In 1894, Richard R. Wright published “A brief historical sketch of Negro education in Georgia.” The 60 page pamphlet provided an investigation into the lengths to which Black people had gone to secure their education during and in the three decades after enslavement. In a rather kind and forgiving tone, it also offered eye-opening accounts of the lengths by which the state of Georgia had gone to impede such progress. It’s evidence of what stands to be lost in today’s politically motivated attempt to interfere with the management of the Library of Congress.
Wright was born in Dalton and enslaved until the age of 10. He went on to become valedictorian of the Storrs School, a grammar school near Piedmont Avenue in Atlanta for the newly free. It was established by the American Missionary Association, along with what became W.E.B. DuBois’ longtime academic home, Atlanta University and what is today Clark Atlanta University. Wright eventually led what is now Savannah State University, becoming its first president in 1891. His assessment three years later largely covered the establishment of these storied Black institutions, but it began with a look at how book banning and outlawing education shaped the onset of public education in Georgia.
One of the first formal schools for Black children in Georgia was run by a Haitian man named Julian Froumontaine beginning in either 1818 or 1819, Wright explained. Froumontaine operated a long-running clandestine colored school in Savannah, while versions of these schools were scattered in the area and in Augusta. The inspiration had come from similarly designed schools in Charleston, where both enslaved and free children of color from Savannah were sent to learn how to read and write.
Credit: Con
Credit: Con
When Georgia politicians gathered in 1829 and expanded on a 29-year old statute outlawing the teaching of both freed and enslaved Black folks, most of these schools closed. Under the new law, a white teacher who instructed Black children could have been fined $500, or what amounts to more than $17,000 today. But the courts could have opted to fine a Black man like Froumotaine even more money in addition to ordering he be whipped and jailed. Froumotaine did it anyway, operating his school in Savannah secretly for the next 15 years. His students carried on the tradition until the Civil War broke out and were among the first Black teachers in the state following emancipation.
Wright’s history takes us through the establishment of common or public schools in the state and the role in which the federal government and philanthropists played in financing the education of Black students. It also noted that Black schools received far less than their share of state dollars established for the education of all, although Wright seemed happy to highlight the fact that the schools received any state funding was a part of significant and satisfactory progress.
In his conclusion, Wright notes that either by pioneering labor or fighting this nation’s battles, “the Negro has by sweat and blood identified himself in every phase and fiber of American history and life.”
This critical history, which lays the foundational understanding of public schooling and collegiate education for Georgians, was entered into the nation’s historical record by an act of Congress in 1894, meaning it’s housed in the Library of Congress. Given recent developments, it is the exact type of material we risk losing if the current administration continues on its destructive path to reshape access to American history in pursuit of shaping what it deems to be a more “patriotic” collection of our nation’s story.
Last month, President Donald Trump fired the nation’s first woman and African American to head the world’s largest library, Carla Hayden. Appointed by then- President Barack Obama in 2016 and confirmed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Hayden was just shy of completing her term set to end in 2026. Hayden was the first chief librarian to not hold a lifetime appointment (this is because of an Obama-era law that put term limits on the prestigious appointment). The White House cited its overreaching and ill-defined diversity, equity and inclusion concerns as a motive to axe Hayden. It went on to baselessly accuse her of providing inappropriate material to minors (there is no such material in the Library of Congress).
The administration now aims to seize control of an institution that falls under the legislative branch’s control; an institution that preserves valuable histories like Wright’s and critical congressional records. While you can no longer read the 1802 act that established the structure of the Library of Congress, the document can be accessed on the U.S. Capitol visitors site. The federal agency teaches that the Library was established by congressmen who recognized that “a democracy cannot succeed without informed and educated citizens.”
If, as The Washington Post has reported, the president were to hand the keys of the storied institution to a loyalist — a very likely scenario — that part of the work Hayden focused on would be at risk for erasure. That work included curating and publishing more collections centering on Native American, women and Black Americans’ stories.
It is not lost on me that Wright’s accounts not only preserve America’s story in its raw, unfiltered truth, but it also gives us a historical blueprint for attitudes toward education for all and the practice of “othering” in our own state. Additionally, Wright’s pamphlet is among similar rare books and collections that help us understand the foundation of the institutions facing government-sanctioned threats to limit who can learn what in our state and alter funding structures that put educational institutions on fiscal life support.
Without careful attention and concerted resistance to such political and ideological interference, what happens in the storied halls and aisles of one of the world’s most important libraries might alter what we understand to be true about our own state’s history.
Nicole Carr is a journalist, incoming doctoral student in the humanities (African American studies) and a journalism professor at Morehouse College.
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