chapter 3 Education Is the Key
Page 32 →About two miles down a dirt road off S.C. Route 601 in Jamison, South Carolina, stands Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, formerly Mt. Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, a white clapboard structure built in 1917. A cemetery enwraps the church on three sides. My mother, who lived in Orangeburg, about eight miles to the south, attended Mt. Zion, as did her ancestors, who are buried in the cemetery. The grave of her father, James A. Brown, prominently stands out for its five-foot obelisk headstone. Her mother, Lillian Riley Brown, is buried next to her husband and is listed on the same headstone. Both were active members of Mt. Zion. The grave of Sara Major Brown, my mother’s grandmother, is located next to that of her son James and is marked by a four-foot tapering triangular headstone. Reverend Charles Thomas Riley, my mother’s maternal grandfather, donated the property on which the church and cemetery stand. His grave is positioned next to the church because he was the benefactor. It is equally prominent because it bears a similar five-foot obelisk headstone.
I grew up attending Mt. Zion and clearly remember the ride in our 1948 two-toned brown and cream-colored Dodge across the railroad crossing after we turned left off Route 601 and proceeded down the dirt road toward the church. The church is rectangular in shape on the inside with a raised platform at the front where the minister’s pulpit and choir pews are located. The church had a pot belly wood stove in the middle for heat in the winter and seated about one hundred congregants. I remember the never-ending sermons. Imbedded Page 33 →in my mind are the responses of approval coming from elders sitting in the “amen” corner, located upfront to the right of the pulpit. My godfather, Joseph Boyd, was a leading elder in the amen corner. A cacophony of repetitious exclamations emanating from the amen corner—“well,” “yes,” “preach it”—filled the church. I remember the voices of spontaneous song breaking out from the congregation—“What a fellowship, what a faith divine, leaning on the everlasting arm”—as if conjured up by a moving spirit of joy. My mother led the hymns playing an upright piano that her family donated to the church. In fact, she was the principal organizer of most church activities. Many members said she was the glue that held the church together. The social and political life of the community was centered around the church on Sundays and during the week at revival meetings. I remember the large dinners occasionally served to the congregation on long tables outside after church services, called “big eats.” Each member of the church contributed a dish.
Mt. Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, Jamison, South Carolina. Author’s collection.
My grandmother, Lillian Riley Brown, ca. 1940. Author’s collection.
Attending church regularly was a normal part of my childhood that was nonnegotiable. My brothers and I did not voice any opposition because church, including Bible School in the summer, was of utmost importance to my mother. We learned our fundamental values from the experience—respect for elders, decorum, especially not speaking out of turn, and dressing neatly.
Diagonally across the road from the church stood the Jamison Zion School for Black children. The school, built in 1927–28 on four acres, survived, as did other vestiges of that time, up to my childhood. The school was built with a large financial contribution from the Julius Rosenwald Fund.1 From 1912 to 1937, the Rosenwald Fund helped construct over 4,978 school buildings for Black Americans across the South, including about 500 in South Carolina. The Page 35 →genesis of the fund was a partnership between Julius Rosenwald, head of Sears, Roebuck & Company, and Booker T. Washington, principal at Tuskegee Institute. The Jamison Zion School featured the standard two-classroom plan typical of the rural schools built by the Foundation. Multiple classes were taught simultaneously. My maternal grandmother, Lillian Riley Brown, taught there from 1928 until the late 1930s. There was a large yard for recess activities, a hand pump in the yard that supplied drinking water, and an outhouse. Each year, the school convened after crops were harvested. Children were needed on the farms to pick cotton and an assortment of vegetables. The church and companion school provided vital educational grounding to the community of former slaves. Often the Rosenwald Fund would require a matching contribution from the Black community as a condition for receipt of a grant. The Black community contributed $900 to the total cost of $4,492 for the construction of the Jamison Zion School. In addition, the community provided labor and skills to build the school as it did in constructing the Mt. Zion Methodist Episcopal Church across the road.
Early Support for Black Education
After the Civil War, the initial phase of organized Black education was carried out by Army schools, mission schools, and, most important, schools of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau.2 Established in 1865, the Freedmen’s Bureau achieved its greatest successes in education. By the time Congress abolished the bureau in 1872, after a meager seven years of existence, nearly 250,000 pupils had attended over 4,000 schools. The bureau had spent more than $5 million for the schooling of African Americans.3
When government resources began to dry up, the new reality meant that school buildings and other educational structures had to last well into the next century. Fortunately, Northern philanthropy picked up the reins by supporting African American education after Page 36 →the Freedmen’s Bureau faded out of existence. Church philanthropy was primarily sponsored by the American Missionary Association, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. In addition, three large education foundations were established: Julius Rosenwald Fund, Peabody Education Fund, and the John F. Slater Fund.
The Julius Rosenwald Fund financed the construction of thousands of school buildings throughout the South. In addition, the fund financed fellowships for advanced study, special experiences in furtherance of advanced scholarship, and the pursuit of professions, fine arts, and agriculture. Money was given to “Negroes . . . and white Southerners who wish to work on some problems distinctive to the South.”4
George F. Peabody of Massachusetts, who amassed a fortune as a merchant and financier, established an education fund of $2.5 million in 1867 to assist the establishment of a permanent system of public education in the South. In an earlier day, he founded the institute at Baltimore and museums at Harvard and Yale that bear his name.5
In 1882, John Fox Slater, a textile industrialist from Norwich, Connecticut, gave $1 million in trust to establish schools to train Black teachers “for uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern states and their posterity.”6 The Slater family had roots in South Carolina. Horatio Nelson Slater III relocated mill operations from Massachusetts to a 400-acre site near Greenville, South Carolina.
In 1967, I would find my way to Harvard under the sponsorship of Slater endowed funds. The Ernest Frederick Slater scholarship was endowed at Harvard University in 1955 specifically for the benefit of residents of Orangeburg, South Carolina. However, there is no record that Ernest Frederick Slater was related to the New England Slater family. His lineage dates to John David Slater (1828–1862), who lived in Bamberg, South Carolina, and ran a thriving livestock business. John’s son, Edward Frederick Slater (1850–1901), who lived Page 37 →in Orangeburg, had six children, including Dr. Ernest Frederick Slater (1877–1954).
The testamentary bequest of the Slater scholarship provides that the income be used on behalf of “deserving . . . young white men who are residents of the City of Orangeburg, South Carolina.”7 Harvard University did not honor the racially restrictive intent of the benefactor because it was illegal to do so. Harvard likely relied upon the cy près legal doctrine to amend the charitable trust to remove the racial restriction.8
Additional funds to study at Harvard Law School were supplied by the State of South Carolina. Although the USC School of Law had been desegregated in 1966, the state apparently was not eager to add to the meager Black law school enrollment. Accordingly, South Carolina provided an out-of-state tuition supplement that was historically limited to study in another state when the state’s segregated schools did not provide the desired field of study to Black students. The state had closed the Black law school at South Carolina State in 1966, three years after the university was desegregated in 1963.9 Many of its Black students transferred to USC School of Law to complete their legal education.
Progression of Black Educational Development
The establishment of “normal” schools and colleges propelled the educational development of the newly freed slaves. Schools of higher education were established for freedmen long before common (elementary) schools. Southern white residents would not teach Black people, and northern white people were insufficient in numbers. If African Americans were to learn, they had to teach themselves. The most effective way to do this was to establish schools to train Black teachers.
In cooperation with the Black church and with philanthropic and religious organizations in the North, the Freedmen’s Bureau provided aid to many Black colleges founded after the Civil War. Those Page 38 →schools included Atlanta University (1865); Fisk University (1866), where I attended my first year of college; Howard University (1867); Biddle Memorial Institute (1867), now Johnson C. Smith University; Hampton Institute (1868); and Claflin University (1869).10
Teachers trained at normal schools and colleges staffed common schools for Black Americans. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were thirty-four fully equipped Black colleges. Those schools graduated collectively 2,000 African Americans over a period of fifty years after the Civil War.11
Often, home schools sprang up where educated Black people were equipped to teach their illiterate brethren. On Thomas Green’s (my paternal great-grandfather’s) homestead in Tatum, South Carolina, one of his daughters, Mable Green, ran a common school for Black children around the turn of the century. The county government shared the financial burden of this effort. Thomas Green’s children were well-educated. One was a doctor, who practiced medicine in Arkansas, another was a minister, and many were educators, including a trustee of Claflin University, a historically Black college in Orangeburg.
Proliferation of Black Educational Institutions in Orangeburg
Orangeburg, South Carolina became an educational mecca for newly freed Black people. One of the oldest Black colleges, Claflin University, was founded in 1869 in Orangeburg by the Reverend Dr. Alonzo Webster. Reverend Webster came from Vermont to teach theology at the Baker Biblical Institute in Charleston. While there, he secured a charter for Claflin University, which was financed through the generosity of Lee Claflin, a Boston shoe manufacturer and philanthropist, and his son, William Claflin, governor of Massachusetts (1869–71). Claflin University was the first college in South Carolina open to Black students, and Reverend Webster became its first president. The initial academic building, purchased by the Page 39 →Claflins, formerly belonged to the Orangeburg Female College. Claflin was established as a Methodist school because the Claflins were Methodist laymen and many Methodists lived in Orangeburg. The Claflins were important backers of Boston University and brought to the new Southern school their dreams of establishing a similar institution in Orangeburg.12
When a fire destroyed the campus in 1879, the Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Church helped rebuild the school. The school was assisted by the Peabody and Slater funds at different times. By 1895, Claflin was prosperous; the campus covered 100 acres and had 20 buildings and 19 faculty members. The institution taught collegiate, college preparatory, normal (teachers), and English courses, as well as courses touching 20 industries. Claflin’s earliest mission was providing elementary, secondary, and vocational education. The first class to graduate from the Normal Department 13 was in 1879, and the first class to graduate from the College Department was in 1882.14
In 1872, President Webster obtained federal land grant money to establish the State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute as a department of Claflin University. In 1896, the two schools separated, and the spinoff was established as Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College. Although African Americans attended USC (the college for white students) for a brief period during Reconstruction (between 1873 and 1877), Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College was the only true state-supported institution of higher education for Black students in South Carolina. Almost ninety years after USC closed its doors to African Americans, in 1964, a few of us joined three Black students who a year earlier had desegregated that university. I later became the first African American professor to hold a full-time faculty position at the USC School of Law in 1973. Interesting to note, one hundred years earlier in 1873, Richard T. Greener was appointed the first African American professor at USC. He taught mental and moral Page 40 →philosophy, served as the university’s librarian, and taught part-time at the law school while a student there.15 He earned a law degree from USC in 1876 while performing his academic and library duties.
The first president of Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College was an African American, Thomas Ezekiel Miller, a radical reconstructionist from Beaufort, South Carolina. President Miller was first elected to the State House of Representatives in 1874 (serving two terms), the State Senate in 1878 (serving one term), and the US Congress in 1890 (serving one term). He returned to the State House in 1894.16 In 1896, during the final days of Reconstruction in South Carolina, Tom Miller was offered the president’s position.
One of the first faculty members appointed at Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College was Robert Shaw Wilkinson, who later became the college’s second president. A graduate of Oberlin College, Wilkinson was appointed Professor of Mathematics, Mechanics and Physics. Three years after the founding of the college, my grandfather, James A. Brown, was a student of Professor Wilkinson during 1899–1903. When my grandfather entered the college, the overwhelming number of Black students in attendance were ill-prepared for college studies. Less than 5 percent of the students were academically able to undertake the rigorous study of Latin, Greek, higher mathematics, and science.17 Because my grandfather had the means to learn to read, write, and reason before entering college, he could handle the academic challenge of college. Notably, Professor Wilkinson praised my grandfather’s skills in mathematics and astronomy.
Upon his graduation in 1903, my grandfather was appointed to the faculty at Biddle University, then under the leadership of the college’s first African American president, Reverend Daniel J. Sanders, D.D.18 His faculty position was assistant superintendent of the School of Industries.19 In 1905, President Miller appointed my grandfather to the faculty of his beloved alma mater. In 1906, Professor Page 41 →Brown was elevated to the position of Superintendent of Brickwork at a salary of $500 per year.20 He taught at the Orangeburg college until his untimely death from the Spanish flu on January 24, 1919. Professor Brown was a member of the Mechanical Department, presided over by Miller Whittaker, who later became the third president of the college.21 In 1914, a full four-year course leading to a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Arts was added to the curriculum, which offered courses in mechanical drawing, electricity, iron work, brick work, woodwork, tailoring, shoe repairing, plumbing, tinning, wheelwrighting, and painting.22
My grandfather, James Alvirgus Brown, ca. 1910. Author’s collection.
Professor Brown was well-educated. My mother kept his collection of books and writings over the years, and they included books on commercial law, economics, astronomy, Latin, Greek, and science. Because he guided the minds of young students, I was not surprised to find books on pedagogy and syntax, and his bent for the Page 42 →classics led him to read philosophy and literature about Caesar’s Gallic wars. I have read one of his essays about French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, penned in March 1902. It illustrates the breadth of his thinking.
Most of the buildings at Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College (later South Carolina State College) and Claflin University were designed by architects Miller Whittaker and William Wilson Cooke and constructed by the architects, Black contractors, and students. On the campus of Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College, my grandfather assisted Miller Whittaker in designing and constructing (with his brother, Ferdinand) White Hall (completed in 1919), an academic and fine arts building with twelve classrooms and a 970-person capacity auditorium and Lowman Hall (completed in 1917), a men’s dormitory and the oldest existing building on campus. As supervisor to students learning the construction trade, my grandfather channeled their labor in the construction of both buildings. Both buildings were named after white trustees who ran the college until Black professionals were appointed to the board in 1966.
The White Hall auditorium was massive and elegant. It was constructed of brick after three devastating fires consumed the historic Bradham and Morrill Halls, built with timber. White Hall housed the Wilkinson organ and hosted many vibrant musical and cultural events.23 I performed piano pieces at many recitals in the auditorium. In addition, my brothers participated in band and dance performances in the auditorium. Every June, we would attend the college’s graduation procession to the beat of Mendelssohn’s War March of the Priests that ended at the White Hall auditorium. Unfortunately, through misguided thinking, White Hall was demolished in 1974 to make way for a new auditorium with no architectural significance.24 I am chagrined at the loss of that building, the crown jewel of the college. Buildings tell us who we are. White Hall expressed the ideals of the college. It communicated the history of the college more Page 43 →clearly and loudly than words ever could. Tearing down such a building with historic significance would be unthinkable at my two alma maters, USC and Harvard University.
White Hall, State College, Orangeburg, South Carolina. My grandfather, Professor James A. Brown, assisted in the design and construction of several buildings at the college. Author’s collection.
In addition to managing his professorial duties, my grandfather acquired two tracts of farmland totaling twenty-one acres in 1909 and 1918, which he farmed to provide additional food and income for his family. That land has been owned by the family for more than one hundred years now. Professor Brown was indeed a man with many interests and talents. A portrait of Professor Brown, taken during his early years as a professor, bears a striking resemblance to me—high cheekbone, lengthy forehead, pointed nose, pronounced ears, and large eyes.
My grandfather succumbed to the Spanish flu at the young age of forty-one. He was so full of life with his youthful looks, purchasing seven acres of farmland only one year before his death, and had no inkling of his impending demise. He had just registered for the Page 44 →World War I draft shortly before his death. Due to a shortage of troops during World War I, in 1917, the United States instituted the first nationwide draft of Black men. For unknown reasons, the Spanish flu had a higher-than-expected mortality rate among younger adults. One medical theory is the flu may have triggered an extreme and uncontrollable immune response (cytokine storm) among young adults with strong immune systems. My grandfather contracted the flu during the third wave of spread within the United States and may have caught it at an Army processing center where he responded to a World War I draft call. The flu was widespread in the military during World War I. Army troops were exposed to large viral loads of the flu and contributed to its spread in the United States.
My grandfather was so beloved and revered by the faculty and students that the college, on March 10, 1919, suspended afternoon classes so as not to interfere with the Memorial Exercises in his honor. A special convocation was presided over by President Wilkinson. Music had been composed specifically for the occasion. The ceremony was attended by faculty, students, family members, and the community.
Professor N.C. Nix eulogized my grandfather as a person “whose name is woven in the woof and warp of the history of the State College.” He noted that “James A. Brown was a great man. His attainments, . . . the character of his work, . . . place him among the foremost of his profession.” President Wilkinson remembered my grandfather as a student from the early days of the college “who showed great interest in his work.” The president acknowledged my grandfather’s interest in mathematics and astronomy and noted that his last act was to mold and erect an astronomical dial standard for the college. He concluded: “He was a man who was always prompt and dutiful, and desirous of rendering the kind of service that meant most.” Special resolutions were prepared and read attesting to his greatness and humility, and his name was inscribed upon the “Memorial Tablet” of the college.25 Had my grandfather lived, Page 45 →it is very likely that he would have eventually led the school as its president.
After the Civil War, my ancestors were committed to the education of former slaves and their descendants. That commitment to the education of Black Americans is unbroken to the present.
My great-grandfather, Thomas Green, a former slave, used his hard-earned wealth to educate his 18 children, most of whom obtained a college education; a few achieved professional degrees in education, medicine, and theology. One son, Charles M. Green, a public school teacher in Marlboro County for more than forty years, was a trustee of Claflin University. Tom Green’s commitment to education extended beyond his family. At the turn of the nineteenth century, he encouraged his daughter, Mable, to open a school for the children of former slaves at his generous homestead.
My grandfather, James Alvirgus Brown, taught at two historically Black colleges, Biddle University and Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina. From 1903 to 1905, Professor Brown was on the faculty in the School of Industries at Biddle University. In 1867, Mrs. Mary D. Biddle of Philadelphia gave a generous contribution to establish the school in memory of her husband, who died for the Union cause. Biddle Memorial Institute stood on sixty acres situated west of Charlotte, North Carolina. Its charter provides for the perpetual heritage of Black people in connection with the Presbyterian Church.26
Shortly after Professor Brown joined the faculty at Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College, he married my grandmother, Lillian A. Riley, in 1904. Lillian Riley Brown dedicated the early years of her life teaching Black children at the Jamison Zion School. She taught multiple grades in a two-room Rosenwald-designed schoolhouse.
One of Professor Brown’s sons, Leroy Brown, was a professor at Savannah State College, a historically Black college located in Thunderbolt, Georgia, just outside of Savannah. In the mid-1930s, he Page 46 →taught industrial education, including auto mechanics, physics, and aviation mechanics. The school was founded as the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth in 1890 pursuant to the Morrill Land Grant Act. At first, it was a normal school educating teachers for elementary school students. Its first principal, and later president, was Richard R. Wright Sr.
Another son, James Albert Brown, taught Industrial Arts to underprivileged Black students at Booker T. Washington High School in Charleston before moving to Roanoke, Virginia, where he was an instructor at Opportunities Industrial Center. There, he provided instructions to Black veterans and other Black students seeking vocational and business education when it was not otherwise available.
Many other family members, including my mother, heeded the call to educate Black students. My primary motivation for returning to USC to teach law was to provide guidance and encouragement to Black students matriculating there and to increase Black enrollment. Having trained Black lawyers is a necessity for the stability of the Black community. Equality of the races is predicated on mutual understanding and respect and receiving just treatment in the legal system.