Page 76 →Chapter 3 Education

As already confirmed, Martin Delany is not counted among African American educators, perhaps because he neither featured prominently in the establishment of schools nor philosophized at length on Black education.¹⁴ On the contrary, he built his reputation largely on his nationalist activities and on his extensive publications, which introduced his political theories and values. Yet, Delany expressed strong opinions on, and concerns about, the education of his people. In all the phases of his life, he held up education as an indispensable factor. Without education, he warned, Blacks had a very slim chance of becoming meaningfully and effectively free and elevated in American society. Though Delany did not write any lengthy works on education, he infused his political writings and speeches with commentaries on the significance of education and its centrality to advancing the future of Blacks in America. His criticisms of nineteenth-century Blacks’ responses and orientation to education highlighted certain ideals and values that he insisted should frame any educational measures or policies designed for Blacks. For this, he certainly deserves recognition as an educator.

Delany felt the pinch of educational deprivation as painfully as Frederick Douglass or any other of his contemporaries. The education of Blacks was a crime in Virginian at the time of his birth. Like other slave states, Virginia proscribed the education of slaves. This policy became even more stringent in the aftermath of the bloody Nat Turner revolt of 1830 in Southampton County. The Virginia General Assembly passed more restrictive laws criminalizing Page 80 →teaching slaves and free Blacks to read and write.¹⁵ However, growing up in what seemed like an integrated neighborhood instilled in young Delany a false sense of security and comfort. He mixed freely with the White children of his neighborhood. Sadly, he would be rudely awakened to the ugly realities of his second-class citizenship when he attempted to “help himself” to the Virginia school system. Upon accompanying his White playmates to school one day, he was refused entry to the classroom.¹⁶ It then dawned on him that education was for Whites only.¹⁷

Delany’s opportunity came when his parents acquired a copy of the New York Primer and Spelling Book from an itinerant peddler. The family kept the treasured acquisition a secret and held nocturnal study sessions. Soon, every member had attained literacy.¹⁸ Words spread that the Delany family had broken the law, and prosecution seemed imminent. The family escaped to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in September of 1822. Chambersburg was little better than Charlestown. Despite a more permissive environment, racism persisted there.¹⁹ Young Delany was, however, able to continue his elementary education in the public school system, where he encountered values that were meant to inculcate acceptance of the prevailing perception of Blacks as inferior and of Africa as a continent of barbarism.²⁰ The persistence of derogatory images of Africa bolstered his determination to seek the truth.²¹ At the completion of his elementary education in Chambersburg, and with no opportunities for further education, Delany moved to Pittsburgh in July of 1831. There, he encountered a thriving, energetic, and equally determined community of free Blacks, mostly migrants like himself, all of whom thirsted for knowledge.²² Delany enrolled in the Cellar School of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where he took classes in the arts and humanities. History was his favorite subject, which he considered fundamental to enlightenment and mental emancipation. Delany made tremendous progress at the Cellar School and was promptly promoted to advanced levels. He supplemented his schoolwork with private study and discussions with his roommate, Mollison Clark. The two frequently discussed and debated diverse issues. To encourage similar activities among other Blacks, they founded the Theban Literacy and Debating Society.²³ In January of 1832, six months into his arrival in Pittsburgh, Delany attended a meeting organized by the city’s leading Blacks to discuss the state of Black education. They were concerned about the education gap created by White neglect of Black education. This resulted in the founding of the African Education Society of Pittsburgh.²⁴ In Pittsburgh, Delany found himself amidst other Blacks who were eager to do something about Black education. He enthusiastically embraced the challenge. Page 81 →In 1837, the Theban Society expanded its scope and became the Young Men’s Literary and Moral Reform Society of Pittsburgh and focused on advancing literacy and intellectual development of “rising generations” of Blacks. Delany was elected its first librarian.²⁵

After attaining the equivalence of a high school education, Delany turned his attention to choosing a profession. He noticed a troubling “slavish” disposition among free Blacks: the tendency to gravitate toward menial and servile occupations. He deplored this development and insisted that Blacks needed to aspire for better occupations through higher education. Lamenting what he characterized as “the menial position of our people in this country,” Delany further denounced “a seeming satisfaction” among Blacks with seeking after menial positions to a degree “unknown to any other people.”²⁶ According to him,

There appears to be, a want of a sense of propriety or self-respect, altogether inexplicable; because young men and women among us, many of whom have good trades, and homes, adequate to their support, voluntarily leave them, and seek positions, such as servants, washing maids, coachmen, nurses, cooks … when they can gain a livelihood at something more respectable, or elevating in character.²⁷

Delany was determined not to replicate this self-degradation. Consequently, he rejected the invitation of his friends and colleagues to become a barber (which was then popular among Blacks, but perceived derogatorily as a “nigger job”) and chose instead to pursue a career in medicine.²⁸ After being rejected by the University of Pennsylvania, Jefferson College, and the medical colleges of Albany and Geneva in New York, Delany entered Harvard University in the spring of 1850.²⁹ That same spring, Harvard also admitted two other Black students sponsored by the American Colonization Society. The tenure of all three Black students ended prematurely after a semester as a result of a protest by several White students who maintained that the admission of Blacks compromised Harvard’s academic standards.³⁰

Notwithstanding the Harvard episode, by 1850 Delany had effectively been freed from the mental shackles of ideological bondage. He had attained a level of education that enabled him to think independently, to question prevailing normative racist ideas about Blacks and Africans, and most significantly, he had developed a critical mindset, which helped him feel much more positive, Page 82 →self-confident, and motivated. He then embarked on a mission to assist other Blacks attain similar self-emancipatory consciousness through education. Like Frederick Douglass, Delany rebelled against the dominant society’s attempts to keep him ignorant. The denial of access to education had ignited in Delany as it had in Douglass, a burning desire to unearth the mystery undergirding the obsessions of Whites with keeping Blacks ignorant. Like Douglass, Delany also discovered a fundamental explanation for the obsession: the emancipatory power of education. Delany was inspired and thus determined to challenge the pervasive culture of Black ignorance. He would ultimately spearhead a crusade to popularize education among Blacks.

In the broader struggle to encourage education among Blacks, Delany confronted a dilemma. While there seemed to be a growing awareness of the utility of education, opinions remained sharply divided on the “which” question: which education was best for Blacks? Ironically, Delany found the answer in the very limitations of his own classical-rooted education. Though enlightened intellectually through classical education, Delany remained without an economically viable livelihood.³¹ His experiences therefore proved that intellectual emancipation was one thing, “making a living” was a different challenge. On a few occasions, he had to rely on charity for his livelihood. The quests for dignity and self-respect had inspired Delany’s desire for knowledge, but the experiences and challenges he encountered raised doubts about the viability of classical education as solution to the problem of Black poverty. He contended that classical education had not advanced the economic development of Blacks. Many Blacks with collegiate education remained as impoverished and marginalized as their less fortunate and illiterate counterparts.³² The lessons of his experience, and those of other Black professionals, suggested to Delany that something was seriously wrong with an education that only liberated the mind (education of the mind) without arming the “liberated” individual with the means of economic survival (education of the hand).³³ The latter, also referred to as practical education, did not mean education for “industrial” occupations. Encouraging Blacks to aspire for “industrial” training and occupations would have been both unrealistic and problematic. Given the racist context, it would most definitely have provoked bitter resentment. Yet, Delany was unequivocal in opposition to any education that would prepare Blacks for “menial” jobs. By “practical” education, Delany and other advocates, meant education or training that would enable Blacks develop skills with which to “make a living” preferably as an independent entrepreneur.

Delany launched his crusade for Black education during his collaboration with Douglass in 1847. That year, Douglass carved an independent Black Page 83 →abolitionist path, after years of tutelage under the White abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison and began publishing his newspaper the North Star in Rochester, New York, with Delany as coeditor. He hoped this publication would more accurately reflect, articulate and advance the interests and aspirations of Black Americans. Douglass and Delany were eager to use the North Star to promote moral suasion as the means of eradicating Black poverty and “moral decadence.” Moral and material improvement became indispensable to Blacks’ quest for elevation and equality. Education was an important component of moral suasion; but not just any education; the one that prepared Blacks to become producers, as opposed to their present status as consumers, of wealth.³⁴

As a roving lecturer and coeditor of the North Star, Delany was in a position to influence and dictate strategies for advancing the moral and material development of Blacks. He quickly noticed two troubling conditions during his travels from Ohio to Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York, and Delaware. First was the depth of poverty and ignorance among Blacks, slave and free, and second, was how this wretchedness had induced self-denigrating consciousness. Furthermore, he found Blacks overwhelmingly in menial/servile occupations, and most disturbingly, they seemed satisfied. Menial occupations and servility had become almost like “second nature.” Freedom had apparently not rid Blacks of slavish characteristics.³⁵ Though Delany acknowledged the efforts of industrious Blacks in several states, he equally lamented the fragile and transient nature of Black entrepreneurship, which he attributed to deficiency in practical education.³⁶ Delany’s faith in moral suasion thrust practical education to the center stage of his philosophy of education. An appreciation for practical education had to begin at the elementary education level.

In his travels and reports, Delany focused attention on Colored elementary schools. His visits to these schools exposed unsettling realities, many of which he addressed in the North Star. In several such schools in Pennsylvania, he observed that free Blacks generally prioritized classical education. Students were taught English, Latin, Greek, arithmetic, music, poetry, and dance.³⁷ He further concluded that Blacks generally possessed a skewed and shallow conception and understanding of the objective of education. They devoted a greater proportion of the school time to preparing pupils for exhibition and entertainment. The ability to sing a few verses and recite a few stanzas of poems usually fooled Black parents into a false sense of satisfaction that their children had “done going to school,” resulting in premature termination of the children’s education.³⁸ He also observed that Black parents seemed overly obsessed with classical education as a foundation for preparing their children for professions such as the law and Page 84 →medicine, often without “consulting the children’s propensities.”³⁹ Underscoring the need for a practical and pragmatic approach to education, Delany implored parents to know their children’s propensity and “direct their education accordingly.”⁴⁰ He insisted that too much emphasis on the pursuit of collegiate/professional education had resulted in the premature creation of a professional class of lawyers, doctors, journalists, clergies, and other specialists the Black communities could neither patronize nor sustain. He noticed with consternation that Black parents tended to steer their children in the direction of “professional education before the body of people, are ready for it.”⁴¹

Delany advised Blacks to first develop a reliable and stable business foundation that would elevate the race beyond menial and domestic realms. This foundation would in turn create the need for a professional class. He portrayed classical education as “suited for the wealthy, or those who have a prospect of gaining a livelihood by it.”⁴² Blacks had yet to attain this level of affluence, demonstrated by the marginalization and impoverishment of the few Black professionals who, shunned and rejected by Whites, could not find clientele and sustenance within the Black community.⁴³ They had pursued professional education without the foundation that would support such a class. Hence the widespread situation he encountered in several Black communities of trained and qualified professionals who were not gainfully employed. Delany characterized this as “one of our greatest mistakes.” Blacks had gone in advance of themselves. They had commenced at the “superstructure” of the building instead of the foundation, “at the top instead of the bottom.”⁴⁴ Blacks therefore needed an education that would develop their practical faculties and thus, their manhood. This is what would enable them to compete successfully and effectively with Whites. He designated a good business education as the foundation that would enable a community to develop the resources and capacity to sustain and nurture such a professional class.

Delany also denounced the approach of free Blacks to education as too theoretical. He observed that teachers made no attempts to teach Black children how to apply the knowledge acquired to their daily activities. For example, he noted that few students were able to apply the arithmetic they learned in school to business purposes.⁴⁵ Delany portrayed this lack of synergy between education and the practical realities of life as a critical flaw of classical education. He placed much of the blame on the curriculum and on the teachers who, ill-prepared and trained in antiquated teaching methods, failed to lead their pupils along the path of what Delany termed “reformed and approved schools,” which would have developed and enhanced their practical abilities.⁴⁶ Consequently, Delany Page 85 →advised all such teachers to take a one-month leave of absence to acquaint themselves with the practical and applied dimensions of their respective disciplines. As he put it,

I could wish that teachers would abandon their old style and method of teaching altogether. It would be worth the while if every school-teacher who is not conversant with new systems, would suspend their schools for a month, and give their whole attendance during that period to making themselves acquainted with new and approved methods.⁴⁷

Delany also estimated that almost nine-tenths of Colored children who were turned out into the world as having “finished education” were miserably deficient in basic and elementary branches of knowledge, such as composition (correct construction of sentence).⁴⁸

The situation in Black schools in Ohio was particularly illustrative of the racist context of state-run public education. Black Ohioans, who lived under the most oppressive “Black Law” ever enacted, were taxed to support a public education system from which they derived little benefits. Ohio legislature introduced a measure authorizing school districts with less than twenty schoolage Black children to admit such children, provided resident White taxpayers approved. Districts with more than twenty school-age Black children, however, would have to provide funds for separate Black schools. Not surprisingly, according to Delany, the allocation for Black education in the latter districts was barely sufficient to educate twenty Black children in any given quarter.⁴⁹ This limitation forced Black Ohioans to assume greater responsibility for the education of their children. Many established private schools which unfortunately were, Delany maintained, as ineffective and superficial as the state-run schools.⁵⁰

Regardless of the context, Delany remarked that Black parents were quick to deem the education of their children “finished” as soon as they could read a few Bible verses and scribble a few lines of handwriting. They focused attention instead on what he characterized as marginal disciplines, pushing their children in the opposite and wrong direction. These children were consequently not only misguided but also often their education was prematurely terminated. They became “of no use to themselves, nor community.”⁵¹ Delany insisted that what Blacks needed more urgently than anything else was “a good business education.” This is the foundation that would develop the resources with which the community could patronize and support a professional class of doctors, lawyers, Page 86 →etc.⁵² He was therefore troubled by what he witnessed in Cincinnati, Ohio, for example, where intelligent Black children riveted their attention on the study of poetry and oratory with a passion that seemed to shut other options completely out of consideration.⁵³

Delany also commented on the morals of the pupils in the Colored schools he visited, and on the quality and relevance of the instructional materials they were given. For example, the standard arithmetic text in Wilmington, Delaware, Colored schools was Pike’s Old Arithmetic, which he described as unsuitable for a “progressive system” of teaching and incomprehensible to “the tender mind of youth.”⁵⁴ A “progressive system” ought to emphasize practical applications. Delany’s use of the concept “progressive” referred strictly to a curriculum that was comprehensible to Blacks and designed to develop and enhance their practical skills. In that same district, Delany visited a Colored school taught by a White woman who “appears to teach for the salary” and whose pupils were deficient “in the first evidence of well taught school”: good manners.⁵⁵ He discovered yet another problem in Philadelphia (true as well of most other places, with the possible exception of the Colored schools of Ohio), the conspicuous absence of Black teachers.⁵⁶ He noticed that the teachers in all the Colored public schools in Philadelphia were White. He attributed this to the fact that no Black person, however competent or qualified, was allowed to teach in those schools.⁵⁷

Delany discerned a sinister objective in the practice of placing Black children completely under the control of White teachers. He portrayed the objective as “to raise them subservient to pro-slavery will.” He concluded that this practice seemed to be succeeding, exemplified by the servile dispositions of free Blacks and their seeming satisfaction with superficial education.⁵⁸ Delany wanted to reverse this debilitating condition. He called for a “well-informed” Black population—men and women “well stored with useful information and practical proficiency, rather than the light superficial acquirements, popularly and fashionably called accomplishments. We desire accomplishments, but they must be useful.”⁵⁹ These “useful accomplishments” would materialize with the jettisoning of the prevailing and almost normative “extravagant idea” among Blacks; namely, the depiction of classical education as the essence of education, indeed, the end of education.⁶⁰ His experience, and the many he referenced in his writings, suggested that emphasis on classical education was a fundamentally flawed strategy that could result in economic dependence. It focused the minds of Black children, and the attention of their parents, on superficial and ineffective endeavors that had very little bearing upon the fundamental Page 87 →problems they confronted, which included making a living and conquering poverty and degradation.

Delany was very emphatic and insistent that Blacks desperately needed an education that would “qualify” them “for active practical business.”⁶¹ In order not to be misunderstood or misconstrued as someone absolutely opposed to classical education, Delany was quick to affirm that he was not fundamentally opposed to classical and professional training, having had the advantage of one. He disavowed any intention of advocating total abandonment of such pursuits. Rather, his mission was to impress on Blacks the imperative of building upon a solid foundation of practical education. Practical education would generate and create wealth that would then enable Black communities to support and nurture a viable professional class (products of classical education). Delany lamented that “the classical and professional education of so many of our young men, before their parents are able to support them, and community ready to patronize them, only serves to lull their energy, and cripple the otherwise praiseworthy efforts they would make.”⁶² He expounded on this vital point:

A classical education, is only suited for the wealthy, or those who have a prospects of gaining a livelihood by it. The writer does not wish to be understood, as underrating a classical and professional education; this is not the intention; he fully appreciates them, having had some such advantages himself; but he desires to give a proper guide, and put a check to the extravagant idea that is fast obtaining, among our people especially, that a classical, or as it is termed, a ‘finished education’ is necessary to prepare one for usefulness in life.⁶³

Delany’s objective was to dispel what he characterized as a misguided view of classical education as “finished education.” What Blacks critically lacked, and thus urgently needed, was “an education that shall practically [emphasis added] develop our thinking faculties and manhood.”⁶⁴

Reporting on Delany’s visit and lecture, a resident of York, Pennsylvania (who self-identify simply as “M.C.”) noted that he advised Colored people to secure a good education for their children—a good practical education. Delany supposedly counselled moderation on classical education (education of the mind). Fundamentally, he had no objections to such education provided it was “attainable” and “not bent on extremes” because “much learning makes men mad.”⁶⁵ Delany insisted therefore that Blacks had no choice but to redirect efforts and attention toward practical education if they were to become elevated and achieve equality with Whites. Practical education was, he believed, the key that would unlock the Page 88 →gates to economic prosperity and elevation for Blacks; indeed, the “indisputable evidence” of “the enterprise and industry” of Blacks. This “would not admit of controversy. It would bear with it truths as evident as self-existence.”⁶⁶

This prioritizing of practical education was not unique to Delany. This was a widespread conviction among Black thinkers and leaders of his time. Proceedings of the national and state conventions held by free Blacks during the 1830, 1840s, and 1850s underscored the centrality of practical education to the success of the Black liberation struggles in the United States.⁶⁷ There were hardly any gatherings of free Blacks at which education did not feature in the deliberations. There was, however, disagreement on the exact form and nature of education deemed appropriate to the success of the struggle. For example, delegates at the Second Annual National Negro Convention in Philadelphia in 1832 stressed the importance of both practical and classical education. However, at the Third Convention the following year, members appeared to lean in favor of “manual labor” education. Two years later, at the fifth and final National Negro Convention of the 1830s, classical education assumed preeminence.⁶⁸ Similarly, delegates at the State Convention of the Colored Freemen of Pennsylvania, meeting in Pittsburgh in 1841, also recommended practical education.⁶⁹ Ten years later, at the State Convention of the Colored People of New York meeting in Albany, the delegates endorsed classical education.⁷⁰

Delany attempted to end the dillydallying on “which” education by highlighting the benefits of practical education. He exhorted Blacks to prepare their children for useful practical business. As he lamented, Blacks were so attached to classical education that they pushed their young ones aimlessly along its narrow path. He also observed, with consternation, that Blacks had a tendency to “move in advance of themselves”; that is, they began education with the classics instead of practical education.⁷¹ He deplored another disposition of free Blacks: they were either totally illiterate, or trained in classical education, and thus unprepared for entrepreneurship and the business world.⁷² He insisted that Blacks had thus far “been on the extreme; either no qualification at all, or a Collegiate education. We jumped too far, taking a leap from the deepest abyss to the highest summit; rising from the ridiculous to the sublime; without medium or intermission.”⁷³ Delany theorized that by focusing on and prioritizing classical education Blacks skipped and thus missed a critical intermediate phase of applied training—one that would have prepared them adequately, at least those who were so inclined and talented—for classical education. As a corrective, he proposed a two-tier educational ladder consisting of a substructure of practical education, and a superstructure of classical education.⁷⁴ As he stated, Page 89 →“we should first be mechanics and common tradesmen, and professions as a matter of course, would grow out of the wealth made thereby.”⁷⁵ In Delany’s schema, therefore, practical education constituted the base, the foundation for nurturing of classical culture, the intermediate phase between ignorance and intellectualism.

The subjects at the core of Delany’s proposed practical education curriculum underscored a symbiotic relationship between practical and classical education. He identified English, arithmetic, geography, and political economy as the essential disciplines Blacks had to master in order to prepare for practical usefulness.⁷⁶ Delany seemed to suggest that practical education was itself inconceivable without a solid “orthographic” foundation. As he declared, “good orthography is the foundation of all scholarship.”⁷⁷ Blacks had to start with mastery of all the basic rules of grammar and composition. He further held that arithmetic and “good penmanship” were indispensable tools for aspiring Black businessmen and women.⁷⁸ Similarly, he stressed the importance of geography, a subject he defined as “knowledge of the world.”⁷⁹ Finally, for Blacks to develop a vibrant capitalist culture, they needed to study political economy, which he defined as “the science of the wealth of nations—practically, the daily application of industry for the purpose of making money.”⁸⁰ These are not abstract subjects too difficult to master but “common School Primer learning that everybody may get. And, although it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know anything about it.”⁸¹ Besides the definitions he offered, Delany did not elaborate on the specific contents of each subject. He did, however, stress the need for a utilitarian and practical methodology of education and recommended the adoption of books and materials consistent with “the progressive system of teaching” prescribed earlier.⁸² Delany believed that effective classroom materials for Black learners had to be comprehensible to “the undisciplined minds” of their pupils. Furthermore, he urged periodic critique and review of these materials and other teaching aids to ascertain their continued relevance and, if necessary, be revised and updated.⁸³

During his lecture travels to numerous Black communities in the Northeast and Midwest, Delany visited Colored schools and reported on his findings. In Cincinnati for example, he reported that he encountered “several young men … who have talents of the highest order, oratory and poetry being familiar themes in their literacy course.”⁸⁴ He was concerned however that they were focusing on disciplines that were not consistent with what he characterized as “the spirit of the age.” In his view, Blacks lived in a “capitalist age” which required a particular orientation to, and type of, education. These young intelligent Black kids needed Page 90 →an education that would equip them with the practical skills to succeed in a world characterized by enterprises and investments. He called for emphasizing adequate business education. This would bring prosperity to the race and, more importantly, bridge the racial gap.⁸⁵ Delany repeatedly blamed Black parents for not properly guiding their children. He observed this troubling trend not only in Cincinnati but also in all other Black communities he visited. He lamented that Black children were being pushed either by their parents or the pressure of society to engage and pursue what Delany derisively called “exhibition displays” education. They riveted the children’s interests on the pursuits of subjects such as music and the arts instead of business education and “elements of science.”⁸⁶ As he reasoned, “Let our young men and women, prepare themselves for usefulness and business; that the men may enter into merchandise, trading, and other things of importance; the young women may become teachers of various kinds, and otherwise fill places of usefulness.”⁸⁷ He exhorted Blacks to prioritize the education of their children, especially “to educate them for useful practical business purposes. Educate them for the Store and Counting House—to do every day practical business.”⁸⁸

Delany was particularly disturbed that Black parents tended to declare the education of their children “finished,” even with deficiency in elementary principles of English language and composition. Many of the kids Delany encountered who were declared to have “finished” their education were unable to write a single complete sentence.⁸⁹ He was especially troubled that Blacks generally seemed to gravitate toward an education that would not fundamentally alter their subordinate status but rather would enhance and solidify the “superior advantages” Whites enjoyed. He explained this advantage thus: “If knowledge of the arts and sciences, the mechanical occupations, the industrial occupations … and all the various business enterprises, and learned professions were necessary for the superior position occupied by Whites, then the same would apply to Blacks.”⁹⁰ Delany insisted therefore that in order for Blacks to attain equality, their educational choices and preferences would have to change. He introduced a simple albeit racial logic: “If as before stated, a knowledge of the various business enterprises, trades, professions and sciences, is necessary for the elevation of the White, a knowledge of them also is necessary for the elevation of the colored man, and he cannot be elevated without them.”⁹¹

Delany believed that a major explanation for White dominance in America was the “superior advantage” they acquired due to the “attainments” resulting from their “knowledge of the arts and sciences, the mechanical occupations, the industrial occupations, as farming, commerce, and all the various business Page 91 →enterprises, and learned professions.”⁹² Consequently, he devoted several pages of his book, The Condition, to addressing the importance of education, specifically business and practical education. He was unsparing in castigation of Blacks and their seeming inability or unwillingness to prioritize practical education. He ascribed the attainments of Whites, and the superior status they occupied in society, to education. Consequently, he exhorted Blacks to aggressively pursue and prioritize the type of education that would enable them achieve attainments that would in turn transform them from perennial consumers and parasites to producers. Putting it bluntly, and with disregard for whatever Blacks had accomplished, Delany wrote:

White men are producers—we are consumers. They build houses, and we rent them. They raise produce, and we consume it. They manufacture clothes and wares, and we garnish ourselves with them…. By their literary attainments, they are the contributors to, authors and teachers of, literature, science, religion, law, medicine, and all other useful attainments that the world now makes use of. We have no references to ancient time.⁹³

This stunning rebuke and condemnation of Blacks, this nullification and abrogation of everything Blacks had done and accomplished by someone widely acknowledged and acclaimed for his antislavery convictions—someone who had built a reputation as a defender and advocate of the rights and privileges of Blacks, deserves contextualizing and further clarification.

In fairness to Delany, this was more a reflection of the depth of his frustration with his seeming inability to convince fellow Blacks of the imperative of becoming more educated, productive, and self-deterministic. In fact, not to be misunderstood, only a few pages later, Delany completely reversed and contradicted himself. Significantly qualifying his earlier contentions, Delany wrote,

indeed the fitness of men for positions in the body politic, can only be justly measured by their qualification as citizens. And we may safely venture the declaration, that in the history of the world, there has never been a nation, that among the oppressed class of inhabitants—a class entirely ineligible for any political position of honor, profit or trust—wholly discarded from the recognition of citizens’ rights—not even permitted to carry the mail, nor drive a mail coach—there never has, in the history of nations, been any people thus situated, who has made equal progress in attainment with the colored people of the United States. It would be as unnecessary as it is impossible, to particularize all the individuals.⁹⁴

Page 92 →Delany then proceeded in several pages to draw attention to prominent Black individuals and their accomplishments. These were hardworking, wealthy, and productive individuals who were contributing to the overall development of their societies and nations; some, like Henry Boyd of Cincinnati, Ohio, a former slave who owned an “extensive furniture manufactory,” even employed “some five or six White men” in his business.⁹⁵ To dispel any doubts about, or misunderstanding of, how he viewed Black accomplishments, Delany accentuated a crucial point:

Certainly there need be no further proofs required, at least in this department, to show the claims and practical utility of the colored people as citizen members of society. We have shown, that in proportion to their numbers, they vie and compare favorably in points of means and possessions, with the class of citizens who from chance of superior advantages, have studiously contrived to oppress and deprive them of equal rights and privileges, in common with themselves.⁹⁶

This would not be the first time, and would certainly not be the last, that Delany had gone to extremes in his criticisms of fellow Blacks, and had to reverse his views, or offer clarifications. On a few occasions, he had publicly expressed his disdain for what he discerned to be a natural inclination among Blacks: the seeming satisfaction with, and preference for, menial occupations. In consequence, he had been accused of condescension and insensitivity to the situations of Blacks who were compelled by their circumstances to engage in such occupations. Delany denied such charges and insisted that he was driven by purely altruistic desire to see his race elevated and empowered.⁹⁷ The tone and language of one of his reviews of the activities and performances of Blacks in South Carolina during the Reconstruction was so vicious as to prompt this remark from his old friend Frederick Douglass: “Were you not M. R. Delany, I should say that the man who wrote thus of the manners of the colored people of South Carolina had taken his place with the old planters.”⁹⁸

In truth, Martin Delany had not taken his place with the old planters, and Douglass knew that. However, in 1871, as in the 1840s and 1850s, Delany invoked and utilized the most vicious vitriol in order to get his message across. He just wanted to impress on fellow Blacks the need to pursue a specific type of education that he was convinced would guarantee them the attainments necessary for elevation in society, one that would secure for them “unqualified equality” with Whites. It had to be an education that imparted knowledge of useful skills that would prepare Blacks for higher level positions.

Page 93 →Delany’s blunt and vicious depiction of Blacks as parasitic, noted above, was no doubt meant to awaken them to the dire reality and challenges they confronted, the urgency of the matter, and to induce in them a determination to boldly confront and undertake the task of remedying the situation. He was very emphatic about the primacy of a good business and practical education and urged Black parents to educate their children for everyday practical purposes—skills that would make them productive members of society. While Delany was very adamant on the need for practical education, he was also careful to warn Black parents against forcing their children into professions for which they had no propensity. He urged Black parents to focus on first identifying and helping to develop their children’s propensities rather than forcing them into the professions. While a society or community of professions (lawyers, doctors) was admirable and good, Delany reasoned that it was in the interest of Blacks to cultivate talents that the community could adequately support. He deemed it unwise to encourage an education that would produce professionals that the community could not sustain and support.

Delany’s travels exposed him to the dark and ugly realities of the lives of free Blacks in America. He presented as a solution an education that would impart the requisite practical skills for survival. This is the remedy that would launch Blacks on an irreversible path to elevation and freedom, one that both freed the mind and empowered the hand. Convinced that the issue of Black education deserved the endorsement and commitment of everyone, Delany sought a national platform to espouse his views. He took his concerns about the state of Black education to the Colored National Convention of 1848 in Cleveland, Ohio. As chair of the Business Committee, he helped craft several resolutions some of which directly addressed his views on education. Resolution 1 was a bold declaration of intent to resist “every action emanating from what source it may, whether civil, political, social or religious, in any manner derogatory to the universal equality of man.” Resolution 2 emphasized the importance of industry and mechanical education to Black elevation. This also included knowledge of “mercantile and professional business, wealth and education.” Resolution 3 stressed the necessity of obtaining knowledge of mechanical and mercantile trades, agriculture, the learned professions, as well as the accumulation of wealth—all essential to elevation. Resolution 5 stated “That as education is necessary in all deportments, we recommend to our people, as far as in their power lies, to give their children especially, a business education.”⁹⁹

Concern for the condition of Black women was also at the core of Delany’s philosophy of education. He bemoaned the subordinate positions occupied by Black women, believing strongly that there was a direct correlation between the status of women and the condition of Blacks in general. Blacks could not advance if Black women were confined to menial and domestic occupations. The degree of Black elevation was therefore heavily dependent on the status of Black women. Delany called for prioritizing women’s education which he characterized as the foundation upon which the overall struggles for Black liberation depended. He offered this very simple, yet cogent, logic:

Our female must be qualified, because they are to be the mothers of our children. As mothers are the first nurses and instructors of children; from them children consequently, get their first impressions, which being always the most lasting, should be the most correct. Raise the mothers above the level of degradation, and the offspring is elevated with them.¹⁰⁰

Delany used every opportunity he had to highlight the importance of an educated female population. He was very clear and dire in his warning about the risk of neglecting women’s education:

Until colored men, attain to a position above permitting their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters, to do the drudgery and menial offices of other men’s wives and daughters; it is useless, it is nonsense, it is pitiable mockery, to talk about equality and elevation in society.¹⁰¹

This concern had existed long before his association with the North Star. In an article in the Pittsburgh Mystery, Delany highlighted and lamented the wretched condition of Black women in the United States. He ascribed the subordination of the Blacks in general to the appalling condition of their women. As he poignantly noted,

No people are ever elevated above the condition of their females; hence, the condition of the mother determines the condition of the child. To know the position of a people, it is only necessary to know the condition of their females; and despite themselves, they cannot rise above their level. Then what is our condition? Our best ladies being washerwomen, chamber-maids, children’s travelling nurses, and common house servants, and menials, we are a degraded, miserable people, inferior to any other people as a whole, on the face of the globe [emphasis in original].¹⁰²

Page 95 →Delany was insistent, therefore, that in order for Blacks to be elevated, a priori, the condition of Black women must change. Black women must be prepared for education that would position them above menial, servile, and domestic occupations. His article touched the hearts of many, including that of the White philanthropist, Rev. Charles Avery of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, who subsequently donated funds for the establishment of a school for Black men and freedwomen: the Allegheny Institute and Mission Church.¹⁰³

Throughout his tours for the North Star, Delany found Black women to be the most illiterate, degraded, and subordinated of subjects, confined overwhelmingly to menial jobs. This discovery confirmed his belief that the poor state of female education, or the almost complete lack of it, had seriously limited the ability and capacity of Black women and, ipso facto, Black men, to compete effectively for economically enriching occupations, thus relegating the entire race to the servile domain. He maintained that the elevation and empowerment of the entire Black race was contingent upon an educated and enlightened female population.¹⁰⁴ The ultimate solution for Blacks, therefore, was not in education per se but in the development of an enlightened female class.¹⁰⁵ Delany envisioned a world where young Black women would not be transcribing “recipes for cooking” but instead would be “making the transfer of Invoices of Merchandise [emphasis in original].”¹⁰⁶ This would not materialize with a predominantly illiterate female population. Women therefore occupied a very special place in Delany’s schema for Black liberation. He called on Black women also to learn trades and develop practical skills that would generate wealth. Such a productive and economically viable female class would be the foundation for building an equally productive, potent, and economically successful Black populace. An illiterate female population, he warned repeatedly, would nurture ignorant children, who would in turn become illiterate and slavish adult population. Nothing troubled Delany much more than the specter of Black men seemingly comfortable with their wives, daughters, and sisters engaged in menial and domestic occupations.¹⁰⁷ This orientation and consciousness had to end in order for Blacks to become elevated and empowered.

During his visit to Wilmington, Delaware, Delany encouraged the young Colored women there and elsewhere employed in domestic services, and living in close proximity, to organize small study-group sessions “for the purpose of moral and mental improvement.” He suggested that they met periodically to study “books of useful knowledge.”¹⁰⁸ He asked them “to commence with the spelling-book, obtaining the most convenient assistance, taking their lessons by columns, until they have mastered English Grammar, at least sufficiently to Page 96 →write sentences correctly.”¹⁰⁹ One of such books he recommended, which he believed would give the women a sound orthographic foundation, and thus the ability “to write correct sentences,” was Roswell C. Smith’s English Grammar, which he described as a very “simple” and “comprehensive” book for beginners.¹¹⁰

There was, however, another dimension to Delany’s educational crusade that did not become fully manifest until the 1850s: the racial factor. Though on a few occasions in the 1840s Delany drew attention to, and expressed concerns over, the negative impact of staffing Black schools exclusively with White teachers, he did not advocate the total exclusion of Whites. After all, he shared with Frederick Douglass, and other leading Black abolitionists, an abiding faith in moral suasion: an integrationist ideology. In fact, the moral suasion ideology Delany propagated, and which shaped the Black abolitionist movement in the first half of the nineteenth century, was predicated on the belief that Blacks were enslaved and discriminated against due largely to the deficiencies of their condition, rather than their race. Change the Black condition through self-improvement and moral reform and everything else would fall in place, including the eradication of discriminatory practices.¹¹¹ As a critical component of moral suasion, therefore, education became of special interest to Delany and leading Blacks.¹¹² Due to his faith in moral suasion, until the late 1840s, Delany’s critique of education focused not so much on the racial and cultural backgrounds of the teachers but on the curricula and teaching methods, on the materials used in the schools Blacks attended, and on the orientation of Blacks generally toward education. However, this focus changed dramatically in the early 1850s with the failure of moral suasion and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850). In fact, the failure of moral suasion was evident by the late 1840s. The material, moral, and educational elevation of free Blacks had not induced positive reciprocity from White society, contrary to the expectation of advocates of moral suasion. Instead, Blacks’ efforts at self-improvement seemed to provoke violent reactions from Whites in both the North and South, as such efforts were deemed threatening to the status quo.¹¹³

The failure of moral suasion and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law ignited Delany’s nationalist consciousness. The law had pledged federal support and services for the pursuit and apprehension of fugitive slaves. It threatened the already fragile freedoms of many free Blacks who had in fact won their freedoms legitimately. In response, Delany expounded a strong ideological justification Page 97 →for emigration in his seminal book, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (1852).¹¹⁴ Here, he stressed the depth and ubiquity of racism and insisted that Blacks could never achieve true freedom and equality in the United States, regardless of how hard they struggled. As an advocate of emigration, Delany’s faith in practical education and in the importance of women’s education remained strong. Consistent with his pessimistic outlook, however, he theorized both in The Condition and in subsequent publications an end to White control of, and influence on, Black lives, especially in education. He exhorted Blacks to assume greater control of their destinies. Also, he angrily condemned what he perceived as the misguided consciousness of many free Blacks, whom he accused of surrendering all their initiatives to Whites and forever looking to Whites for assistance and direction, even on such a crucial subject as education.¹¹⁵

Delany’s adoption of race and ethnicity as the definitive and substantive construct for analyzing and defining the Black condition resulted in conflict with his former associate Frederick Douglass. When Delany left the North Star in 1849, both he and Douglass tried to minimize emerging conflict over their growing ideological estrangement. It was, however, only a matter of time before that conflict became public knowledge. As Delany embraced emigration, Douglass remained steadfastly optimistic. By the mid-1850s, the two had become leaders of opposing ideological movements represented by two national conventions: an integrationist one led by Douglass held in Rochester, New York, in 1853, and an emigrationist one led by Delany held in Cleveland, Ohio, the following year. Though the two conventions represented broad ideological battlegrounds, education provided specific, narrow, and more direct subject of controversy. Like Delany, Douglass conceived of education as the cure for what he characterized as the “triple malady” that inflicted Blacks: poverty, ignorance and degradation.¹¹⁶ He also considered the pursuit of classical education necessary and viable only after Blacks had built a strong foundation of practical education.

For Douglass, as for Delany, practical education constituted the foundation for classical culture. Again, like Delany, Douglass too maintained that Blacks were not yet in a position to appreciate and utilize the services of professionals. The deliberations of the Rochester convention underscored Douglass’s regard for, and prioritizing of, practical education. In its Report, the convention’s Committee on Manual Labor stressed the importance of manual labor and industrial education.¹¹⁷ This rapport on practical education notwithstanding, disagreement surfaced on strategies of implementation. To help implement his platform, the integrationist and still-optimistic Douglass solicited the assistance of Page 98 →White abolitionist Harriett Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853). Stowe had earlier expressed a desire to assist the cause of Black freedom and had sought Douglass’s opinion. Douglass wrote to her suggesting education as the most important area and requested her assistance with establishing in New York or some other location, an industrial school to train Blacks in the various mechanical arts.¹¹⁸

Delany’s reaction was predictably negative. In a strongly worded response, he denounced Douglass’s initiative. Although in agreement with the demand for an industrial school, Delany objected to soliciting the involvement of Whites, especially on such a crucial matter as the education of Black children. Inviting Whites was, he believed, both inconsistent and self-destructive.¹¹⁹ He insisted that the education of Blacks deserved the undivided attention of “intelligent and experienced” Black leaders. Stowe, according to Delany, “KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT US the free Colored people … neither does any White person … and consequently can contrive no successful scheme for our elevation, it must be done by ourselves.”¹²⁰ Furthermore, he pondered; “Why, in God’s name don’t the leaders among our people make suggestions and CONSULT the most competent among THEIR OWN brethren concerning our elevation [emphasis in original]?”¹²¹ Douglass fired back, questioning Delany’s spirit of self-confidence and independence. Chronic disunity, Douglass retorted, had rendered Blacks incapable of attaining the complete independence Delany envisioned. He accused Delany of being too theoretical and out of touch with the realities of the Black situation and reaffirmed his own intention to continue to solicit assistance from all quarters.¹²² This squabble over the role of Whites in the education of Blacks did not consume much of Delany’s attention precisely because he was much more focused on emigration, which he pursued vigorously from 1852 right up to the outbreak of the Civil War.

The theme of Black independence and self-initiative dominated Delany’s thought throughout his brief emigrationist phase. The Civil War, however, ushered in a new Delany. It rekindled his optimism, perhaps to an extreme. Like Douglass and many other free Blacks, Delany welcomed the war as the force that would finally destroy slavery. He became a staunch advocate of Black participation. He was commissioned the first combat Black major in the Union army and assisted in recruiting several Colored regiments. However, it was in his capacity as sub-assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau; a post he assumed after Page 99 →the war, that Delany was able to refocus attention on Black education. He was assigned to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and given jurisdiction over several government plantations. Suddenly entrusted with responsibility over the emancipated inhabitants of these plantations, Delany was anxious to develop means of solidifying their new freedom. Two critical and closely related factors presented themselves: economics (i.e., making a living) and education. Developing a viable economic foundation for the freedmen and freedwomen of the South was almost impossible, he acknowledged, without first ridding them of the ignorance that centuries of enslavement and subordination had infused in their consciousness. Freedom was empty and fragile, Delany reasoned, without education. As a Bureau agent, Delany struggled to enhance the economic adjustment of Blacks to freedom through organizing and supervising productive activities on the plantations. He wrote Bureau headquarters arguing that, given the opportunity, the free Blacks in these locales had the ability and intelligence to benefit from schooling.¹²³ He requested increased attention to, and expenditure on, freedmen’s education. He criticized the failure of the Bureau Commissioner to provide “expenditure for school house,” noting also that

good and suitable school houses are very much needed, there has not been good or suitable school house in the whole sub-district of Hilton Head … teachers being obliged to make use of temporary ill-constructed little ‘shanties’ in such Churches as they may be permitted to occupy … either of which is ill-adapted to the purpose of a school.¹²⁴

In his yearly reports to the Bureau, Delany was careful to draw the attention of the government to the dire state of Black education, particularly the children in his plantation district in Hilton Head, South Carolina. While applauding the efforts of the American Missionary Association (AMA) in establishing and funding schools, Delany lamented the lack of sufficient funds for education from the Bureau. He appealed to the Bureau to consider increasing its financial commitments to freedmen’s education. He also wanted the Bureau to assist in abolishing a practice that had come to be regarded “as an essential part of training”; that is, the whipping of children as means of correction in schools. He expressed disdain for the prevalence of whipping as a method of disciplining Black students, noting that too many teachers resorted to this method “as the easiest and least troublesome mode of correction.”¹²⁵ He described corporal punishment as a troubling reminder of the violence and coercion of slavery, one that undermined the ability of students to adapt freely to the school environment. He reiterated that a school “should be a place of the most pleasurable resort and agreeable Page 100 →association of children.” Whipping compromised the creation of a school environment that would nurture “agreeable association.” Frequent resort to the whip, he averred, betrayed a fundamental deficiency on the part of teachers, namely, the inability to adapt to the technicalities of teaching. Delany believed that well-trained teachers should be able to teach and handle their pupils without resorting to the whip. According to Delany, “A teacher is, or is not adapted to teaching. If properly adapted, they could and should teach without whipping. If they were unable to control and correct their pupils without whipping, then it only proves that such teachers were not adapted to teaching, and all such should seek some other employment.”¹²⁶ He further reiterated that whipping undermined and compromised the very essence of what the school experience should be. He portrayed a school as

a place of the most pleasurable resort and agreeable associations to children; but certain it is that in no wise can this be the case, where the great hickory, long, leather strap, or bridle rein meets, as it enters the school house, the child’s as it does the eye of the visitor, reminding one, as it must them, of entering the presence of the old plantation overseer, in waiting for his victim.¹²⁷

Delany characterized a school environment that allowed whipping as inappropriate for the education of children. Furthermore, in his next report, he lamented the absence of “good and suitable school house” in his district and urged the Bureau to do more to improve facilities. A school ought to be, in Delany’s judgment, “a desirable place of resort” to pupils. This was only possible if it nurtured “pleasurable remembrances.” Delany identified the following conditions as prerequisites for nurturing “pleasurable remembrances”: “agreeable teachers, pleasant rooms, comfortable seats and desks, with equal playground and scenery.”¹²⁸

Delany was, however, powerless to resolve the education problems and challenges he identified, and the Bureau seemed less committed. Fortunately, private religious and philanthropic organizations such as the AMA became active in providing resources for educating freed Blacks in his district.¹²⁹ In his periodic reports to Bureau headquarters, Delany continued to emphasize the inadequacy, or more appropriately, the lack of appropriation for education from the Bureau for the schools in his district as well as the sub-district of Beaufort and other places. He highlighted the “plight” of the schools in his district, which he ascribed to the neglect by the Bureau and praised the efforts of private philanthropic organizations in helping to alleviate the situation. Page 101 →He advocated more active government role in Black education in his, and surrounding, districts.¹³⁰

Delany’s persistent efforts to inspire a deeper commitment to Black education failed due to the fact that Bureau officials saw the situation differently. On one occasion, the Bureau school superintendent described Delany’s requests as “unnecessary.”¹³¹ Denied official support, Delany struck a rapport with the AMA teachers. He paid regular visits to their schools to obtain firsthand knowledge of their operations and their impacts on free Blacks. Determined to help undo the damages of centuries of educational deprivation, he advocated adult literacy and encouraged Blacks in Hilton Head, both young and old, to attend school. The local AMA agent acknowledged Delany’s efforts in the area of adult education. In a letter to his superior, the agent wrote, “We succeeded in setting up a day and night school for adults. Major Delany of the Bureau is going to make an effort to arouse the adults and induce them to attend school. I have much faith in his success.”¹³²

Delany characterized education as much more than the provision of a school setting. He identified certain equally fundamental social, psychological, and environmental conditions—mutual love, admiration, and respect between teachers and pupils; decent accommodations for teachers; comfortable seats and desks for pupils; and adequate recreational facilities for all—as essential elements of the ideal school.¹³³ Such a school, he maintained, would be a pleasant environment for both teachers and pupils.¹³⁴ This conviction prompted Delany to devote considerable attention to the schools in his and surrounding districts. He investigated and assisted in alleviating many of the problems that plagued the schools. He often furnished AMA teachers and agents with much-needed provisions from the meager produce raised by freed Black farmers in his plantation district. Despite official constraints, he readily assisted with the repairs of dilapidated school furniture, buildings, and other infrastructures.¹³⁵ Elizabeth Summers, an AMA teacher commissioned to the former Lawton Plantation on Hilton Head, mentioned a Delany visit to her school in one of her letters. Summers reported that Delany inspected the schoolhouses and teacher’s “residences to determine what repairs were needed…. He is going to fix our school,” she concluded with satisfaction.¹³⁶

What is most striking about Delany’s view on education in the post-Civil War era is his silence on curricula and the racial identity of teachers. These are matters he had highlighted during late 1840s.¹³⁷ During Reconstruction, however, Delany was more focused on ensuring freed Blacks were educated. He was not overly concerned about the racial identity of the teachers. Consistent with Page 102 →his renewed sense of optimism about Blacks attaining full citizenship in the United States, it mattered little by whom, and in what form, that education was transmitted. The Civil War and early reforms of the Reconstruction era seemed to have rekindled Delany’s faith in America. Though cognizant of the tense and fragile race relations, especially in the South, Delany remained confident that the fortunes of Blacks would change for the better in an ideal school environment where they not only had unfettered access to learning but also were provided with the essentials that would make such education effective and meaningful. This mirrored the accommodationist philosophy that defined his social, political, and economic worldviews in the aftermath of the war.

There was nothing dogmatic in Delany’s philosophy of education. His conception of education changed with changing circumstances. Three distinct phases can be delineated. In the first, which lasted from the 1830s to the end of the 1840s, the dominant abolitionist ethos of moral suasion influenced his views about education. During this phase, Delany advanced practical education as the means of transforming the social and material conditions of Blacks. By the late 1840s, however, he became convinced that race, rather than condition, deserved priority, and his philosophy of education assumed racial overtone. This phase reflected his pessimistic view of race relations in the United States. Suspicious and distrustful of Whites during this stage, Delany opposed their involvement in any educational scheme meant for Blacks. It should be acknowledged however that in the post-Civil War era, particularly during his Bureau agency, Delany’s renewed optimism compelled deemphasizing of the racial and cultural identity factor, and he philosophized instead about the ideal school environment, and the ideal teacher-pupil relationship. This is not to suggest that he jettisoned race and racial analysis. In fact, by the early 1870s, released from the constraints of the Bureau, Delany’s ideas assumed strong racial overtone and, to some of his contemporaries, seemed unabashedly separatist. He was heard publicly advocating “Black leaders for Blacks”; a viewpoint he avoided in the late 1860s (more on this in Chapter 4).

What is perhaps most intriguing about Delany’s philosophy of education was his approach to the fundamental problem of Black perceptional reorientation, an issue of great interest to modern advocates of Afrocentricity. Delany’s own educational odyssey revealed an unrelenting determination to debunk the myths and misrepresentations of Africa and uncover the truths about his people’s past Page 103 →and about his heritage, as well as overcome the epistemological limitations of Black education or lack thereof. Toward these goals, he found the liberal arts, particularly history, most helpful. Then, once he had achieved emancipatory consciousness, Delany struggled to induce similar consciousness in other Blacks. Consequently, he devoted much of his writings to refuting racist views of Africa. However, his preoccupation was with the mental and psychological reorientation of Blacks; the “Afrocentric” aspects of his political writings were not a dominant theme in his philosophy of education. This was particularly evident during the moral suasion phase when Delany outlined strategies for an effective Black education. He prioritized education for economic elevation, which he considered of more immediate importance than education for enlightenment. His curriculum reform proposal emphasized subjects that, he thought, would facilitate a speedy integration of Blacks into mainstream middle-class United States.

It should be noted, therefore, that as high as Delany personally ranked history, a subject crucial to his own mental emancipation, it was conspicuously missing in the list of priority academic subjects he subsequently developed. Resolving this apparent ambivalence is not difficult, however, for Delany’s educational paradigm did not suggest complete jettisoning of perceptional reorientation. He implied, and in fact believed, that the attainment of economic emancipation and progress would create a foundation for, and facilitate the process of, positive self-perception. “Making a living” was the central tenet of his philosophy of education. Future educators and critics of American education, including Booker T. Washington and Carter G. Woodson, would amplify Delany’s insistence that the most rewarding education for Blacks was one geared toward satisfying the fundamental challenge of “making a living.” In fact, Woodson would later describe a fundamental shortcoming of Black education in these words: “they have thereby learned little as to making a living [emphasis added], the first essential in civilization.”¹³⁸

Delany’s observations and critique of United States school curricula and the superficial orientation of Blacks to education were undoubtedly pertinent. Nonetheless, he seemed to overestimate the capacity of Blacks and their ability to initiate and sustain the reforms he advocated. Blacks, especially in the 1840s, lacked the financial wherewithal and the ability to institute the type of educational reforms Delany proposed. With very few exceptions, most of the Colored schools he visited were run by Whites and/or were totally dependent on White support. Neither Delany nor any other Black leader was in position to implement a philosophy of education that contradicted mainstream values. On the controversy over Harriet Beecher Stowe, therefore, Douglass seemed Page 104 →more pragmatic. Nonetheless, in the course of his crusade, Delany highlighted some of what he characterized as “egregious” deficiencies in the very limited educational opportunities available to Blacks. He also underlined how years of servitude and enforced ignorance had imposed a superficial and conservative conception of education. Perhaps, most important, he outlined and discussed modalities for a viable and functional Black education. He theorized about the ideal school environment, about curricula reforms, about gender equality and the need to prioritize female education, and about applied education—that is, making education responsive and relevant to the challenges of earning a decent living.¹³⁹ These themes continue to dominate contemporary discourses on African American education. Delany was indeed a pioneer Black education theorist/philosopher. His ideas and contributions not only illuminated the challenges of Black education in nineteenth-century America but also advanced solutions appropriated by his contemporaries and future generations of American educators. Long before General Samuel Chapman Armstrong conceived of Hampton Institute or Booker T. Washington dreamt of Tuskegee, Delany had theorized about the dignity of labor and industrial education as foundations for a functional and empowering education for American Blacks.