Thesis: African Americans used cultural capital and social capital to collectively mobilize education as a community. The social capital and cultural capital that was used for education enabled African American leaders to emerge from their communities. The leaders that emerged from African American communities helped educate while establishing Afrocentric curriculums that challenged Eurocentric curriculums.
Introduction: The history of African American education is filled with racism, discrimination, a promotion of white supremacy, an indoctrination of black inferiority, and hate. African Americans have always questioned while resisted Eurocentric teachings. They did this by embracing Afrocentric curriculums. The pedagogy of the Afrocentric curriculum is one that positively serves the education of African American children at the beginning of their learning. There were laws that made it illegal to teach African Americans to read and write.
Together African Americans challenged the system that was meant to keep them disenfranchised. There was an initiative to learn how to read and write in spite the oppression they faced. Collectively African Americans created a tax system that allowed for the building of churches and schools in their communities. The tax money they pooled together, paid for their teachers’ salaries and living expenses. Social capital and cultural capital are two ways African Americans collectively mobilized education for themselves, their children and their community.
The denial of the education for African Americans- Between 1740 and 1867 anti-literacy laws in the United States made it illegal for free and enslaved African Americans from learning to read and write. The ability to read and write had many advantages for enslaved African Americans. Being able to write meant you could forge a letter proclaiming yourself as a free person. Allowing your escape to free a state.
Literacy equipped one with articulation to be able to form intellectual opinions regarding their living existence in bondage. By reading the bible the enslaved became empowered by developing spirituality, discipline, strength, faith, and endurance. It was revealed to the Apostle Paul that slavery was condemned by the will of God and that no group was justified in enslaving another.
Following the 1740 law that prohibited teaching the enslaved to read and write. Another law passed in 1800 extended that prohibition to free African Americans. Punishment for being caught teaching an African American included lashing, imprisonment, and sometimes lynchings. The severity of punishment depended on skin color. If your skin color was black, the punishment would be harsher. It was once thought that a literate African American was a threat to society for their ability to read, write and teach others. Education stands as a weapon and symbol of freedom for African Americans because for many years education was not allowed. So, it had to be acquired subversively.
The denial of African Americans being educated in the North– The state of Ohio excluded African American children from attending public schools in 1829. Adah Ward Randolph writes in Owning, Controlling, and Building Cultural Capital, Property tax monies for the support of public schools were to be returned to African American taxpayers (page 17). There was a realization by African Americans that no one was going to change the miseducation of African Americans but themselves. This action forced African Americans in Ohio to use social capital and cultural capital for the education of their children.
Social capital and cultural capital mobilized the creation of African American schools. Together they formed mutual benefit societies and private religious associations to maintain schools for African American children. School tax funds were used to establish schools intended for their children. Cultural capital is group consciousness and collective identity that serves as an economic resource to support collective economic and philanthropic endeavors. There was a push for more teachers that were African American.
Education, literacy, and freedom- Education and literacy are transformative. It can alter one’s self-perception or status to fight the inferior mindset that the American society wanted to keep African Americans in. Education allowed African Americans to assert themselves as free people. There was a migration to Northern States, so African Americans began seeking refuge in Northern states at the beginning of the Civil War. Fighting for the end of slavery. In the Union Army African Americans were able to use their education openly in many ways. Education served as racial uplift and liberation for African Americans.
Leaders within the African American community- Being educated means you can prepare yourself to be a leader in your community and beyond. Elijah Marrs is a perfect example of an African American that used his literacy for the greater good while serving for the Union Army. Elijah Marrs was a literate man who during the war was obliged by his comrades to writing letters home to their families. The commanding officer took notice of Marrs’s abilities and promoted him to Sergeant. Marrs began passing on knowledge he possessed by teaching his comrades to read and write. Once soldiers learned to read and write they spent less time engaging in useless or immoral activities like drinking and gambling. Following the Civil War, African American soldiers returned home with more education plus a higher set of values and morals. Education was central to the change in African American communities.
Education or Training? –With education being central to the change in African American communities. Questions regarding what was being taught and who was teaching this material to African American children began to be asked. Education with a focus of slavery, capitalism, and dominance is an easy way for African American children to develop an inferior mindset because that was the objective.
General Samuel Chapman Armstrong is considered an architect of African American education, but he was a strong believer in white supremacy. He established Hampton Institute in Virginia with a strong emphasis on technical training. Armstrong wanted to develop a system of profit while also creating a new source of potential cheap labor. The students and faculty at Hampton Institute did farming and agricultural work on the property where the institution was located. The surplus of produce that was farmed at Hampton Institute was sold to neighboring businesses which helped the institution remain open. Graduating students returned to be teachers which helped the growing numbers of African Americans with literacy skills.
William H. Watkins writes in Blacks and the Curriculum, Curriculum has been a defining feature of black education. From the outset of white “architects” of black education understood the power of ideas. They carefully selected and sponsored knowledge, which contributed to obedience, subservience, and political docility (page 40). What this means to me is that the education of African Americans was meant to keep them obediently accepting of racists theories and ideas that support the inferiority of their people from teachers without question. Even if these teachings were wrong. What this sounds like to me is more like training rather than educating.
Professor Franklin H. Giddings did just that with his theories that reject Africa as the mother of all civilizations predating European contact. Because it would contradict his social Darwinism ideas of evolution and the inferiority of supposed savage races. Social Darwinism was used in the establishment of the social hierarchy that places whiteness at the top of humanity along with mental superiority and intellect. In recollection of my own educational experiences, I always asked myself from whose perspective this story is being told. Was it from an oppressive point of view with racist ideas like General Samuel Chapman Armstrong and Professor Franklin H. Giddings? Or did it paint the picture-perfect idea of the establishing of the thirteen colonies and Manifest Destiny? Or was it from the point of view of someone of color in the pursuit of life, liberty, and justice?
In the reading Traditions of African American Education, in 1933, Carter G. Woodson urged African Americans to take charge to contest white supremacist ideologies in educational curriculums. This strand confronts the ideological warfare waged on African Americans through distortions, omissions, and misrepresentations of Black thought and experience in literature, history, and the popular media (page 24). Carter organized with writers Hillard, Kunjufu, Madhubuti, and Shujaa and others to develop literacy programs addressing the miseducation of African American children.
Afrocentric Curriculum and Black Nationalism- The Afrocentric curriculum has focuses on both social and educational arenas. It is rooted in over 150 years of Black Nationalism, pan Africanism, separatism, and Black liberation movements. The general philosophy of Afrocentrism is a rejection of Euro- American social and curriculum theories. In the YouTube video Black People still don’t get it, Barbar Sizemore said, “Next to God, black nationalism is the best thing for African Americans”. With Afrocentrism one can develop a better appreciation of Black nationalism. Black Nationalism is a political and social ideology that seeks separatism to empower black communities through solidarity, racial pride, power in culture, practiced through self- reliance and self- sufficiency. Leaders in Black Nationalism include Marcus Mosiah Garvey, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, and Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington plus so many more leaders. With Black Nationalism one will see how inclusion into American society as a disservice to African American men, women and children. Inclusion into American society subjects African Americans to accept second class citizenship status in its social hierarchy. With Black Nationalism one develops a love of self that is rooted in self-determination. Black Nationalism forces one to look to Africa to cultivate a knowledge of the world’s first peoples and civilizations. Black Nationalism allows for the understanding of culture, religion, science, economic trade, irrigation for agricultural practices and what it takes to sustain growing regions by looking to Africa. The Afrocentric curriculum focuses on the political, social, and economic mobility of African Americans while also focusing on the contributions coming from the continent of Africa throughout its people’s diasporic history.
Conclusion- There should be more classes with curriculums focused on the contributions of Africans from the time of histories beginnings from prehistoric, ancient, middle passages, precolonial and exploitation of resources, post-colonial to present. Curriculums that focus on these specific periods of time in specific places are important to students of all colors and races. For reasons like this is why Carter G. Woodson asserted for the development of African themed curriculums. Through autobiographical stories of Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Huey P. Newton and writings by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad I was introduced to ideologies that include Black Nationalism. These studies have positively served me throughout my own spiritual development and self-identity in life, career, and education. Like in African American communities of the past where the focus was for literacy and education to develop knowledge then pass it on teaching others, I plan to do the same with my education.
Works Cited
Randolph, Ward Adah. “Owning, Controlling, and Building upon Cultural Capital: The Albany Enterprise Academy and Black Education in Southeast Ohio, 1863-1886. (pp. 17)
Murrell C. Peter. “Traditions of African American Education: A Historical Perspective. (pp. 24). SUNY series, The Social Context of Education. 2002. State University of New York Press
Watkins H. William. “Blacks and the Curriculum: From Accommodation to Contestation and Beyond” (pp. 40)
TransAtlantic Productions. “Dr. Barbara Sizemore Black People still don’t get it” Jan 6, 2018. YouTube video.
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