Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

The provisional government adopted the ante-bellum public school system and put it into operation. The schools were open to both races, from six to twenty years of age, separate schools being provided for the blacks. The greater part of the expenditure of the provisional government was for schools. Relatively few negroes attended the state schools proper, as every influence was brought to bear to make them attend the Bureau and missionary schools, and the state negro schools soon fell into the hands of the Bureau educators, who drew the state appropriation.

The colleges at Marion, Greensboro, Auburn, Florence, and other places were reopened in 1866-1867. The legislature loaned $70,000 to the University, besides paying the interest on the University fund. For three years the University was being rebuilt, and so well were its finances managed that in 1868, when the carpet-baggers came into power, the buildings were completed and the institution out of debt, although it had used only half of the loan from the state.[1712]

The Reconstruction convention of 1867 was much more interested in politics than in education. The negro members demanded free schools and special advantages for the negro, and a few carpet-baggers had much to say about the malign influence of the old régime in keeping so many thousands in the darkness of ignorance. The scalawags demanded separate schools for the races, but pressure was brought to bear and most of them gave way. Sixteen of the native whites refused to sign the constitution and united in a protest against the action of the convention in refusing to provide separate schools.[1713]

The School System of Reconstruction

The new constitution placed all public instruction under the control of a Board of Education consisting of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and two members from each congressional district,[1714] the latter to serve for four years, half of them being elected by the people every two years. Full legislative powers in regard to education were given to the Board. Its acts were to have the force of law, and the governor’s veto could be overridden by a two-thirds vote. The legislature might repeal a school law, but otherwise it had no authority over the Board.[1715] This body also acted as a board of regents for the State University. One school, at least, was to be established in every township in the state, though some townships did not have half a dozen children in them. The school income was fixed by the constitution at one-fifth of all state revenue, in addition to the income from school lands, poll tax, and taxes on railroads, navigation, banks, and insurance.[1716] The legislature added another source of income by chartering several lotteries and exempted them from taxation provided they paid a certain amount to the school fund. On October 10, 1868, the Mutual Aid Association was chartered “to distribute books, paintings, works of art, scientific instruments and apparatus, lands, etc., stock and currency, awards, and prizes.” For this privilege it was to give $2000 a year to the school fund.[1717] Two months later the Mobile Charitable Association was formed, which paid $1000 a year to the school fund,[1718] and a number of other lotteries were chartered soon after.

The school system, as a whole, did not differ greatly from the old, except that it was top-heavy with officials, and in that all private assistance was discouraged by a regulation forbidding the use of the public money to supplement private payments. The first Board of Education probably contained a collection of as worthless men as could be found in the state.[1719] The elections had gone by default, and since only the most incompetent men had offered themselves for educational offices, the work suffered. Dr. N. B. Cloud, an incapable of ante-bellum days, was chosen Superintendent of Public Instruction. He was a man without character, without education, and entirely without administrative ability. Before the war he was known as a cruel master to his few slaves. In August, 1868, he proceeded to put the system into operation by appointing sixty-four county superintendents, of Radical politics, each of whom in turn appointed three trustees in each township. The stream rose no higher than its source, and the school officials were a forlorn lot. One of them signed for his salary by an X mark. Another, J. E. Summerford, the superintendent of Lee County, was a man of bad morals, and so incompetent that, when attempting to examine teachers for licenses, he in turn was contemptuously questioned by them on elementary subjects. In revenge for this expression of contempt, he revoked the license of every teacher in the county. One county superintendent was a preacher who had been expelled from his church for misappropriating charity funds. But Cloud paid no attention to charges made against the integrity of his school officials.

Cloud proceeded with much haste to open the schools. A year later he made a report which is an interesting document. There was little progress to be noted, but much space was devoted to an appreciation of that “glorious document,” the constitution of 1867, the crowning glory of which—the article on education—should “entitle the members to the rare merit of statemen and sages.” This provision for education, he said, was the first blow struck in the South, and especially in Alabama, to clear out the last vestige of ignorance with all its attendant evils; and now, in spite of the burdens imposed by the unwise legislation of the past forty years, the bosoms of the citizens expanded with a noble pride in the present system of schools.

After this he proceeds to business. He reports that in every county and in almost every township in the state his officials met with opposition, not, he confesses, on account of opposition to schools, but on account of the objectionable government and its agents. The reports from the white counties, especially, indicate opposition to the establishment of negro schools, while in the Black Belt this opposition was not so strong. Everywhere, he states, the opposition died out, more or less, in time.[1720]

Before the new system went into operation, a meeting of the Board was held in Montgomery to clear away the remains of the old system. They voted to themselves a secretary, sergeant-at-arms, pages, etc., like the House of Representatives; all school offices were declared vacated and all school contracts void; separate schools were provided for the races where the parents were unwilling to send to mixed schools; eleven normal schools were provided for, with no distinction of color; and a bill was introduced by G. L. Putnam and passed into a law, the object of which was to merge the Mobile schools into the state system and also to make an office for Putnam. A sum of money had been appropriated by the previous legislatures to pay the teachers in the state schools, and now the Board declared that any association, society, or teacher in a school open to the public should have a claim for part of this money.[1721] The country superintendents were made elective after 1870; coöperation with the Freedmen’s Bureau was declared desirable, and the Bureau was asked to furnish or to rent houses, or to assist in building, while the aid societies were asked to send teachers who would be paid by the state, and who would be subject to the same regulations as native teachers. The “Superintendent of Education” of the Bureau was to have supervision over the Bureau schools, but he, in turn, would be under the supervision of Cloud.[1722]