Grand Contraband Camp - Education

Education

Near Fort Monroe, but outside its protective walls, in an area that later became part of the Hampton University campus, pioneering teachers Mary S. Peake and others began to teach both former slaves and free blacks of the area. Peake had been teaching secretly, defying the 1831 Virginia law against educating slaves and free blacks passed after Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion. Such efforts to teach the former slaves were aided by the American Missionary Association; based in the North, its leaders included both black and white ministers from chiefly Congregational and Presbyterian churches. Reverend Lewis C. Lockwood arrived at Fort Monroe in September as its first missionary to the former slaves; he sponsored Peake, a Mrs. Bailey and Miss Jennings, and an unnamed free black, for a total of three day schools for contrabands by the winter of 1861.

Peake held her first classes outdoors, often under a large oak tree. In 1863, it was the site of a public reading of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation to the contrabands and free blacks, and the tree became called the Emancipation Oak. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is within the Historic District of Hampton University.

For most of the contrabands, full freedom did not come until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery was ratified in late 1865.

Because southern states had prohibited teaching slaves (and, later, free blacks), education of freedmen during and after the war was a major goal of freedmen and their allies. The American Missionary Association, which founded Hampton Institute and numerous other historically black colleges, and other religious organizations were important in founding both elementary and higher level schools and colleges, to train teachers who could teach the children and adults.

In addition, former Union Army officers and soldiers, and wealthy philanthropists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries created and funded educational efforts for the betterment of African Americans in the South. They helped found normal schools to generate teachers for the millions of new black students in the South. Two such schools eventually became Hampton University and Tuskegee University.

In the first decades of the 20th century, the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald collaborated with Dr. Booker T. Washington and his staff at Tuskegee to create an architectural model and matching fund to support improving rural elementary schools for black children, which were historically underfunded by southern states in their segregated system. The Rosenwald Fund, with strong matching efforts by black communities, generated the construction of more than 5,000 mostly rural schools for black children in the South. Other philanthropists, such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Rogers and George Eastman, also gave substantial support to Tuskegee and other black institutions.