At the Intersection of Race(ism) and Black Education: White Supremacy and Black Schooling in the Antebellum North

• In Event: 16.031 - The Pursuit of Equal Educational Opportunity for Students of Color and the Competing Purposes of Schooling in the United States: Colonial Times to Today

Abstract

Racism and White Supremacy were at the foundation of the obstacles African Americans faced in their fight for equal educational opportunity in the North. The efforts to establish Black schools in Antebellum North were met with heavy White resistance and protest. As Blacks and their allies fought to gain access to education, many Whites pushed back ferociously, oftentimes through acts of violence, to preserve White dominance and control (Pickney, 2016; Moss, 2013; Moss, 2006). In 18th and 19th century Connecticut, Blacks experienced slavery and torture, unfair sentencing, and restricted access to attend school, own real-estate and establish businesses.
This paper takes a historical perspective on Black education in the North between 1700 and 1850. More specifically it outlines the patterns of White resistance against both Blacks and Whites seeking to establish educational institutions that served Blacks. I argue that White resistance towards Black educational opportunities, as described by Ferber’s (1998), White Man Falling: Race, Gender and White Supremacy, was grounded in White Supremacy ideology that aimed to: 1) emigrate literate Blacks, 2) maintain that Blacks were inferior, 3) secure racial purity, and 4) use force to suppress efforts to establish Black schools.
The paper draws on primary sources, including personal letters, news articles, and legislation, and secondary sources, including biographies, books, journal articles and historical texts related to the struggles for Black education in colonial Connecticut. It is structured in three major parts. The first part, Black Schooling and the Patterns of Resistance, examines the trends associated with the resistance to education imposed upon Blacks from 1700-1850. I draw connections between White resistance and the tenets of White Supremacy described by Ferber (1998), as the motivation behind restricting access to, and eventually shutting down operational Black schools. The second part, titled Connecticut and the Fight for Black Education, highlights the efforts to gain access to education for Blacks in Connecticut, examining the schooling experience of Blacks in Connecticut and how the White Supremacist ideology denied them access to educational opportunities. In the final part, Higher Education Attempts for Blacks in Connecticut, I examine the responses and resistance to two Black-exclusive schools: William and Jocelyn’s “African College,” which would have been the nation’s first black college in New Haven, Connecticut, and Crandall’s Academy for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color in Canterbury, Connecticut.
The paper adds to our understanding of the pursuit for equal educational opportunity for African Americans by shedding light on the historical patterns of White resistance to such efforts. The paper highlights how White Supremacist ideology justified and propelled the legal, cultural and material denial and destruction of Black educational institutions. In doing so, the paper provides an historic lens through which to examine contemporary efforts to secure equal educational opportunities for African Americans.

Author

• Monique Golden, University of Connecticut - Storrs