Famous African American Teachers

Introduction: Dr. Charles K. Ross, Director, African-American Studies
The University of Mississippi

Africans, delivered to America during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, brought with them a commitment to education. This desire for learning caused them to be placed in the difficult position of forcibly learning English but not legally being taught how to read and write. Although caught in this paradox, African Americans such as Jupiter Hammon, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Mary Jane Patterson, and Booker T. Washington all had significant educational accomplishments.

Several African Americans received degrees from white institutions of higher learning during the 19th century and historically black colleges were formed beginning in 1837 with the establishment of Cheyney State Training School in Pennsylvania.

With the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction, African Americans in the South found themselves retrenched to land as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, legally stripped of the right to vote, and socially segregated. Against this backdrop, education became the leading tool in the fight for equal rights politically, economically and socially. The individuals featured during Black History Month by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning represent and epitomize some of the many accomplishments, contributions, and achievements by African American teachers.

Hiram Revels (September 27, 1827-January 16, 1901) was born in North Carolina and tutored by a black woman for his early education. He was apprenticed to a barber and became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. From these humble roots, he went on to become the first African American United States Senator in the nation and was a senator from Mississippi. He served a shortened term of slightly more than one year in 1870-1871 as he completed the long-vacated term of Jefferson Davis. Ironically as of 2008, Mr. Revels is one of only eight blacks to serve in the senate.

Mr. Revels attended Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana and Knox College in Galesburg, Ohio and preached in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, and Maryland. In Maryland, he set up a private school for blacks. During the Civil War, he worked with two black regiments and took part in the battle of Vicksburg. After the war, he continued in the ministry in Kansas and Louisiana before accepting a church in Natchez, Mississippi. It was during the reconstruction period that Revels became a politician, being elected as an alderman in Natchez and then to represent Adams County in the Mississippi Senate. It has been reported that his giving an opening prayer in the Mississippi Senate in January 1870 led to his election by the senate to be the Mississippi senator to the U. S. Senate. In the U. S. Senate, he sat on the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia. He argued for amnesty for Confederates. In his brief term, he nominated a black man to the United States Military Academy (though the man was eventually rejected) and argued against keeping the D. C. schools segregated.

After the Senate, Revels served as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, now Alcorn State University, where he also taught philosophy. His presidency was interrupted by a leave of absence to be Mississippi’s Secretary of State and being dismissed for political reasons from 1874-1876. He was reappointed and served until he retired in 1882.

Revels died in 1901 and is buried in Holly Springs where he taught for a short time at Shaw College, now Rust College.

References:

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000166 accessed on February 21, 2008.

Archives: Teachers featured earlier this month
John Robert Edward Lee
Sarah Mapps Douglass
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson
Mary Smith Peake
Peter Humphries Clark
Mary McLeod Bethune
William Leo Hansberry
Inez Beverly Prosser
W.E.B. DuBois
Hallie Quinn Brown
Father Patrick Francis Healy
Charlotte Forten Grimke
Harper Councill Trenholm
Mary Church Terrell
Alexander Twilight
John Hope
Euphemia Lofton-Haynes
Booker T. Washington
Margaret Murray Washington
Robert Russa Moton
Fanny Jackson Coppin
Ellis O. Knox
Anna Julia Cooper
Matthew Gaines
Maria L. Baldwin
Carter Woodson
Charlotte H. Brown