Keeping blacks down?

by

by David Safier
We can find plenty of motives for the conservative uproar over Obama's talk to school children, most of them purely political. But there's one more aspect. Is this yet another attempt to deny educational opportunities to black children, this time by robbing them of the chance to be spoken to by very possibly the finest and most visible black role model in the country?

A bit of history. After the Civil War, freed slaves and their children rushed into schools.

From the first days of their freedom, Georgia's freed slaves demanded formal education.

Freedmen's Education Legislation passed in 1829 had made it a crime to teach slaves to read, and legislation and white attitudes discouraged literacy within Georgia's small free black community. Yet when schools for freedpeople opened in early 1865, they were crowded to overflowing. Within a year of black freedom, at least 8,000 former slaves were attending schools in Georgia; eight years later, black schools struggled to contain nearly 20,000 students.

The first postwar schools were former clandestine schools, operating openly by January 1865. Literate black men and women opened new, self-sustaining schools.

Wartime EducationNorthern freedmen's aid organizations began establishing schools in mid-1865. Of the nearly fifty aid societies working in freedmen's education in the 1860s, only seven were active in Georgia. These benevolent organizations raised funds, recruited teachers, and attempted to keep the future of the freedpeople before the northern public.

The thirst for education by freed slaves was so strong that southern whites feared that black children would surpass white children in educational attainment. So black schools were underfunded, and teachers, both black and white — the whites were often northern women who traveled to the south to teach black children at great personal expense and danger — were threatened. An educated slave was a potentially rebellious slave, their owners maintained in the pre-Civil War south, and many southern whites continued to hold that idea long after the Civil War. Unfortunately, that fear lingers to this day.

Here is a 2004 quote from Ron Butchart, Professor, University of Georgia, College of Education:

"There is an interesting pattern in the history of African American education, and you can actually trace it back into slavery. But let me take it from the point of emancipation onward. It’s a three-step process. The first is an absolute unshakeable demand: we will have access to literacy; we will have access to the social and cultural capital of the ruling class. The freed people made that demand throughout Reconstruction, and they won access. The second step is a white reaction that tries to push back the revolution. It began in the 1880s and 1890s. The third step is a movement on the part of white leadership in the form of legislatures and governors to essentially take that backlash and put it into law. And so you get the codification of Jim Crow in law by the turn of the century. What happens after that is a return to step one, which is, the African American community said, “Despite what they do, we will get access to education.” And so in the first half of the century they began pushing for control of their schools the best they could. They made sure that the Jeanes teachers were working on their behalf. They made sure that they were getting the Rosenwald schools. They began fighting against segregation, which then led us, of course, to Brown. What happens 20 years after Brown? We’re back to step two with the white backlash. What happens 10 years after that? We begin getting southern governors and legislatures beginning to sanctify the backlash in law, culminating in No Child Left Behind. But that then can lead back to step one. And so I think the question for us is: How do we — African Americans and their comrades — help move back into that movement on the part of the black community to make sure that there is access; to continue to demand equal education?  There is a pattern and we can be at the cutting edge of pushing us back into step one."

To use Butchart's terminology, is the uproar against Obama's speech, and even against his legitimacy as president, part of "the second step," a white reaction to stop the movement toward better education for black children?

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4 thoughts on “Keeping blacks down?”

  1. “Is this yet another attempt to deny educational opportunities to black children, this time by robbing them of the chance to be spoken to by very possibly the finest and most visible black role model in the country?”

    I think it’s stupid to prevent the president’s address from reaching the students, but to suggest this guy is “very possibly the finest and most visible black role model in the country” is troublesome. Visible, yes, but finest compared to whom? If you take a moment to clear away all the distractions of industry-funded tea-bag theatrics, psychotic fundamentalist christian drivel and the ridiculous news network partisan crossfire, what have you got? What has changed since Obama’s election? We’re still committing war crimes, still gutting the treasury, still bowing to lobbyists, still making signing statements, still disarming the public, still adulterating the food supply, still enforcing the patriot act, still fighting the phony war on terror, still wiretapping the public and still performing extraordinary rendition. How well is this guy going to fend off industry pressure and sign a health-care bill of any substance? I know better than to speak for my black friends or any people of color, but suggesting that Obama is a fine role model for anybody could be quite an insult.

  2. Nobama, the only reason I’m leaving your garbage up is to let you embarrass yourself. But if you continue in this fashion and I get tired of letting you embarrass yourself even more, which will be very soon, I will delete your comments as soon as I see them.

  4. David YOU have gone over the top and I demand an Applogy!!

    YOU LIVE IN THE PAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Arizona has less than 2% Blacks!!

    The Students don’t have a chance to see NOBAMA180 on a one on one basis but as he has been seen for the last two years on T.V.?

    This Crap may work in P.A. where I was Born David but your Racist Comments will NOT fly in Arizona!!

    RETRACT YOUR WHOLE STORY NOW!!!

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