“We Value Our Black Babies as Well as Other Folks Do Theirs”: Reconstructing Public Memory of the Black Educational Pursuit in Nevada (1864–1890) (Poster 18)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 4:55
  In Invited Poster Session: 2024 AERA Undergraduate Fellows Research Poster Fair

Abstract

What characterized Black educational life in late 19th-century Nevada?
Situated in the Postbellum and Reconstruction eras, Black Americans migrated to northern Nevada for economic and political opportunities, driven by the rise of Comstock Lode mining. Additionally, they invested in institutional building for education as they reimagined a new world in the newborn, “battle-born” Nevada. Engaging in counterstorytelling, a methodological tool of Critical Race Theory, I seek to reconstruct a new narrative about Black education as a challenge to assumed public truths (Horsford, 2011). Conducting archival analysis of primary sources like state reports and personal artifacts alongside secondary sources like newspapers, contributes to constructing a more corrective account of the educational motivations in Black Nevada. Aware of archival silences, I resist reliance on historically White institutional databases and commit to include "black cultural production as community archives" (Trouillot, 1995; Glegziabher, 2022). Preliminary findings emphasize that Black Nevadans prioritized education as a political project and made extensive efforts to see their conviction come to fruition. Shortly after an 1865 Jim Crow Law prohibited Black people from attending public schools, at least two colored schools funded by the Black community were erected in 1866/1867, contrary to public insistence that none existed. Black Nevadans were vehement in their outcry of the "monstrous injustice" at the hands of the state to deny tax-paying Black Nevadans schooling—with oratories, journalistic advocacy, and lawsuits like Stoutmeyer vs. Duffy (1872). Correspondence from the Pacific Appeal in 1870 highlights the emergence of literary and social clubs as Black subversive spaces for education and political organizing. These findings prescribe further examination of the experiences of Black students and the inclusion of first-person accounts in this objective for [re]construction. Resistance to racial domination, fugitive underpinnings, and self-determination are the themes woven into the fabric of Black Nevadan’s pursuit of education.

Author

• Eden Wolde, University of Nevada - Las Vegas