenth century, education opportunities were more accessible, although they were limited by schooling available by private pay and what was becoming the debate of the day—whether public expenses should be used to provide an education to children at the taxpayer's expense (Kaestle 1983).
Said, "common schools," were becoming more prevalent in the North, and with abolitionism in the 1830s, brewing new ideas about the humanity of black people and the inhumanity of slavery, the education of black Americans was even more possible. These opportunities, however, coexisted with the continuing vagaries of scientific racism, which found their subscribers of the day, even though the Enlightenment philosophers (e.g. Thomas Jefferson, himself a doubting scientist and enslaver and John Locke) attempted to qualify the intelligence of the "negro" (Jefferson “Notes on State of Virginia” 1787; Crawfurd 1866). Locke, for example, describes the “negro” as “A people of beastly living, without God, law, or religion, or commonwealth” (Crawfurd 1866: 216), and as Crawfurd (1866) adds in his assessment of the “negro,” “Among no people is human life so cheap” (216).
With studies like Dr. Ira Russel’s (Davis 1869), the “negro” brain was heaviest when analyzing those Africans, who were enslaved compared to those who were on the Continent: Not only did the African brain weigh less than the white brain but also this weight indicated racial character. For the black cerebrum, it was, thus, supposedly inferior to the white one. And, yet, other scholars like Dr. S.B. Hunt suggested something special about American Negroes, who seemed to exhibit cranial capacity consistent with high civilization. These studies attempted to qualify and categorize black inferiority.
Consistent with Social Darwinist theories, the “negro” was supposed to be less “fit” than whites, and therefore, doomed to extinction (Gossett 1997). For the scientific racist scholar, Samuel George Morton, “the Ethiopian (negro) is “joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race presents a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity” (Menand 2001-2002). In essence, comparative racial intelligence studies sought to and reportedly “proved,” through pseudoscientific phrenological and craniological studies of intelligence test scores, that black Americans were less intelligent than whites. Any investment in the “negroes’” future, education included, was considered a futile one and lacking in potential enterprise and return on investment. Slavery was thought to improve the intellectual and behavioral lot of blacks (Gossett 1997). Without it, blacks were thought to be capable of running amok, potentially becoming a danger to society and most ravenous towards white women, who were the forebears of white children and crucial progenitors of the white gene pool.
Slavery and Anti-Education as Oppression
As scientific racism belittled and dehumanized black intelligence throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the mid-nineteenth century (Gossett 1997), Southern debates on common schools became more prevalent decades later, although practically to the exclusion of black people, with the exception of almost coerced consideration via Reconstruction policies that accounted for black education to integrate blacks into society, as new-citizens. Initially, these debates among legislators entertained whether education should be accessible to non-planter class children, for Southern white elites provided private education for their children. To this extent, Southerners debated the significance of “common schools” at public expense for whites, across class lines (Kaestle 1983).
For black children in the South, outside the educational experiences of local churches, there, too, formal education was less accessible. More so than the debate about accessibility, the strictures of Southern slavery prohibited the education of enslaved black people, and most black people in the South were enslaved. Put simply, in the institution of slavery, an educated, enslaved black person was evidence that a crime had been committed. Especially, white enslavers were concerned about literacy and enslaved people’s desire for liberation, when the literate, religious leader, Nat Turner, led a slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia in 1831, killing 60 whites. Turner and others responsible for the rebellion were executed, and thereafter, it became unlawful to educate an enslaved or free (black) person. The rebellion’s aftermath and policy also contributed to illiteracy among practically all black Virginians (Dailey 2000). Nonetheless, clandestine schools operated, educating blacks, often in black churches (Du Bois 1935).
In the making of what were the Northern and Southern regions, slavery was the cash cow for the Southern region, until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished it in 1865, after the American Civil War. Interestingly, it was at the behest of formerly enslaved black people and postbellum black advocates and legislators (black and white) that the education of formerly enslaved black people became a major political issue addressed by Reconstruction and the advent of the Freedmen's Bureau, which through its administerial services, also made public education accessible to both blacks and whites of different class backgrounds. Historically-black Colleges and Universities, since 1837 (with the establishment of Cheyney University; formerly, the Institute for Colored Youth), had provided education to blacks, and subsequent institutions, provided education even as normal and chautauqua schools to impart rudimentary, teaching, industrial, and religious education to blacks, free and formerly-enslaved. The first of its kind in the South, Mary Peake (a biracial, although deemed black woman) opened the first day school in Hampton, Virginia in 1861.
In a reverse logic, higher education institutions trained black educators to teach, before even secondary (high school) education was available. This, itself, was a political phenomenon because just like black intelligence had been debated and relegated to, at times, subhuman considerations synonymous with primal intelligence, in the South, especially, educating black Americans beyond elementary-level became a political question. Just as "negroes" were reduced to the basicities of the "white man's burden" and, ultimately, a political problem, and hence, the "negro problem," so too was the political question of "what to do with the negro" reduced to the question(s) of whether and how much the "negro" should be educated.
Noted in Du Bois’ (1935) black Reconstruction, white Southerners did not encourage black education:
“Persistent propaganda represents the South after the war as being largely in favor of Negro education. This is a flat contradiction of plain historical evidence. Dunning says: ‘The Negroes were disliked and feared almost in exact proportion to their manifestation of intelligence and capacity;’ and there were many reasons in the utterances of Southerners to support his generalization. ‘Education of the Negroes, they thought, would be labor lost, resulting in injury instead of benefit to the working class." [Emphasis added by author] ‘The Teachers of the Freedmen’s Bureau or of private philanthropies ‘interfered with labor—and encouraged directly or indirectly, insolence to employers. ‘Schooling,’ felt the South, ‘ruins a nigger (645).” [Emphasis added by author]
It was also as if the investment of public resources in such an enterprise would be deemed futile and wasteful, in light of the white Southerners' planter and agrarian interests to control a ready and willing supply of cheap labor, even when slavery was abolished and formerly enslaved blacks now had legal self-governance to enter into legally-binding labor contracts. black Americans, however, stood at the helm of advocation for universal public education, making even more expressed demands for their education during Reconstruction, and thereafter (Du Bois 1935; Fairclough 2007).
1867 Virginia Constitutional Convention
Postbellum and, eventually, with the passage of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868, Southern state governments were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and accept universal manhood suffrage, prior to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected black men’s vote, in response to those states in which this suffrage was not easily attainable, due to Southern white opposition. With the 1867 act, Southern governments were to be nullified and emplaced in one of five military zones. While Virginia was placed into Military District Zone Number One, it resisted the election of a new General Assembly, consequently, not being readmitted into the Union until 1870.
Particular to readmission requirements was the need, as well, for the states to adopt new state constitutions that aligned with the laws of the U.S. Constitution at that time. Virginia’s state constitutional convention did not easily resolve this misalignment as a seceded state. Rather, its politicians (principally, Radical Republicans) debated whether former Confederates could be disfranchised from ever participating in Virginia politics, either as voters or politicians. With Radical Republicanism and newly-included, (twenty-four) black male delegates to the state constitutional convention, such a drastic measure would have reshaped Virginia politics, effectively changing the white male vote, which itself, had only become universal for white males with the 1851 Virginia constitutional convention. It was only through the eventual compromise of “universal suffrage and universal amnesty (of Confederates)” that Virginia was able to approve its new state constitution in 1867, which expanded to include the suffrage for black men (Dailey 2000).
Named for a chief proponent of Radical Republicanism, John C. Underwood (an abolitionist and federal judge), who also advocated for black suffrage, this “Underwood Constitution (1867),” also provided for free public schools for black and white children, although an 1864 Virginia state constitution made such a provision without including what were known as “common schools” for all children. black Virginia delegates, like Samuel F. Kelso and James W.D. Bland (born a free man) supported public education without racial distinction in opportunities for black or white children. Delegate James W.D. Bland even supported universal public education “regardless of race, color, or previous condition, or loyalty, or disloyalty, freedom or slavery.”
However, support for public schools among whites, varied depending upon the region of the state, as northern and southside Virginia—areas with more agriculturally-based economies—often opposed the schools, because schooling potentially compromised the labor supply (Pearson 1969; Dailey 2000). It was also debated, and often left unclearly specified in many states' postbellum, constitutional provisions was whether black and white children should attend integrated schools (Fairclough 2007). Ultimately, the unspecified mention of integration made it possible for segregation to be the custom of the public school systems across the South. Southern white legislators sympathizing with black public education felt that integrated schooling would re-divide Southern whites, who still supported the social hierarchy of white supremacy. This further relegated blacks to inequitable social conditions. They also felt that not educating newly-freed, black Southerners could become an economic pitfall: black laborers, now as free persons, sought labor contracts with Southern whites that made provisions for and fulfilled their requests to have themselves and their children educated (Fairclough 2007).
Turning to Virginia, black advocates of public education feared that segregation would render their children’s schools “unequal” to whites. Therefore, they pressed the U.S. Congress to include an equal school rights provision in the State of Virginia’s readmission to the Union. This was a request that other Southern states faced, as well. More specifically, the clause was “that the constitution of Virginia shall never be so amended as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the school rights and privileges secured by the constitution of said State” (Dailey 2000: Note 56, p. 179). Nevertheless, (white) Virginia legislators passed successfully what was a segregation clause, as a part of the Underwood Constitution, and a major proponent of black public education, William Henry Ruffner, had introduced the legislation in the Virginia General Assembly. Ruffner also served as Virginia’s first superintendent of public schools, and he continued an expressed interest in supporting segregation in education, during his tenure, as he adamantly opposed the prohibition of racial segregation in education, a provision found in the U.S. Congress’ Civil Rights Act of 1874 (Dailey 2000).
The Virginia Readjuster Movement: A Postbellum Biracial Coalition
The outcomes of these Southern debates on universal (black and white) public education depended upon who were the incumbent public officials at that time and how they expressed support for or against black education as far as their respective constituencies in different parts of the state, especially, as far as local economies, labor demands, and demographic concentrations of blacks and whites. In the State of Virginia, a peculiar, yet notable, biracial coalition of white and black legislators (crossing partisan lines—both Republican and Democrat), formed from 1879-1883, to facilitate the continued funding of public schools (as they had been established in the Underwood Constitution) that educated whites and blacks. Politicians worried about how to redress budgeting issues, in light of an economic crisis in the state that could have siphoned funding for the schools.
More specifically, in what became a biracial, cross-class (landowners and agrarian workers), multi-context (urban, eastern-state and rural, western-state) movement, turned into the formation of the third-party, the Readjuster Party (1879), these Virginians sought to resolve the fissures of government over how to resolve Virginia's antebellum (mostly tied to railroad transportation construction) debt. The discourses of the movement also evolved into debates that thought highly, quite early, and resolutely about the value of (black) public (and secondary) education. The Panic of 1873 struck Virginia, and it had to decide how to overcome its debt, including whether a commitment to funding public education (as provided for in the Underwood Constitution) could be sustained, in light of its state budget woes.
As historian, Jane Dailey (2000) notes, “Although postwar southern society was eventually reranked according to racial hierarchy, the path from emancipation to Jim Crow was rockier than is sometimes realized, with many detours and switchbacks along the way” (6). In this sense, it is also notable that Jim Crow assumed different sociopolitical relationships and outcomes per state, because of the people and political interests that existed within those states (Key 1949; Woodward 1951 and 1955).
It was to the point of even local advocates in a city that was historically populated with, at one time, the largest concentration of free people, in Petersburg, Virginia, that borne of leaders like the white man, General William Mahone (a Democrat and former Confederate soldier, enslaver, and railroad magnate) from Petersburg, Virginia and a Reconstruction-era, black Republican, City of Petersburg city council member, Rev. Henry William's, that the South witnessed the birth of its first public high school for black Americans in its region—Peabody High School (1870). The school developed as an outgrowth of a former school initiated through the auspices of the nation's oldest black church, First Baptist Church (now, on present-day Harrison Street). The school was named for the white philanthropist, George Peabody, who funded black schools as teachers across the South (Anderson 1988).
Peabody became the first black public high school of the American South, with a year of establishment the same as the famous M Street (High) School in Washington, D.C., 1870 (Stewart 2013). This major advancement in black public education, unfortunately, met with less favorable debates about the expansion of public schools for blacks and whites over three decades. Even more so, these debates were evolving in the context of a New South that was solidarizing around white supremacist policies. It also entertained the possibility of black secondary education.
1901 VA Constitutional Convention: The Paradox of Funding Secondary Education
Like other states following-suit of the State of Mississippi, Virginia called a state constitutional convention in 1901, in order to address ways to disfranchise the “negro” (Woodward 1964 and 1955). But, within the scope of these discourses arises the concern about funding black education. In a brokerage of interests for whites versus blacks, there was discussion about whether a four-month requirement for elementary and rudimentary schools being open for regularly-scheduled school, before funding for the establishment of a public high school would even be entertained. In places, like Petersburg, Virginia, the hometown of the Readjuster leader, General William Mahone, and where there were large numbers of black Readjusters on the local city council, black and white children already had a nine-month, as opposed to a four-month education. This city would be insulated from the debates that the legislators contested would possibly bear a different taxation burden.
It is in these dialogues that we also learn about the legislators’ political interests (and preferences), their partisanship (Democrat) being constant, based upon their own, personal ideologies about race and the role of the state in addressing racial affairs (1) the nature of black people (including their intelligence) (2) the cost-effectiveness of funding black education, whatsoever (3) the effect of funding black education on the overall education costs and the quality of education for white children (4) the demographic imbalance of blacks and whites in certain localities and implications for tax structures and (5) the best interests of localities versus the State of Virginia, especially in light of the state’s requirement of public education for black and white children for readmission to the Union in 1870. (See Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention 1901: State of Virginia, Volumes 1 and 2).
The following quotes encapsulate the foci of debates among Virginia delegates about black Americans’ access to secondary education, as noted in the Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1901: State of Virginia (Volume 1). At the center of the debate is whether or not it is prudent to incorporate legislation that mandates a minimum of four months of schooling for (black) elementary schools in each locality before funding can be accessed for the establishment of high schools in the localities—what was Section 2 of the Report of the Committee on Education. The quotes are noted in succession, although not inclusive of all the quotes in this debate.
Delegate Mr. Glass offers, “Your Committee on Education thought it was best to put the public schools beyond any possibility of being dragged into politics. Education is not a political matter. It ought to be absolutely divorced from politics, and we contend that that will be the effect of the adoption of this report (1083).” As Mr. Glass offers this, it cannot be denied that race, education, and politics are heavily intertwined, especially in considering what will be the future of black education in Virginia.
Delegate J.M. Willis (Democrat; Hampton, VA) asks, in light of the levels of schooling,
“Do you think there ought to be a high school in any district or county where the primary and grammar schools are not run at least four months in the year?” To which, Delegate Eggleston responds, “I do not think that the taxpayers of my county ought to be taxed to run every negro school for four months before they can use their taxes to establish a high school in that county, and that is the effect of this provision….The effect of this provision is to cut off virtually from the use of those higher institutions in every country community.” Willis follows, stating, “Do you not think it would be possible, if we leave out the provision here, in some districts high schools might be established at the expense of the primary and grammar school? In other words, there might be such a hue and cry for a high school that that high school might be established at the sacrifice of the primary and grammar schools, and a few in the community would get the benefit of the public school fund at the expense of the majority and those who need it most (1201).”
The taxpayer argument, hence, supposes that political interests are racialized and that the negro mandate should not be connected to the advancement of a higher-level of school for everybody in the locale. For Delegate H.D. Flood (Democrat; West Appomattox, VA) he states the education issue with respect to race and taxes,
“We are not here making any fight against the State of Virginia undertaking to educate the negro children, but we are here asking this Convention not to require us if we choose to tax ourselves to the extent of fifty cents on the one hundred dollars worth of property to divide that tax equally with the negro children in those counties. We have expended in the last thirty years $12,000,000 upon negro education. Whether it has done any good or not, I do not know. I know the records disclose the fact that in the Virginia penitentiary nearly two-thirds of the negro convicts can read and write, and that over half of them have been educated in the public schools, but, notwithstanding this record and other facts I could mention, we are not making a fight upon negro education. I am not here opposed to the State of Virginia appropriating such taxes as she is disposed to levy upon the people for the equal benefit of the white and negro children, but if in our negro-ridden communities the property owners, the white people, choose to impose an additional tax upon themselves so that their children can have proper educational facilities, so that they can go to school eight or nine months, instead of four months in the year, and so that, instead of having no graded schools to which they can go and prepare themselves, they can have them. I think it is a hardship on the part of this Convention to say they cannot do it because if we are to divide equally with the negro, not only the taxes we pay into the State treasury, but the taxes we want to levy for our own immediate uses in our own immediate vicinity the people are not going to tax themselves. They are not going to impose this burden upon themselves.”
In Delegate Flood’s view, local taxes should be decided by whites to be able to enhance the quality of education and their children, if they so choose. But, this would be an unacceptable burden.
Delegate George B. Keezel (Democrat; Keezeltown, VA), when speaking with Delegate Flood and Delegate Walter Allen Watson (Democrat; Nottoway County, VA), assures that the issues is related to the allocation of state funding, race does not, but population age per county does states,
“I simply desire to state that I have the figures exactly from the official records. There is, as we all know, a distribution of the State fund, according to population, between the ages of five and twenty-one years. It matters not whether the population is colored or white, it goes to your county according to the school population. I am not sure, but in your county for the last year which I saw the average was $1.43. I made the calculation here, and on that basis, it certainly is not less than that; with 1,593 negro school children in Appomattox, it will give $2,277 from the school fund to the county of Appomattox on account of the colored children there (1205-1206).”
Delegate Flood replies by sharing sentiments, seemingly consistent with Jim Crow inequality,
“I say your premises are all wrong. I am not taking exception to your figures. That distribution of $1.43 is made on the basis of the white and colored children in the Commonwealth of Virginia. If you strike out the negro children of Appomattox you would have to do it in the rest of the counties, and instead of its being $1.43 that our white children get, it would be $5, as the gentleman from Nottoway informs me (1205-1206).”
In essence, removing the negro child from calculation will have the effect of increasing the amount of funds available to educate The dialogue continues…
Mr. Keezel: “That would be impossible.”
Mr. Flood: “Whether it would be $5 or not, it would be a great deal more than $1.43.”
Mr. Watson: “I tried to make myself understood that the total amount of taxes collected in this
Commonwealth for public school purposes was $1,971,000. That is the total amount of taxes collected in this Commonwealth for public school purposes. I will say that every dollar of that tax, practically, is paid by the white people of this Commonwealth, as the system is now constituted. The whole negro tax of this Commonwealth, I will say to the gentleman from Rockingham, is about $125,000, for all purposes. Out of it, the schools get only their fractional part (1205-1206).”
Watson, thus, suggests that negro and white schools should receive school funding based on the proportion in which each of the two groups contributes to their taxes.
Mr. Flood: “One-fourth.”
Continuing the discussion about different expenditures per child for black versus white children, Delegate Watson argues further for the effect of funding black children to the detriment of diminishing the amount that can be spent per white pupil, “About a sixth, sir. Now, if the gentleman from Rockingham will take the total amount of $1,971,000 and divide it among 397,000 white school children, which the gentleman from Prince Edward told us is the number of white children in this State, he will find that the distribution to each white child would be nearly five dollars, whereas if you add to the number the 268,000 negro children in this Commonwealth, making 665,000 and something, as the gentleman from Prince Edward has said, the distribution is less than two dollars per head. I ask the gentleman from Rockingham to calculate it himself, and we will ascertain that the total distribution on the basis of [the] white population would be nearly five dollars (1206-1207).”
Delegate Flood replies in a manner that suggests that localities with more blacks should tax their residents, accordingly, not levy such a tax statewide. Simply put localities with more blacks, only, should assess their residents a “black tax,” in order to educate their respective populations of black children:
“It is perfectly obvious that the amount per capita that would be sent to each county from the State fund if the negro population were eliminated, would be very much greater than now. I notice that the Richmond Times says that Nottoway gets a great deal of the school fund by reason of its negro population. I say none of the counties receive it by reason of the negro population because when you go to divide the school fund, which the white people pay, by the number of white children, the white children would get a great deal more per capita than they now get. This goes back to the question about public good. But I am not making any assault upon the proposition that the State of Virginia shall educate the colored children, but I do say that the counties of this Commonwealth, especially the counties in the black Belt and especially the poorer counties, counties that are not wealthy like the county of Rockingham, are asking but a small boon at the hands of this Convention when they ask you to let them levy a tax upon their own property owners, if they desire to do so, and to appropriate the amount thus raised as the best interests of their communities may demand (1206-1207).”
In another contribution to the debate, Delegate Flood wants to assist blacks with public education, he just does not want to do so, such that the policy seemingly privileges black children over white children, as he states,
"Mr. Chairman, I desire to say that I feel as deep an interest in the common schools as does the gentleman from Prince Edward. I feel, I believe, a deeper interest in the common schools for the white children than he does because I am willing to go further for the negro. I want to aid him every way in my power; but I am not willing to sit here and allow an article to be adopted by which the negro children of my county are to get the benefit of what the white children there, in my judgment, are entitled to. This Constitution will be so fixed that the amount of money distributed by the State of Virginia amongst these counties has to be apportioned in the various counties among the two races according to their population. I have no objection to that. I am perfectly willing to support that, but when it is attempted to insert a provision in the Constitution that will doom the white children in my county and the gentleman’s county, to grow up in ignorance, I think it is time for us from that section of the State to raise a voice of protest against it (1210).”
Rather, thus, Flood wants the allocation of the state budget to the localities to be based on the black-white student population count. In effect, his concern is making sure that white children have privileges that black children do not. Flood also seems adamant about a “white man’s burden,” as he argues,
“I cannot see why this Convention of white Democrats is going to impose upon the white people of the black districts of Virginia a worse inhibition than the Underwood Constitution has in it. The gentleman from Rockingham (Mr. Keezel) says we can now manage the matter to suit ourselves. We can, but you could not do it if this Constitution shall be adopted. We would be bound and tied hand and foot with this negro incubus upon us, and we could not get rid of it until we got rid of the new Constitution. We did not come here to be put in a worse position than we were before. We came here hoping to get some relief from this body, and instead of getting relief, you are putting us down with this thing upon us, with no hope of relief and no hope of ever giving our children any better education than they are getting now, unless we tax ourselves beyond what our property can stand. It is unreasonable, it is unfair and unjust. This Convention ought not to put such a proposition in the Constitution. I believe it will raise legal complications, and that there will be carried into the courts the question whether we are not bound to keep up for four months in every year, or five months if the amendment of the gentleman from Richmond city (Mr. Pollard) is adopted, a school in every school-house that we have built throughout this Commonwealth (1211).”
Flood also thinks that not allowing localities to tax at their own will imposes an implicit bias against what is beneficial for white students, as he states,
“You are not taking anything away from the darkies. We need not impose this tax if we do not want it. You need not think, gentlemen of the Convention, that the white taxpayers of the black counties are going to put a tax of one dollar upon themselves and get twenty or thirty cents benefit from it for their own children. You are not taking anything away from the negroes. You are doing this: You are just prohibiting, you are putting a clog, you are stopping the white people of the black sections from imposing a tax for the benefit of their white children, because they cannot afford to impose that tax and raise it from their taxpayers and then have it divided. Do not desert those people, gentlemen. With a patient little less than miraculous, and a fortitude unparalleled, and a fidelity to their obligations unsurpassed, they have driven them, and with hearts still united, with spirits still unbent, with the light of triumph in their faces, they have fought to this hour, waiting for and expecting deliverance at your hands (1212).”
Delegate William A. Anderson (Democrat; Lexington, VA) supports the approval of the legislation, with concern about its implications for improving the education of black children, as he observes,
“It seems to me to be a very reasonable and a just limitation upon the power of the local authorities that any school which they do establish shall be conducted for at least four months, whether it be a negro school or a white school. That is the only effect, as I understand it, of this provision. If my friend will read it himself he will find that that is the only construction which can be placed upon it, the only meaning it will bear. It cannot be wrested to have the effect gentlemen have endeavored to point out. They are fighting a phantom that does not exist, sir. But, sir, even if it does have the effect distinctly, and it was so expressly enacted, that the schools established for the education of the colored children of this State should be conducted for four months in each year, such a proposition meets the approval of my judgment. My friends have discussed another question which I do not think is presented by this plan, and that is, whether we shall maintain a system of education which will give an opportunity for education to the colored children of the State. For one, sir, I think it is our duty to do that thing. For one I am opposed to consigning this race to a career of degradation and ignorance. I think, sir, we should give them every opportunity that we can, without endangering our civilization and the welfare and happiness of the white race, to work out their salvation under the most favorable conditions that it is in our power to place within their reach, upon lines distinct from those that are traveled by the white race (1212-1213).”
Anderson also sees opportunities should be given to black people, without infringing on white people’s destiny. In determining the proportion of allocations for black and white schools, Delegate Anderson suggests,
“It does not have that effect at all, if my friend will pardon me, as I understand the provision, because the local authorities determine the number of schools and what schools shall be established. Both colored and white schools shall be established. If they have not enough money to support all the schools for the education of all the colored children in the respective counties for four months, they will have to diminish the number of schools. The local authorities determine absolutely what proportion of the local fund shall be applied to the education of colored children and what proportion to the education of white children (1214).”
Later in the exchange, Delegate Meredith provides examples of inequality for whites based on the context of the black-white populations for respective localities in the state:
“I wish to say one word, sir. I shall support the amendment of the gentleman from Charlotte (Mr. David Q. Eggleston, Democrat; born in Charlotte County and hailing from Smithville, VA) for the simple reason that the language of the proviso in the committee’s report is an effort to apply a general principle, where the circumstances are such as would make the application of it unjust. The circumstances are such in regard to the character of the population of the State and the children who have to be furnished school facilities, that is absolutely unfair to undertake to apply any general principle and to make it fit all the different sections of the State. The gentleman from Rockbridge (Mr. William A. Anderson, Democrat; Lexington, VA) can speak very kindly about his intention to educate the colored people, but let me put the personal application to him. Suppose the gentleman had $150 to expend in education and it took $150 to educate his child, would he be willing to divide his means with the child of his colored cook? He knows that he would not. Now, that is a personal application. There is not a single man of us who would do it. It is all very well to indulge in noble thoughts and broad principles of generosity, but when you come to apply our principles we ought to apply them fairly to the man who is to suffer. But let me show you the condition of affairs in the State and see how it operates. I take the county of my friend from Rockingham (Mr. Keezel). There are in that county ten thousand white children to one thousand colored. I find the figures in the school report. I take the county of Powhattan. It has 818 white children and 2,000 colored. Take Prince Edward. Prince Edward has 1,600 white children and 4,000 colored. Do we not see how very different are the circumstances in the several counties. I am speaking of the school population. I am just showing that the application of a general principle would be unfair and that an unjust application of a just principle can be just as unfair as an unjust principle itself. Here are people who you see are in totally different circumstances from your own (1214).”
Delegate Meredith, asks whether the representative would be willing to divide monies for education between his white children and the negro children that he proposes to educate as if to suggest that the two likely would not be of the same value and this division of resources would not be in the self-interest of the representative. He argues that a general principle of a funding formula would not be best because different localities have varied black-white population balances—some with larger black populations that would have more adverse effects for white children than those with fewer black children than white children, which would have less adverse effects for white children.
Furthermore, Meredith couches the terms of taxation to be one best assumed as a “burden” incurred by the state and not by the localities. He sees local, white taxpayers as shouldering an unnecessary burden that can be better absorbed by more Virginians across the state than disproportionately among localities with larger, black populations. Moreover, these localities should be able to determine what their taxation plans will comprise. Meredith also suggests that the general will supports black public education to be supported by public funds. He feels that making this a local tax will be unfairly borne by white people (and not blacks, themselves), because, in his view, white people are more likely to pay taxes than black people. To this extent, he wants the localities to decide how they will approve taxes to fund black education. But, still he insists that the state should bear the costs, entirely:
“If the gentleman from Rockbridge wishes to be fair, and of course he does, I submit that he should help to make this heavy burden of educating the colored children, to be borne by taxes from the State at large, and not by the local taxes from the eastern counties. I am prepared to vote that Richmond shall bear her part of this burden. Why? Because they are citizens. It is for the general good that their education is desired, and the general fund should bear the burden of it, and not the local sections in which they happen to live. It is not fair to put upon them that burden, when you know the taxes that come for public education in these counties come out of the white people. How is it as to local taxes? Does the State undertake to interfere with the management of the local taxes for other purposes of the city of Richmond? There is no interference. Why should we do it as to local taxes for school purposes? I repeat, I do not refer to the expenditure of money obtained by State taxes, but to the expenditure of money which comes from the localities. Why not leave it to the wisdom and discretion of the people of those localities? I appeal to you simply to leave this subject of local taxes to be managed as the people of the locality may wish to manage it. Do not undertake to say that what shall be their duty upon any theory of generosity to the colored race. If you want to be generous, then help them to bear the burden. Let the State itself bear it, as she ought to bear it, and do not put this burden upon the people of the eastern counties simply because the colored children happen to live in those counties. They are citizens, they are ignorant citizens, and for the general good, should be educated by the State. But you propose that even the local taxes shall not be spent as may be deemed best by those who pay them. The State ought to bear this burden, but if it will not bear it, then simply say to the counties which must bear the burden: “You must do this thing yourself, and you may do it in your own way (1215).”
Delegate John Garland Pollard (Democrat; City of Richmond, VA) shifts the focus of the debate to an underlying question of what may constitute the “public good” for the State of Virginia and its children, no matter their race:
“Mr. Chairman, I believe that in the pending proposition we are confronted with the most important question that has yet been discussed in the Convention, and we might as well squarely face the issue. Under the report of the committee the question is simply this: Shall we give the cities and counties of the State the right to abolish negro schools? It goes a step further than the division of the school fund. It even authorizes cities and counties to take the taxes paid by negroes and apply it to the education of whites. It is even more radical than anything that has heretofore been suggested. There is nothing in the clause under consideration which would require the establishment of any school, negro or white, and there is nothing in it which requires the maintenance of such schools as have been established. So if our friends in the black Belt would desire to take from the negroes the privilege of being educated, all they would have to do would be to abolish the schools that have already been established for the colored children. Thus it is put entirely within their power to say whether there shall be any negro school in their counties. Mr. Chairman, I believe that the State of Virginia has a duty to the children that it cannot delegate to any county. The whole State is interested in seeing that the children of Appomattox county are educated. It is not merely a local matter (1217).”
Unlike Meredith, Delegate Pollard disagrees with the notion that whites contribute the most to the state’s taxes, and therefore, should benefit the most. Rather, he suggests that we must consider the wealth and contributions of blacks, and they should benefit from the state, also. So, whites should not be allowed to use funds in a way that is counter to the interest of the state, rendering black education useless—providing a short-term, public education that lacks substance. As Pollard later recognizes, educating both black and white children also is a matter, put simply, as “simple justice:”
“I believe it is an erroneous idea to suppose that it is the white people of the State who are bearing such as burden as has been pictured upon this floor. The colored people of the State produce a large portion of the wealth of the State, and upon this wealth, taxes are raised to maintain the schools. It, therefore, is but simple justice that they should enjoy at least the benefits of that portion of the wealth which they produce. I cannot consent to support a proposition which not only permits a division of the school fund on racial lines, but is even more radical, and permits the local trustees to apply to white schools the fund that is paid into the treasury by the negroes. While it is true that the counties are more immediately interested in the education of the children of the State, still the State of Virginia should not permit them to so use the funds as to render entirely useless that part of the money which is derived from the State fund. There is raised by State taxation only about enough to run the schools two months and a half, and a school that is run two months and a half is a useless institution. We should not put it within the power of the counties to render useless the State fund (1217-1218).”
Delegate Carter Glass (Democrat; Lynchburg, VA) warns of the consequences of not providing a rudimentary education to black children, as he offers,
“Not only will the effect be wretchedly bad in the respect stated, but if Virginia does not give its negro children a proper primary education, my word for it, they will get an improper and a dangerous primary education. If we do not give them a plain schooling best adapted to their needs and useful to them, outside dreamers and fanatics will give them an education that will not be useful to them, but dangerous to the peace of Virginia (1221).”
In sum, as Glass notes, elsewhere, he sees these actions as “prejudice,” although the true prejudice lies in the fact that he associates the external influences of people outside of the state as contributing to an education that is anathema to the best interests of the state: This is an implicit reference to the Northern influences on blacks’ education—influences seen as counter to the South’s interest of keeping blacks in a subordinate space to be able to serve in manual labor (1221; See also Anderson 1988 for discussions about Northern influences on Southern black education).
Delegate Watson, sees himself acting in the best interests of whites and in response to what he declares later in the debate as the futility of investment in black people, and ultimately, a sign of the “negro problem,” to which part of his view receives noted applause in the actual text:
“Now, sir, that kind of sentiment that the gentleman is talking about is the same kind of sentiment that wrote the history of his ancestors and mine in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It is the same kind of sentiment that burned that negro at the stake in Leavenworth, Kansas, a few months ago, and sold the charred remains for twenty-five cents apiece to relic hunters who came upon the scene. Aye, sir, it is the same kind of sentiment that is dining Booker Washington in the White House today. Standing here, sir, for my people, I want to say that they are not disposed to consider nor to consult that sentiment when it comes to a question of performing a constitutional duty. (Applause.) I would not have the attitude of my people misrepresented on this important subject, and I know my friend does not intend to misrepresent them, but this outline of policy which is suggested here by gentlemen on the other side if you strip it of its verbiage and get it down to the plain, naked facts, no longer becomes a question as what we shall do in the shape of generosity of the negroes of the Commonwealth, but what we shall do in the shape of justice for our own people within the limits of this State. Mr. Chairman, I am one of those who believe that while you may teach this man in black to read and to write and to figure, in all the questions of higher education which we are now undertaking to provide he is absolutely incapable of cultivation or useful advancement (1221-1222).”
Although Watson describes black education as a constitutional duty, he asks that all delegates consider what is just for white people within the limits of state law. Furthermore, he suggests that blacks have a limited capacity for learning and socialization to white norms. In this sense, investing in their education also reeks futility.
Conclusion: Fighting for the “Black Cerebral”
The fact that, historically, education was legally barred by race and the institutionalization of slavery and codes that were specific to black Americans. What may be even less known, although highly politically relevant, is the fact that the provision and accessibility of public education to black Americans was tied to the readmission of the State of Virginia to the United States of America, post-Civil War. Black Americans have been long-active in their advocacy, provision of resources, and development of systems and institutions to support their desire to be educated, and expressly, they approached the U.S. Congress to make the provision of public education accessible to them as newly-minted citizens.
Despite this initiative, we also see through the case of Virginia that a biracial movement—a third-party, formed as a Movement of the Readjusters—sought to consolidate an educational experience at public expense. However, part of the political contestation against this motive was also the consideration of whether or not the state’s taxes should be used towards the education of a population that white Southerners held multiple, ideological views about whether black Americans should be educated and at whose expense.
While the predominant discourse did not focus on black intelligence as a “wasted expenditure,” other concerns of “wasted expenditure” appear, as far as the “waste of taxes,” when they could be used to fully educate and advance the status of whites. Focus on privileging whites, especially compared to the North, remained a critical issue. Sometimes, this also meant contrasting the geographic concentration of blacks in the South or in higher population concentrations localities in the state and what this meant for allocating public resources for the group, in order to maintain the status of being a Union state. Black intellect was not the focus of disparate treatment; yet, black inferiority and second-class citizenship remained a critical driving force: Blacks were best-serving when they were laborers for whites.
It can not be said, however, that Virginian, white-Southerners did not also want to fight for the “black cerebral,” when considering its public good for the group’s advancement and not the economic interests of white (political and economic) elites. The Readjuster movement points to a cross-racial, even cross-partisan effort to address some of Virginia’s societal issues—resolution of its debt, proper expenditure of taxes, and the funding of education for blacks and whites. Turning to the 1901-1902 Virginia state constitutional convention, we also see the extent to which white legislators were interested in limiting black Americans’ access to public education, based on their thoughts about black people and the role of government in providing resources for a group of people that they felt should not have equal standing with whites in society. The Republican Party had lost the footing that it had in the Virginia legislature, especially when many of its black legislators sought similar partisan interests as the Readjusters, who dominated Virginia politics for a short period during the 1880s. While Democrats also supported Readjuster politics, the larger project of the party’s members leaned towards redeeming the South and the Conservatives, who would rather address the state’s antebellum debt and redirect Virginia’s taxes from public education to do it (Key 1949; Woodward 1964; Dailey 2000).
The last black legislators in the Virginia General Assembly (State Representatives James A. Fields, Republican, 1889-1890; A.Q. Franklin, Republican, 1889-1890; Ross Hamilton, Republican, 1869-1882 and 1889-1890; and State Senator Nathaniel M Griggs, Republican, 1887-1890). Thus, by this state constitutional convention, there were no black legislators elected to the General Assembly to represent black Virginians’ interests. Moreover, the biracial, Readjuster movement ended by 1883. Mostly Democrats comprised the legislators at that time, and their agenda was resolute in developing a state politick devoted to white supremacy, as other Southern states were constructing through their public policies. The political space of this state constitutional convention was, inadvertently, “whites-only” (Key 1949; Woodward 1964).
Most importantly, additional investigation and study of black (political and economic) elites’ roles will enhance our knowledge about the black voices that helped shaped the Readjuster movement. In our contemporary moment of politics, we may also ask ourselves, could it be that the local tax structure for public school funding depends upon the historic backdrop of tax debates that were conceived as “burdens” premised upon racial discourses about how localities can best figure tax structures in the interests of white children? Simply put, as we note in contemporary politics, whether black Americans had equal access to public education also related to the conception of their being “deserving,” as beneficiaries of (white) public taxes.
Dr. Shayla Nunnally is a professor of political science and chair of the Africana Studies Program at the University of Tennessee. Michael Christie was her student co-author while on faculty at the University of Connecticut.
References
Primary Sources
Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention 1901: State of Virginia
(Volumes 1 and 2) https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010446673?type%5B%5D=subject&lookfor%5B%5D=%22%20Constitutional%20conventions%20Virginia.%22&ft=.
The Report of the Committee on Education and Public Instruction
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010446673?type%5B%5D=subject&lookfor%5B%5D=%22%20Constitutional%20conventions%20Virginia.%22&ft= (page 1018-1019; Version 1).
Secondary Sources
Anderson, James. 1988. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press.
Crawfurd, John. 1866. On the Physical and Mental Characteristics of the Negro. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, Vol. (4): 212-239.
Dailey, Jane. 2000. Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Davis, J. Barnard. 1869. On the Weight of the Brain in the Negro. The Anthropological Review 7(25): 190-192
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1992. [1935]. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York: Free Press.
Fairclough, Adam. 2007. A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Gossett, Thomas F. 1997. Race: The History of an Idea in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kaestle, Carl F. 1983. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860. New York: Hill and Wang.
Key, V.O. 1984. [1949]. Southern Politics in State and Nation. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.
Menan, Louis. 2001-2002. Morton, Agassiz, and the Origins of Scientific Racism in the United States. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 34: 110-113.
Pearson, Charles Chilton. 1969. The Readjuster Movement in Virginia. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.
Woodward, C. Van. 1981. [1964]. Origins of the New South, 1877-1913. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Woodward, C. Van. 2002. [1955]. Strange Career of Jim Crow. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
