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chapter 9 Reconstruction: The Making and Unmaking of a Revolution
training, instructing young people in teaching methods and theory as well as diction, 1865–1877
geometry, algebra, and map reading.
By 1868, more than half the teachers in black schools in the South were black, and
most were women. For them, teaching was a calling, not just a job. “I am myself a colored
woman,” noted Sarah G. Stanley, “bound to that ignorant, degraded, long enslaved race,
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by the ties of love and consanguinity; they are socially, and politically, ‘my people.’”
The increasing preponderance of black teachers reflected a growing race conscious-
ness and commitment to self-reliance. Despite the fact that white teachers may have
had better training and more experience, black communities preferred black teachers.
The Reverend Richard Cain observed that white “teachers and preachers have feelings,
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but not as we feel for our kindred.” In 1869, a group of blacks in Petersburg, Virginia,
petitioned the school board to replace white teachers with black ones, asserting, “We
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do not want our children to be trained to think or feel that they are inferior.” Black
female teachers became important community leaders and inspirational role models.
Like black schools, they helped build racial solidarity and community identity.
Although the historically black colleges and universities emphasized teacher train-
ing, early on they took two different curricular paths that reflected the different expec-
tations freedpeople had for themselves in light of their opportunities. Schools such
as Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, founded in 1866, embraced the classical
liberal arts model, whereas schools such as Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia,
founded in 1868, adopted the vocational-industrial model. When Booker T. Washing-
ton helped found Tuskegee Institute in 1881, he modeled it on Hampton, where he
had been a student and teacher. In 1871, Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College
(Alcorn A&M) opened as Alcorn University in Claiborne County, Mississippi. Alcorn
was both the nation’s first state-supported college for blacks and the first federal land-
grant black college.
Fisk offered a well-rounded academic program to prepare the best and the bright-
est of the race for citizenship, leadership, and a wide range of careers. The school
boldly aimed for “the highest standards, not of Negro education, but of American edu-
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cation at its best.” Within six years, however, Fisk faced a serious financial crisis that
threatened its survival. In an effort to raise money, George L. White, school treasurer
and music professor, organized a choral ensemble to go on a fundraising tour. Model-
ing their performances on European presentation styles, but singing slave songs and
spirituals little known to white audiences, the Fisk Jubilee Singers were soon famous.
In 1872, they performed for President Ulysses S. Grant at the White House, and the
next year, while on a European tour, they sang for Britain’s Queen Victoria. The money
they raised saved the school from bankruptcy and enabled Fisk to build its first perma-
nent building, Jubilee Hall, today a National Historic Landmark. Their performances
built worldwide respect and admiration for African American music and culture and
inspired other black colleges to create similar groups.
Hampton Institute had a different mission: “to train selected Negro youth who
should go out and teach and lead their people first by example, by getting land and

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