1865: Plans To Educate The Freedmen
By late 1865, the American Civil War was over (which ended slavery in the former Confederate states) and slavery in the United States had officially ended in the Northern and border states as well with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, known as freedmen, millions of former African American slaves were without employable job skills, opportunities, and even literacy itself, (e.g., in Virginia, since the bloody Nat Turner Rebellion in 1831, it had been unlawful to teach a slave to read).
Some realized that these newly freed people were still in a battle against ignorance and neglect. Members of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) proposed a "National Theological Institute" (NTI) which would educate those wishing to enter into the Baptist ministry. Soon, the proposed mission was expanded to offer courses and programs at college, high school and even preparatory levels, to both men and women.
Read more about this topic: Wayland Seminary
Famous quotes containing the words plans, educate and/or freedmen:
“One who winks the eyes plans perverse things; one who compresses the lips brings evil to pass.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 16:30.
“To whatsoever upright mind, to whatsoever beating heart I speak, to you it is committed to educate men. By simple living, by an illimitable soul, you inspire, you correct, you instruct, you raise, you embellish all. By your own act you teach the beholder how to do the practicable. According to the depth from which you draw your life, such is the depth not only of your strenuous effort, but of your manners and presence.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)