"Education Is the Watchword": Schooling in the All-Black Towns of Indian Territory, 1890–1935

• In Event: 51.031 - Contested Histories, Contested Spaces: Education in Oklahoma

Abstract

In October of 1904, hundreds of Rentiesville community members gathered to hear the words of inaugural township President, N.A. Robinson. Robinson delivered a profound and hopeful message to the multitude attending. Speaking at length regarding the township’s burgeoning nature, Robinson highlighted the growing mercantilism, railway, post office, and church; and each institutions’ place in the development and survival of the town. However, nothing was more central to Robinson’s message than education. Indeed, as Robinson’s oration ended he stated,

As we assemble in this splendid hall, it reminds us that education and high civilization is the watchword at Rentiesville. Our school is in splendid condition, with an enrollment of 81, and yet they are coming. A nine months school is a fine opportunity for our boys and girls. Prof. C.R. Ross is a model teacher.

Robinson’s words are poignant for he outlines the spirit and work of not only the people of Rentiesville, but Black people throughout the all Black towns of Indian Territory after the turn of the 20th century. In addition, Robinson spotlights the central role education played in Black imagining, community development, and freedom realization.

Through archival inquiry this work examines the origin, development, and spirit of formal schooling in the all Black towns of Indian Territory. Questions my inquiry explores: What strategies did African Americans deploy to work through and around an anti-black, white settler colonial and white supremacist legal landscape structured to render black education inferior if not non-existent? To what extent did black resource pooling and mobilizing contribute to school formation? What made it possible to develop curriculums devoted to black freedom and institutional development and adhere to pedagogies of love despite systematic government surveillance and policing? What was the relationship between schools and broader black community development? To what extent did black educational aspirations converge and diverge with those of Indigenous People in Indian Territory?

The history of education in the all Black towns of Oklahoma is simultaneously instructive, poignant, and troublesome. African Americans in these historic towns went to enormous lengths to engage what was supposed to be a foundational pillar of American society. As Jim Crow operated de facto prior to statehood and de jure afterward, black institutional interaction was virtually nonexistent. It is out of this milieu that Black towns and schools emerged. In at least eighteen towns, throughout both Indian and Oklahoma territories, formal schooling materialized. And, in every instance African Americans in these communities consistently pooled their resources-financial and labor- to manifest schooling. Mining this rich history also inserts Oklahoma into broader conversations around 19th and 20th century American and African American education.

Author

• Eric Sourie, University of Oklahoma