Nine Black Men

0:03We are now in Washington, D.C., February 25, 1870. A special dispatch goes out from the jam-packed galleries of Congress. Mr. Revels, the colored senator from Mississippi, was sworn in and admitted to his seat this afternoon at 4.40 o 'clock. As Revels approached the speaker's desk to take his oath, the galleries rose to their feet, quote, that they might miss no word or lose no glimpse of what was being enacted below. This dispatch, published in the New York Times, described the confirmation of the country's first-ever Black person to serve in Congress, Hiram Revels. The United States is still in the aftershocks of the Civil War, but changing quickly.

0:51It's been five years since the Confederacy surrendered. The Union's top general, Ulysses Grant, is now the president. And he's a very different man from his predecessor, the southerner, Andrew Johnson. Grant supports the radical reconstruction agenda. That includes full citizenship for all people born in the United States, and full enfranchisement for men. Congress has just passed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting states from denying any man the right to vote, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Nearly 2 ,000 Black people stepped into public office during Reconstruction, 16 in Congress, and the rest in state and local offices.

1:35They entered the roles of people who governed daily life in the South. They became magistrates and tax assessors, county sheriffs, and state lawmakers. It's hard to overstate what a massive change this marked in the life of the United States, or what a massive job these newly elected Black officeholders had in front of them. After the Civil War, the South needed to be reimagined. It needed to become, for the first time really, a democratic society. Everything needed to be rethought. And when I spoke with President Barack Obama, he wanted to talk about perhaps the biggest priority for many new Black officials.

2:14Schools. One of the things I love when you read about Reconstruction is how much Black folks understood literacy and education as intricately tied to freedom. The degree to which they thought our number one project here is let's start a bunch of schools to make sure that our people have a chance to learn how to read and write. That's the one thing that the white majority couldn't constrain. Learning. Yeah. Can't block that. We can lock this in our heads. And they understood that, but it also influences generally this notion that then carries over to the broader society of public education, that citizenship, equality, power, all of that is tied to our ability to understand and communicate and analyze the society.

3:23that we're in. That's what gives us agency and that's what gives us power. My name is Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Reconstruction, The Unfinished Promise.

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6:16During slavery, most southern states had laws on their books that punished enslaved people for reading and writing, and punished white people for teaching them. As President Obama says, this left black people after the Civil War all the more determined to get a formal education. And just as they did with voting and running for office, they did not wait to start their own schools, even if they could not read or write themselves. These schools are the ultimate story of resistance. Some would eventually become what we now call historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. But exactly how did the schools first get established?

6:59Each of them has its own story, and these stories are dramatic. with twists and turns that take a lot of detective work to follow. This is the kind of research that is especially suited for a scholar of Black resistance movements. Enter Kelly Carter Jackson.

7:18Kellie Carter Jackson:This structure straight ahead looks like a slide and a, like a wristwatch or... I have no idea. Maybe... Jackson is chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She's standing in Montgomery, Alabama with a local historian, a man named Joseph Caver. Here is the memorial, the Centennial Memorial put up in 1974. Caver is a graduate of Alabama State. He was on campus when the school erected its Centennial Memorial in 1974. The memorial is a big metal structure in the middle of campus. It looks like a giant looped ribbon. And you can see the tributes around. The tributes are small plaques laid in the ground, each engraved with the names of important people in the school's history.

8:20That's number three.

8:21Kellie Carter Jackson:William Burns Patterson Harbor Council. These are the president. Wow. It's a lovely tribute, but it's incomplete. Alabama State was one of the first schools created to educate freed Black people during Reconstruction. And like so much of Reconstruction, the particulars of the school's early history were, until recently, just forgotten. It's not totally clear why or how the school lost track of its origin story. But when Joseph Kaver started digging into his alma mater's past, he discovered something really interesting. In the story of this one school, you can see what Barack Obama pointed out to me, the way education became a fulcrum for democracy in the South.

9:06And not just during Reconstruction, but all the way through the Civil Rights Movement. Kelly Carter Jackson graduated from another HBCU, Howard University. When she heard the true backstory of Alabama State's founding, she had to know more. Here she is with that story.

9:26Kellie Carter Jackson:Not long after Alabama State University laid its tributes to past presidents into the ground, Joseph Caver made a discovery. I'm here working at State Arch� down in the basement. And this graduate student from Auburn University working on her dissertation. And she said, Joe, they got it all wrong over at Alabama State. And she took me upstairs in the library over next door. And we went to the American Missionary Association microfilm collection. She loaded the microfilm for Alabama State and scrolled to something remarkable. It was two pages, the incorporation papers and the signature of the nine Black men.

10:16Kellie Carter Jackson:Nine Black men. All previously unknown to the school's official history. Joseph realized that Alabama State's origin story left out an entire chapter. The incorporation papers revealed that these men founded his alma mater in 1867, making it one of the first schools created during the early years of Reconstruction. I came running down the stairs.

10:46And one of my best friends now, he was down working on his new book. and I jumped up and I said, Mills, look at this. And he read it. He said, Joe, they got it all wrong with Alabama State. I said, yes, I know.

11:06Kellie Carter Jackson:Joseph dug up all the details he could find on each of the nine men and wrote them back into the history of the school. Ivy Parrish was a carpenter. Thomas Speed was a blacksmith from North Carolina. Nicholas Dale was a carpenter and a merchant. Thomas Lee was a farmer who would also go on to help write Alabama's new constitution. Nathan LaVert was also a farmer. John Freeman, he was a carpenter, which comes to use when the building of the school is self-done by the local community. James Childs was a shoemaker. He made boots and shoes and also was a minister. One of my favorite details comes from the life of David Harris.

11:51Kellie Carter Jackson:He was a merchant, plasterer, and brick mason from Tennessee. And to celebrate his emancipation, he commissioned a desk, the kind where the desktop folds up. I love picturing him sitting there, organizing his quills, writing letters. Joseph gave the founders a name, the Marion Nine.

12:17Kellie Carter Jackson:Although the campus today is in Montgomery, Alabama, the school was established about 75 miles to the west in Marion. The Marion had a larger population of Black servants than field hands. And those Black servants picked up reading before the end of the Civil War. Five of the nine Black founders could read and write. Wow. They signed the incorporation papers. Among the Marion Nine, the most notable name is Alexander H. Curtis. because Alexander is such a great example of how Black people during Reconstruction just leapt into becoming new American citizens. He lived a brief life. He died in his late 40s.

13:03Kellie Carter Jackson:But in that time, Alexander did extraordinary things. He was born into slavery in North Carolina and was brought to Alabama when he was around 10 years old. He was a skilled laborer while enslaved, and he did all kinds of jobs, from operating a barbershop to bookkeeping and tailoring. As Alexander got older, he was able to sell this work outside of the plantation and keep some of the profits. This was not uncommon. Enslaved people had skills that could be hired out, or occasionally even crops or products like eggs and butter to sell. In some parts of the South, enslaved people were told they could save up to purchase their freedom through this kind of side hustle.

13:48Kellie Carter Jackson:Alexander was one of those who succeeded. Just before the Civil War began, he bought freedom for himself and his wife for$2 ,000. I don't know what the current rate of$2 ,000 in 1858, what the value would be today, but that's a sizable amount of money. Sizable indeed. It's nearly$80 ,000 today.

14:15Kellie Carter Jackson:Alexander's wife is interesting as well. She was a woman named Princess Webb. The princess part of her name is not random. She was the actual descendant of a princess from Madagascar, like all the way on the eastern side of Africa, who had been kidnapped and enslaved in the American colonies. Princess and Alexander were about the same age and appeared to have fallen in love in their 20s. that got married and raised nine children. I haven't been able to find a photo of them together, but there's one of Princess later in life. She has long outlived Alexander, making it to nearly 80 years old. She's sitting draped in a thick fur-trimmed coat, a dark fur hat with a bow and feathers perched on top of her beautifully coiffed white hair.

15:03Kellie Carter Jackson:And she looks fully regal. She also looks no-nonsense, like I'm a little intimidated. But it's fitting because Princess and Alexander were important people in Reconstruction-era Alabama. So he has his hand in groceries, barbering, politics, religion. He's all over the place. He's a distinguished man. And perhaps because he was a parent, or maybe because he likely had to teach himself to read in secret while enslaved, When the Civil War ends and Reconstruction begins, Alexander is fired up about creating a school for newly freed people. Can you talk about what the state of Black education looks like right after the Civil War ends?

15:53Sure. When we look at what formerly enslaved people did in the years after the Civil War, they are really trying hard to reunite their families. They're trying to legalize their marriages, and they are trying to distance themselves from their enslaved past by acquiring literacy.

16:10Kellie Carter Jackson:Crystal Sanders is a professor at Emory University and the author of a book about historically Black colleges. And so we know that in the aftermath of the Civil War, throughout the Reconstruction period, there are large numbers of white women coming from the North to work in Black schools. But by the time that these women arrived, what they're finding is that Black people on the ground throughout the South had already begun to set up their own schools. They had already begun to find ways to ensure that they would learn to read and write so they could read a labor contract and that they could read the Bible.

16:46Kellie Carter Jackson:Often, the challenge in starting a school was access to money. That was true for Alabama State as well. Initially, a white missionary set up a makeshift school in Marion, but it was quickly overwhelmed by the number of Black people who wanted to become students. They needed resources to expand. That's where Alexander Curtis and the Marion Nine stepped in. They said, hey, we can raise the seed money. Alexander Curtis is the backbone of all of that. He leads the effort to finance the school and making it a normal school to teach students how to teach. He went around town with a subscription list, signing up parents as donors.

17:27Kellie Carter Jackson:There were suppers and ladies' fairs with cakes and jellies, and it worked. With a combination of money from Black parents, donations from some white residents, and funds from the federal government, they got enough resources to expand the school. They bought land and built a handsome, white, two-story building with four classrooms and a space for aspiring teachers to practice lecturing. The Marion Nine, including Alexander, became trustees of the school. They initially named it Lincoln, likely after Abe, though for the sake of clarity, I'm just going to refer to it by its current name, Alabama State.

18:04Kellie Carter Jackson:And in November of 1867, two years after the end of the war, the first classes began, even though the building was still under construction. Lincoln School of Marion, Alabama. Of what grade? Primary and intermediate. What number of pupils enrolled during the month? 113. Male, 49. Female, 64. What number free before the war? Zero. Shortly after the school opened, Alexander got appointed as a county registrar. And in 1870, the same year that the 15th Amendment was ratified, establishing a constitutional right that allowed black men to vote, Alexander Curtis was elected to the state legislature. There's a great photo of him too.

18:54Kellie Carter Jackson:He's posing with his fellow state senators, and he's standing towards the front of the Capitol steps. He's got this thick build and a long but tidy beard underlining his round face, and his bow tie is neatly looped. He looks so handsome. And what's more, he's not the only Black face in the photo. So one of the things that is so astounding about Reconstruction is that there were many Black leaders who achieved political power at various levels in the South. And that's what made Reconstruction so radical. Manisha Sinha is the chair of the history department at the University of Connecticut and an advisor on this series.

19:37Kellie Carter Jackson:More than 170 Black men would serve in the Alabama legislature during Reconstruction. At least 42 of them were formerly enslaved. You wouldn't see that extent of Black political representation till the late 20th century. They're represented in state and local offices and right up to the highest levels of state government and in Congress. And in Black majority states, African Americans attain high office as senators, as representatives. So this is literally a world turned upside down. turned upside down by Black voters. And given the size of the Black population in most Southern states, all elected officials depended upon the support of newly minted Black voters to keep their jobs.

20:26Kellie Carter Jackson:So they followed the priorities Black voters set. And as with Alexander Curtis, education was at the top of the list.

20:39You know, Du Bois talks about the fact that in the South, public education is the creation of free people. And what he meant by that was that when Black men are able to be elected to state legislatures across the South, one of the first things they do is introduce legislation to create universal public education.

21:00Kellie Carter Jackson:Biracial Reconstruction governments created publicly funded school systems in every state in the South. For the first time, everyone had a chance to go to school. And so it was a model. It was a model for a democratic society, right? It was a model for saying that we're going to not just give lip service to inclusion, but we're really going to practice it. Because again, many of these legislators had been formally enslaved and they understood the value of literacy and they wanted to ensure that every child, not just Black children, but poor white children across the South, had the opportunity to become literate.

21:41Kellie Carter Jackson:The impact was substantial. Within a decade of the Civil War, half of all the children in South Carolina, Florida and Mississippi were enrolled in schools. Across the country from 1870 to 1880, Black illiteracy rates fell by nearly 10 percent. White illiteracy rates went down by about 2 percent. This remarkable change in American life was due to schools like the one that Marion Nine helped build. But of course, the story does not end there. There was widespread opposition to Black education. There was widespread opposition in the sense that it appeared that it would upset the racial status quo.

22:31Kellie Carter Jackson:I'm wondering if you could read this quote. Sure. And then share with us your thoughts on it. Sure. This is from W.E.B. Du Bois' classic study, The Souls of Black Folk, where he said, quote, for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong, for education among all kinds of men always has had and always will have an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Dr. Jelani Favors is a professor at North Carolina A &T. He wrote a book on Black higher education called Shelter in the Time of Storm. It's rooted in that quote from Du Bois, one of the greatest scholars and writers of the 20th century.

23:14When Du Bois is talking about this idea of discontent, of dissatisfaction, these are some of the same concerns that white slave owners had when they banned education during the Hanson-Battle on Michelin era. That was not a coincidence. Yeah, it was not a coincidence, right? And so they knew and realized that, you know, if you begin to educate these folks, that they're going to begin to raise questions. They're going to begin to expand their horizons.

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24:50We are in uncharted territory. Staff writer Evan Osnos on the New Yorker Radio Hour. I think all of us right now are trying to make sense of an avalanche of news every day. And there aren't very many places where you can go and understand how something looks in the grand scope of history and context. That's what I come to The New Yorker for. I'm David Remnick, and each week my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world, and I hope you'll join us for The New Yorker Radio Hour. So we've heard how Alabama State got its start, and how it was an emblem of this incredible drive for education among freed Black people in the South.