Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited

Last updated

Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited
Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited.jpg
AuthorRobert Francis Engs
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectArmstrong, S. C., Hampton Institute
Published1999 (University of Tennessee Press)
Pages232 [1]
ISBN 978-1-57233-051-1 [1]
378.1 [1]
LC Class LC2851.H313A764 [1]

Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited is a 1999 biography of American General Samuel Chapman Armstrong and his associated normal school for freedmen, Hampton Institute, written by Robert Francis Engs and published by the University of Tennessee Press. The first full biography of its kind, the book portrays Armstrong as a complex politician and administrator in the postbellum period who balanced the needs of opposed parties surrounding the Virginia school: its African American students, Southern white neighbors, and Northern philanthropist funders. Previous works presented Armstrong in a polarized fashion, as either a savior or handicap for freedmen. The book emphasizes Armstrong's upbringing as a missionary in Hawaii in the development of his educational philosophy.

Contents

Reviewers complimented the book's balanced presentation of Armstrong, grounded use of the period's thought, and contribution to the historiography of industrial education. They felt the book lacked community and state historical context, as well as recent scholarship on Native Americans at Hampton.

Summary

Samuel C. Armstrong.gif
Booker T Washington retouched flattened-crop.jpg
Armstrong and his protégé, Booker T. Washington

Robert Francis Engs's Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited: Samuel Chapman Armstrong and Hampton Institute, 1839–1893 is the first biography of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, [2] [3] the founder of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. The book was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 1999. It challenges several long-standing ideas about this period: that the "Hampton-Tuskegee system" and its adherents stunted the progress of African Americans, that the Hampton Institute ideology was opposed to that of historically black and historically white colleges, and that the positions of W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington were diametrically opposed. [4] Engs writes Armstrong as a symbol of postbellum America's conflicts over race, class, religion, and gender. Engs's Armstrong, in "paternal ... arrogance" believed that he and others of higher status could best determine how to improve the lots of those suppressed by "lack of opportunity and discrimination", such as African Americans and American Indians. [5] This intuition, of knowing "what was best for the freedmen", was influenced by his experience in missionary work, [3] where his parents treated the indigenous Hawaiians as misbehaving children with behavior to be corrected. [6] The biography distills Armstrong's philosophy, demeanor, and understanding of African Americans from his experiences as a missionary, student of Williams College, and leader in the American Civil War. Engs dismisses polarized interpretations of Armstrong's legacy as either a savior or a handicap for uneducated blacks. [7] Instead, Armstrong is portrayed as a complex man who believes both in "black inferiority" and that freedmen could improve their lives through his lessons. [8]

Armstrong was born and raised in Hawaii in the mid-1800s. His father was the Kingdom of Hawaii's (secular) minister of public instruction, whose schools practiced the "manual labor principle of education". [5] Engs wrote that Armstrong's Hawaiian childhood insulated him from racist sentiment on the mainland. [3] Armstrong attended private schools in Oahu before moving to study on the mainland. He shied away from the ministry, believing as his father, "the shorter one's creed, the better". [5] Armstrong's experience in the Civil War—including as a prisoner of war, leader of the United States Colored Troops, and General—led to his lifelong pursuit of "noble strife" in helping his "fellow man". [9] He joined the Freedmen's Bureau [10] and served as the first principal of the Hampton Institute on the Virginia Peninsula. [7] Hampton's task was to prepare African Americans "to teach their people the 'civilizing' ways of white men" through "Christian teachings, a strict code of conduct, and manual labor". [7] Hampton was one of eight American Missionary Association teacher-training schools. Armstrong left a 25-year legacy, and introduced the school's manual and industrial teaching methods in the late 1860s despite its increased cost. [10] Engs distinguishes this vision from the post-1900 industrial education, with Armstrong's "industry" signifying the industriousness of "self-discipline and self-reliance". [10] The labor proceeds also supported the black students through school, though only during school months. [10] Armstrong sought to see his "best" graduates ascend to higher education and to occupations "originally envisioned for whites". [3] As his "most famous student", "virtual son", [6] and "spiritual heir", Booker T. Washington opened the Tuskegee Institute in the style of Hampton. [8] Armstrong later expanded Hampton's scope to include Native Americans, [8] who were kept apart from the blacks as a "school within a school". [6]

Clockwise from top left: Mark Hopkins and James Garfield assisted Armstrong in the school's design. Philanthropists George Peabody and Collis Huntington advised Armstrong. [10]

Engs notes that missionaries struggled to reconcile the task of assimilating discriminated peoples into a society that defined itself by that active discrimination. [2] Engs portrays Armstrong as a natural politician, administrator, and "risk-taker" [8] who sought broad-based support from opposed parties, including African Americans, the "anti-Negro white South", and white philanthropists of the North, which made Armstrong into a "master prevaricator". [3] As a "realist", Armstrong adopted the subtleties of his patrons to keep Hampton open, and did not confuse "the uplift of African Americans" with "promoting their equality with whites". [6] Hampton's curriculum was ultimately set by federal and donor money. [6] In time, Armstrong's goals for the school were derailed by increased costs and the school's Northern industrialist backers, who made manual labor education the focus and end of the curriculum, rather than a means. [3] Engs concludes that Armstrong's black graduates lived in better circumstances than their peers. [11] Many became teachers in the South and were "grateful" for their opportunities. [6] Reversely, Hampton's Native American graduates suffered in health at the school and had little job opportunity back out West. [6] Engs also concluded that Armstrong's work was limited by his reliance on the elite, emphasis on white men deciding black lives, and inability to change his philosophy when his assumptions became outdated. [8] Still, Engs thought that Armstrong succeeded in his intent to "civilize" students at Hampton, though this mattered little, Engs wrote, when white society was unprepared to accept them "no matter how civilized they might be". [12]

Reception

Wilbert Ahern ( Journal of American History ) found the book's arguments convincing and "gracefully written", but wanted to know more about Armstrong's background in financial administration, forming of ties with the Northern philanthropists, and successful students apart from Booker T. Washington. [11] Jennings Wagoner ( History of Education Quarterly ) noted that Armstrong's intentions were portrayed as comparable to the leaders of George Fredrickson's Inner Civil War, who saw their work as an extension of that of the Founding Fathers. [5] Wagoner wrote that Engs provided a "well-grounded" biography that handles Armstrong's "complexities and contradictions" with skillful use of the historiography and understanding of the era. [2] Ahern emphasized the biography's "balance" in contrast to prior partisan writing on Armstrong. He noted Donald Spivey's Schooling for the New Slavery and Engs's first book, the 1979 Freedmen's First Generation, as examples of work that associates Armstrong with "stifling ... African-American aspirations". [3] Ahern also wrote that Engs's work affirms the then-controversial claim in James McPherson's 1975 The Abolitionist Legacy that Armstrong was "fundamentally dedicated to the advancement of opportunity for African Americans" and other races. [3] Edna Greene Medford (The North Carolina Historical Review) wrote that the book was particularly valuable to the historiography of industrial education. [8]

Medford praised Engs's contextualization of the late-nineteenth century in American political, racial, and educational thought, but criticized his treatment of the relationship between the school and its community, particularly in stories of its students interacting with the community. [8] Ahern felt that Engs missed relevant, recent literature on Armstrong's impact on Native Americans. [11] Harold Forsythe ( The Journal of Southern History ) described Engs's tone as mild, but with a "continuous ... critical bite". [13] Forsythe also marked the book's reliance on Armstrong's and Hampton records and consequent distance from the larger history of Virginia. [13]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited". Bowker Books in Print. 1999. Closed Access logo transparent.svg (Subscription required.)
  2. 1 2 3 Wagoner 2001, p. 109.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Ahern 2000, p. 1045.
  4. ↑ Wagoner 2001, p. 106.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Wagoner 2001, p. 107.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bair 2000, p. 451.
  7. 1 2 3 Medford 2000, p. 384.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Medford 2000, p. 385.
  9. ↑ Wagoner 2001, pp. 107–108.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Wagoner 2001, p. 108.
  11. 1 2 3 Ahern 2000, p. 1046.
  12. ↑ Bair 2000, p. 452.
  13. 1 2 Forsythe 2002, p. 985.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Booker T. Washington</span> American educator, author, orator and adviser (1856–1915)

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freedmen's Bureau</span> US agency assisting freedmen in the South

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to 1872, to direct "provisions, clothing, and fuel...for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forty acres and a mule</span> Attempt to redistribute land during the US Civil War

Forty acres and a mule was part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than 40 acres (16 ha). Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land. However, Abraham Lincoln's successor as president, Andrew Johnson, tried to reverse the intent of Sherman's wartime Order No. 15 and similar provisions included in the second Freedmen's Bureau bills.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armstrong High School (Virginia)</span> Public high school in Richmond, Virginia, United States

Armstrong High School, part of the Richmond Public Schools, is a high school located in Richmond, Virginia, United States, with grades 9–12. The school was founded in 1867 as the Richmond Normal and High School by the Freedmen's Bureau and was eventually incorporated into the Richmond school system in 1876. The school's namesake is former Union General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, a white commander of a U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) regiment during the American Civil War. General Armstrong later founded Hampton Institute, a historically black college now known as Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. Armstrong was a mentor of Booker T. Washington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel C. Armstrong</span> American soldier, general and educator

Samuel Chapman Armstrong was an American soldier and general during the American Civil War who later became an educator, particularly of non-whites. The son of missionaries in Hawaii, he rose through the Union Army during the American Civil War to become a general, leading units of Black American soldiers. He became best known as an educator, founding and becoming the first principal of the normal school for Black American and later Native American pupils in Virginia which later became Hampton University. He also founded the university's museum, the Hampton University Museum, which is the oldest Black American museum in the country, and the oldest museum in Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hampton University</span> Historically black university in Hampton, Virginia, US

Hampton University is a private, historically black, research university in Hampton, Virginia. Founded in 1868 as Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, it was established by Black and White leaders of the American Missionary Association after the American Civil War to provide education to freedmen. The campus houses the Hampton University Museum, which is the oldest museum of the African diaspora in the United States and the oldest museum in the commonwealth of Virginia. First led by former Union General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Hampton University's main campus is located on 314 acres in Hampton, Virginia, on the banks of the Hampton River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emancipation Oak</span> United States historic place

Emancipation Oak is a historic tree on the campus of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, in the United States. The large, sprawling southern live oak, believed to be over 200 years old, is 98 feet in diameter, with branches which extend upward as well as laterally. It is designated one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society and is part of the National Historic Landmark district of Hampton University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Missionary Association</span> New York-based abolitionist movement

The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreading Christian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; The Association was chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England. The main goals were to abolish slavery, provide education to African Americans, and promote racial equality for free Blacks. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Betsey Stockton</span>

Betsey Stockton, sometimes spelled Betsy Stockton, was an American educator and missionary in Hawaii.

The Grand Contraband Camp was located in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, on the Virginia Peninsula near Fort Monroe, during and immediately after the American Civil War. The area was a refuge for escaped slaves who the Union forces refused to return to their former Confederate masters, by defining them as "contraband of war". The Grand Contraband Camp was the first self-contained black community in the United States and occupied the area of the downtown section of the present-day independent city of Hampton, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calhoun Colored School</span> United States historic place

The Calhoun Colored School (1892–1945), was a private boarding and day school for Black students in Calhoun, Lowndes County, Alabama, about 28 miles (45 km) southwest of the capital of Montgomery. It was founded in 1892 by Charlotte Thorn and Mabel Dillingham, from New England, in partnership with Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, to provide education to rural black students. African Americans comprised the majority in this area, and the state had segregated facilities. Calhoun Colored School was first designed to educate rural black students according to the industrial school model common at the time.

Tullahassee Mission was a Presbyterian mission and school, founded on March 1, 1850, in the Creek Nation, Indian Territory by Robert Loughridge. This Presbyterian minister had been serving there since 1843, when he founded Koweta Mission. This mission was also originally built for Muscogee Creek students, and the community of Tullahassee developed there.

Walden University was a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1865 by missionaries from the Northern United States on behalf of the Methodist Church to serve freedmen. Known as Central Tennessee College from 1865 to 1900, Walden University provided education and professional training to African Americans until 1925.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Belden Lyman</span> American missionary to Hawaii

David Belden Lyman was an early American missionary to Hawaii who opened a boarding school for Hawaiians. His wife Sarah Joiner Lyman (1805–1885) taught at the boarding school and kept an important journal. They had several notable descendants.

The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Armstrong (Hawaii missionary)</span>

Richard Armstrong was a Presbyterian missionary from Pennsylvania who arrived in Hawaii in 1832. Along with his wife Clarissa, he served in mission fields of the Marquesas Islands and in the Kingdom of Hawaii. He established several churches and schools, and was Kahu (shepherd) of Kawaiahaʻo Church after the departure of Hiram Bingham I. Kamehameha III appointed him Minister of Public Instruction, and his accomplishments established an educational system that earned him the nickname "The father of American education in Hawaii".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reuben Atwater Chapman</span> American judge

Reuben Atwater Chapman was an American attorney who served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1868 until his death in 1873. As a youth he was employed as a store clerk in Blandford, Massachusetts when he was given the opportunity at the age of 19 to read law as a clerk in a law office. Admitted to the bar, he successively practiced in Westfield, Monson, and Ware, before settling in Springfield, Mass., where he practiced in partnership with Whig politician George Ashmun as Chapman & Ashmun. The firm became one of the most successful in the state and in 1860 Chapman was appointed an associate justice of the state supreme court, subsequently being elevated to chief justice in 1868. He was a presidential elector for Lincoln in 1860, and served on the Harvard Board of Overseers. He handled some legal matters for John Brown when Brown was in business in Springfield, and later, when Brown was imprisoned in Virginia facing hanging after the abortive Harper's Ferry raid, he wrote to Chapman asking him to either come himself or send legal assistance: "I have money in hand here to the amount of $250 [...] do not send an ultra abolitionist," which Chapman was unable to do at the time. Chapman died in Switzerland in 1873.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clarissa Chapman Armstrong</span> American missionary

Clarissa Chapman Armstrong was an American missionary in the Hawaiian Islands and Marquesas Islands, from 1832 until 1847. She was part of the Fifth Company of missionaries sent to Hawaii by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christiansburg Institute</span>

Christiansburg Institute was a school for African Americans from 1866 until 1966 in Montgomery County, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freedmen's schools</span>

Freedmen's Schools were educational institutions created soon after the abolition of slavery in the United States to educate freedmen. Due to the remaining opposition to equality between blacks and whites, it was difficult for the formerly enslaved to receive a proper education, among a myriad of other things. Schools were made especially for blacks but were open to anyone regardless of race. These schools were far from perfect; however, they did give African Americans hope and opportunity for their future.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.