Martha Schofield, pioneer Negro educator / Historical and philosophical review of reconstruction period of South Carolina

by Matilda A. Evans

The same number of this newspaper carries instances and gives dates of other atrocities of a most depraved character. All this served to stimulate the growing animosity between the whites, who regarded the outrages being committed by them as absolutely essential to the preservation of civilization, and the Northern immigrants or carpet-baggers, who through the Negro vote were in power and held all of the important offices of the County and State. Many of these disgraced with shame for the time being the offices held for enriching themselves and impoverishing the already impoverished and well-nigh destitute country.

Martha Schofield’s activities in broad-casting stories of these hideous outrages and appealing for the continuance of the reign of the military authorities in South Carolina as the only means of making life at all safe and possible under the circumstances, drew to her the contempt and hatred of the white people, who of all the people on earth were best suited by reason of their position and knowledge to assist her in her work.

The suspicion and distrust she worked under of being in sympathy with the unscrupulous and corrupt regime in complete control of local affairs was manifestly a serious handicap. No one more clearly than she realized the disastrous effect their corruption would have on her school, her work and the colored people. She knew also that it meant defeat, in the South at least, of the great party whose triumph in the cause of freedom had made it possible for the first time in American history to test the possibility of elevating a lowly and much abhorred race. These influences weighed heavily upon her heart, and but for the courage and sternness of her nature, which seemed never to be at its best except when acutely vexed and infinitely tried, would have resulted in her voluntarily withdrawing from the self-imposed task almost in its beginning.

The author shall never forget but she will always remember and value her most priceless treasure, the tender religious emotion which the happenings of these times provoked. They were felt keenly at the morning service of the Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute during her first year at this institution. How fondly does she recall now as if the voices of angels, whose voices of three decades ago as the whole school would sing those comforting old plantation hymns, “Steal Away, Steal Away to Jesus,” and “Love, Come a Twinkling Down.”

The joy, the emotion and inspiration which is felt at the moment of writing these lines, over the probability of a similar joy in heaven, in the heart of her who had the heroic courage and the splendid manhood to risk her life in the unselfish and holy cause of implanting in the Negro mind and soul that which is beautiful, noble and sentimental, is unbounded.

The reflection that large numbers of her fellow-citizens now rejoice with her, and the prediction that others who do not now do so will later on, gives her likewise an even greater measure of the debt of gratitude which all owe to the mother of the movement for the courage to continue the work for the uplift of the Negro even at the peril of her life.

The work of Miss Schofield was made doubly more perilous each day by the misrule of the imported rulers of State. For these she had, instead of sympathy, an unbridled contempt, and never failed to express that contempt, whenever possible. But the white people would not condescend to hear her talk, much less believe anything which she might say. Besides their prediction that deplorable conditions would follow the rule of any Yankee, no matter whether he was a Scott, a Moses, or a Chamberlain, must not be discounted by the substitution of honest men from the North. The more corrupt a Republican was the better he served to prove the contention of the Southerners that only Democrats could be safely trusted with power.

The dishonest, corrupt and unscrupulous officials in authority were equally as energetic in protecting their offices from capture by good men, by countenancing, if not actually encouraging, a spirit of lawlessness. Governor Jenkins, the Republican Governor of Alabama, was quoted as saying that he would like to have a few colored men killed every week or so, in order to provide the semblance of truth for his libels that the maintenance of the Radicals in power was the only salvation of the colored people. His work and talk, typical of that of others, served to frighten good men away and keep Jenkins and his kind in authority. And all this time Martha Schofield and her little band of Negroes, whom she was endeavoring to lead out of the depths of darkness, despair and crime into the light of reason, courage, and industry were daily praying for their enemies, for the deliverance of men of all races from the fetters of greed, avarice and revenge, which was responsible for the suffering and misery to be seen on every hand. They were praying not only, they were working also, with all their little might, that the things for which they prayed might come to pass. This school, of all others which the author ever attended, preached, if it preached anything at all, that God must never be expected to answer prayers unsupported by works.

At one of the great political rallies held in Aiken by the Democratic Party a few years before the succession of Hampton to the Governorship one of the orators of the day said that the treasury of South Carolina had been so gutted by the thieves in power that nothing was left to steal except the power to stop the further enlightenment of the fool ‘nigger.’ He added also, that he wanted a change in the government in order to make a South Carolina bond equally as good on the market as a “nigger’s note.”

The legislatures of the Southern States authorized the increase of the public debt from $87,000,000 to $300,000,000. They held the right to declare martial law in every county whenever deemed advisable, to arrest and try any person by court martial and had at their disposal the right to raise regiments of soldiers, one of Negroes and one of whites, to execute their several wills. Under these circumstances it does seem that security of life, liberty and even the pursuit of happiness and the accumulation of property should have gone on undisturbed by anything which the aristocrats and poor whites might have done, in opposition to the desideratum so devoutly wished for by the authorities in power.