Week 34 – Education – Introduction

Clandestine schools taught by free coloreds; humane masters “who winked at the violation of the law and permitted their children to instruct a favorite slave to read and sometimes to write”; ministers such as Rev. C.C. Jones who dispensed Christian instruction, or “some aged impecunious white lady {who} would agree to teach the children of free colored people and the children of such slaves as had hired their time.” While on Butler Island in 1838-1839 Fanny Kemble taught her husband Pierce Butler’s personal household slave Aleck to read. Aleck’s daughter Anna would go on to teach at St. Cyprian in Darien, St. Athanasius in Brunswick, and the Church of the Good Shepherd in Pennick. Anna Alexander became the first and only African American consecrated deaconess in the Episcopal Church. With Union troops on St. Simons Island In 1862 Susie Taylor King taught forty children, adults and soldiers of Company E “all of them so eager to learn.” After emancipation the army, the Freedman’s Bureau, the Freedman’s Aid Society, and Christian associations such as the American Missionary Association, the Baptist Home Mission Society, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary set out to help educate colored families.

Census records on Georgia’s sea islands in the early 1900s noted parents who could not read or write but their children were “At School.” Their parents expected them to learn. Parents built the schools. Teachers made sure their students achieved the best education they could provide. Both parents and teachers expected the best from the students because Education meant Freedom.

This month we look at the role of teachers and community in schools before Brown v. Board of Education. Appreciation goes to Dr. Melanie Pavich (Mercer U) and Dr. Hector Montford (College of Coastal Ga) and their students for oral history interviews used for these articles. See Sources for more details. SSAAHC welcomes your education memories – contact us at harringtonschool@ssiheritagecoalition.org, or call 912-634-0330.

Adults today in their 70s and 80s recall that there was no need for a PTA. “The teachers knew us and they knew our parents.“ Mr. and Mrs. Johnson at Harrington were neighbors and members of the local church. Mr. Baisden at South End was also a neighbor. Mr. Wilkerson, principal at Risley regularly visited students’ homes and sat on the front porch with their parents. Parents expected students to learn and to be respectful of their teachers. If not, alumni recalled, the teachers reminded them with Big Boy or Big Patty straps and “a whooping when we got home.” As one student put it, “Every night was parent teacher night because if you did something wrong…the teachers would tell your parents. They would sure tell.”

But going to school wasn’t a fearful thing. Studies in reading, writing, and math were interspersed with music and outside recess playing ball, tag, or dodgeball. Isadora Hunter loved school when she attended Harrington in 1928. She always regretted having to drop out to tend to her younger siblings when her mother died. Many, like Berthenia Gibson, went on to be teachers themselves emulating her teachers Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. “Our teachers wanted us to succeed, too. They prepared us for the outside world.”

Up until the 1960s black children only attended schools for black students. There were some benefits to segregated schools – they were located in your neighborhood so you could walk or bike to school and you attended with your friends. There was a sense of community, and growing pride for students, family and community. There were plenty of downsides too. “Five times“ hand-me down books, dusty interiors, poor lighting and outside toilets. Public school officials believed you were not as well educated as white students. But when island black students were bused to Brunswick or enrolled in private African American schools, they often skipped a grade or two because in their one room schoolhouses separated by a partition, they had heard and learned the older students’ lessons too.