From cotton field to schoolhouse
Subtitle: African American education in Mississippi, 1862-1875
By: Christopher M. Span.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Chapel Hill, N.C
Language: eng
Number of pages: 252
ISBN-13: 9780807832905
Subjects: African Americans -- Education -- Mississippi -- History -- 19th century; Freedmen -- Mississippi -- History; Education -- Mississippi -- History -- 19th century; Education and state -- Mississippi -- History -- 19th century; Mississippi -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century; Mississippi -- Politics and government -- 1865-1950
Description: This book examines Mississippi's politics and policies of post Civil War racial education. The primary debate centered on whether schools for African Americans should seek to develop Blacks as citizens, train them to be free but subordinate laborers, or produce some other outcome. African Americans envisioned schools established by and for themselves as a primary means of achieving independence, equality, political empowerment, and some degree of social and economic mobility. Most northerners assisting freed people regarded such expectations as unrealistic and expected African Americans to labor under contract for those who had previously enslaved them and their families. Meanwhile, many white Mississippians objected to any educational opportunities for the former slaves. The author finds that newly freed slaves made heroic efforts to participate in their own education, but too often the schooling was used to control and redirect the aspirations of the newly freed.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.