Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education of Freedmen in the South, 1861-1870 - Paperback

by Robert C. Morris (Author)

This study of education for freedmen following Emancipation is the definitive treatment of the subject. Employing a wide range of sources, Robert C. Morris examines the organizations that staffed and managed black schools in the South, with particular attention paid to the activities of the Freedman's Bureau. He looks as well at those who came to teach, a diverse group-white, black, Northern, Southern-and at the curricula and textbooks they used. While giving special emphasis to the Freedmen's Bureau school program, Morris places the freedmen's educational movement fully in its nineteenth-century context, relating it both to the antislavery crusade that preceded it and to the conservative era of race relations that followed.

Author Biography

Robert C. Morris (1942-2003) held positions at Columbia University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library before becoming director of the National Archives, Northeast Region.