Book Description

Contemporary histories of black education have neglected the contributions of African Americans to their own education during the nineteenth century. Most histories have focused on the role of white philanthropists during the post-Civil War years. This dissertation examines the role of blacks in Baltimore, Maryland in creating educational opportunities for themselves during the nineteenth century. The opportunities they created provided them with the essential components of cultural capital, a shared sense of purpose and identity. They employed that cultural capital in their schools in their quest for freedom. Blacks equated education with freedom and used education to seek freedom from physical slavery, ecclesiastical freedom, and political freedom from second class citizenship. Educational leaders like Rev. Daniel Coker, Rev. William Watkins, Sr., and Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange were among the African American educators who established facilities for black youth. Their institutions imbued their students with cultural capital. Also, by employing a strategy of working with sympathetic whites, such as Judge Hugh Lenox Bond and other members of the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People, African Americans were able to gain admission to the Baltimore City public schools in 1867. African Americans continued to demand adequate educational opportunities from the Mayor, City Council, and School Board. They fought for appropriate school facilities, black teachers, and equal levels of education with whites. New black leaders such as Rev. Harvey Johnson, Rev. William Alexander, and other members of the Brotherhood of Liberty, were much more radical than the black leaders of the antebellum era in their demands for equal education for blacks. They threatened to file discrimination suits unless their demands for better schools were met. As the demands for black teachers and more schools were met, black women teachers played a key role in educating African American children. Black women teachers were the predominant instructors in the "colored" schools by the 1890s and continued the legacy of instilling cultural capital in black youth. They had to overcome the racial discrimination in "Jim Crow" Baltimore as well as the gender bias they faced from both black and white men. -- Abstract.