By order of the K. K. K.[1738]
Before the summer of 1871 the reconstructed faculty had absolutely failed; there never had been any chance for them to succeed. The regents were unfitted to manage educational affairs, and they chose men to the faculty who would have been objectionable anywhere.[1739] The professors and their families were socially ostracized. Even southern men who accepted places in the Radical faculty were made to feel that they were scorned; no one would sit by them at public gatherings or in church. The men might have survived this treatment, but not so the women. In 1871 the Superintendent of Public Instruction and two members of the board of regents were Democrats. The faculty was reorganized for the eighth time since 1865, and a faculty of natives was elected. The effect upon the attendance was marked. In April, 1871, there were three students and in June none, while during the session of 1871-1872, 107 students were enrolled. In 1873 and 1874 the Radicals again had control, but they did not attempt to reconstruct the University.[1740]
When the land grant college, provided for in the Morrill act of 1862, was established in 1872, there was no attempt made to appoint a reconstructed faculty or board of trustees. But there was sharp competition among the towns of the state to secure the college. The legislature was to choose the location, and many of the members let it be known that their votes were to be had only in return for material considerations. It was finally located at Auburn, in Lee County. One Auburn lobbyist went out on the floor of one of the houses and there paid a negro solon $50 to talk no more against Auburn. The next day the same negro was again speaking against the location at Auburn. His purchaser went to him and remonstrated. The negro acknowledged that he had accepted the $50 not to speak against Auburn, but said, “Dat was yistiddy, boss.” Another Auburn man promised a cooking stove to a negro of more domestic inclinations, and amidst the excitement forgot all about it; but after the vote the negro came up and demanded his stove. He received it. Another was given a sewing-machine.[1741]
There was no attempt to force the entrance of negroes into the State University. Some reformers wanted the test made, but too many scalawags were bitterly opposed to such a step, to say nothing of the Ku Klux Klan. In December, 1869, the Board of Education asked the legislature to provide a university for the negroes,[1742] and several colored normal schools were established. In 1871, Peyton Finley, the negro member of the Board of Education,[1743] introduced a series of resolutions declaring that the negro had no desire to push any claim to enter the State University, but that they wanted one of their own, and Congress was urged to grant land for that purpose.[1744] But not until December, 1873, was Lincoln school at Marion, Perry County, designated as the colored university and normal school, where a liberal education was to be given the negro.[1745]
Trouble in the Mobile Schools
For more than a year Cloud had trouble in the schools of Mobile. The Mobile schools (always independent of the state system) were under the control of a school board appointed by the military authorities in 1865. When all offices and contracts were vacated, G. L. Putnam, a member of the Board of Education, and also connected with the Emerson Institute, which was conducted at Mobile by the American Missionary Association, had secured the enactment, because he wanted the position, of a school law providing for a superintendent of education for Mobile County. In August, 1868, Cloud gave him the office. The old school commissioners refused to recognize the authority of Putnam, who was unable to displace them, because he himself could not make bond. But, in order to give him some kind of office, Cloud went to Mobile and proposed a compromise, which was to appoint one of the old commissioners superintendent of education and Putnam superintendent of negro schools under the supervision of the other superintendent and the board of commissioners, which was still to exist. This was an arrangement Cloud had no lawful authority to make.
As part of the compromise the principal and teachers of the American Missionary Association were to be retained and paid by the state. The Emerson Institute (or “Blue College,” as the negroes called it) was to remain in possession of the American Missionary Association, but the school board and county superintendent were to have control over the schools in it. Putnam, as superintendent of the “Blue College” school, refused to allow the control of the board. He wanted them to pay his teachers, but would have no supervision. The general field agent of the American Missionary Association, Edward P. Smith, offered the “schools and teachers” to the school commissioners to be paid but not controlled. “We ought now in some way,” he said, “to have our teachers recognized and paid for, from the public fund, an amount equal to that paid for similar grades to other teachers in Mobile.” At the same time the state was paying $125 per month for the use of the building over which the Association and Putnam would allow no supervision. The county superintendent and the commissioners, unable to secure any control over the Putnam schools, refused to recognize them as a part of the Mobile system. Cloud declared all the offices vacant, but the commissioners refused to vacate. The case was carried into court and the commissioners were put in jail. The supreme court ordered them released. The Board of Education then met and abolished the Mobile system and merged the special and independent schools of that county into the general state system. This was done on November 13, 1869.[1746]
The judiciary committee of the legislature, consisting of three Radicals and one Democrat, was directed to investigate the conduct of Cloud in the Mobile troubles. It was reported (1) that Cloud had appointed two superintendents in Mobile County, contrary to law; (2) that on January 29, 1869, G. L. Putnam, who was not an official of the state and who, according to the compromise, should have been under the control of the county superintendent, drew from the state treasury with the connivance of Cloud between $5000 and $6000, with which he paid the teachers of “Blue College,” who were in the employ of the American Missionary Association and not of the state of Alabama; (3) that in July, 1869, Cloud again appointed Putnam superintendent of education for Mobile County, and sixty days afterwards he made a bond which was declared worthless by the grand jury, and after that Cloud gave Putnam a warrant for $9000, which he was prevented from collecting only by an injunction; (4) that while the injunction was in force as concerned both Putnam and Cloud, the latter drew from the treasury $2000 or more of the Mobile school funds to pay lawyers’ fees; (5) that while the injunction was still in force Cloud drew $3600 from the treasury for Putnam, the greater part or all of which was illegally used; (6) that Cloud again drew a warrant for $3300, which the auditor, discovering that Putnam was interested, refused to allow, and it was destroyed; (7) the committee further stated that very large salaries were paid to the teachers in “Blue College,” or Emerson Institute,—that one of them (Squires) received $4000 a year. The committee went beyond the limit of the resolution and reported that county superintendents were paid too much, and recommended the abolition of the Board of Education by constitutional amendment, the reduction of the pay of all school officials who acted as a sponge to absorb all the school funds, and, finally, that no person should hold more than one school office at the same time.[1747]
Later investigation showed that Putnam had made out pay-rolls for the teachers of the Emerson Institute for the last quarter of 1868 and presented them to A. H. Ryland, the county superintendent of Mobile, for his approval. This Ryland refused to give, as the compromise in regard to the Institute dated only from January 22, 1869. Putnam then went to his own American Missionary Association Negro Institute Board, had the pay-rolls approved, and then, as “county superintendent of education,” drew $5327.20, Cloud certifying to the correctness of his accounts.[1748] Putnam padded the pay-rolls and, in order to draw principal’s wages for each teacher, divided the Institute into ten schools. As there were only ten teachers besides the principal, there were now eleven principals.[1749] Kelsey, the principal, stated that no matter how much Putnam obtained for “Blue College,” the teachers received none of it, but were paid only their regular salaries by the Association. Kelsey himself was paid only $250 a quarter. The teachers were under contract with the Association to teach for $15 a month and board. Some of them testified that they had received no more. However, a part of the appropriation was turned into the treasury of the Association, and we may well ask what became of the remainder of it.[1750]
Irregularities in School Administration