White Saviors and Black Resistance
Q: What do you get when you mix White Supremacy + Charity + Education?
A: White Savior Complex -- Hard at work in public education since 1787.
The history of charity and philanthropy in establishing popular education in the United States and New York City is deeply enmeshed with white savior complex and racialized notions of goodness, progress, poverty and morality. Early schools were founded by charitable organizations (primarily Quaker and Christian) to ‘help civilize, raise out of poverty and destitution those who were less fortunate.
In light of the lack of governmental structures and financial support, religious institutions and ethics were at the forefront of early schooling initiatives. Religious and charitable values were deeply embedded in the founding and structures of the New York City African Free School (NY AFS), and the gendered curriculum (Learn more: "The Gendered Curriculum") was designed to prepare students for racialized and gendered social roles rather than citizenship and full democratic participation.
Founded in 1787 as the city’s first nonreligious free school, the NY African Free School was still influenced by the charitable and religious standards of the day, as well as the financial legacy of early White business leaders and capitalists who profited from the exploitation of seized land and the labor of chattel slavery.
The NY AFS was founded and funded by the New York Manumission Society who described the mission of the school as “For the purpose of mitigating the evils of slavery, to defend the rights of the blacks, and especially to give them the elements of education.” (Ravitch, 1974 p. 6). The NY African Free School utilized the Lancaster Method of apprenticeship teaching founded by Joseph Lancaster (Learn more: "Lancaster Education System"). This was a ‘labor -saving model’ that still informs contemporary school models designed for efficiency and cost- saving. In the Lancaster Method, the role of the teacher is diminished as young apprentices take responsibility for the majority of classroom management and instruction, supposedly able to monitor up to 1000 students at a time. “A place for everything, and everything in its place” was the Lancaster motto. In this mode of instruction, there is no imagination or creative capacity for students or teachers as everything is dictated, and every role and moment of class time is predetermined.“It was not only analogous to a machine, it was a machine, the school machine.” (Ravitch, 1974, p. 12)
In addition to creating a school culture to manage young Black students and that required as little funding as possible, the Manumission Society described a desire to “help civilize, raise out of poverty and destitution’ and towards religious teachings/righteousness.” (Andrews, 1818, p. 47). Although the school was intended for the children of slaves and former slaves, the curriculum was not oriented towards emancipation, but “to teach students how best to occupy a subservient position all their lives, not how to participate in the responsibilities of citizenship.” (Ravitch, 1974, p. 12)
“The moral rigor of the African Free Schools was often fueled by a sense of paternalism among its leadership. In its writings, the Manumission Society cast its mission as reaching out to and uplifting the ‘injured sons and daughters of Africa,’ whom, it was assumed, slavery had left in a state of moral and intellectual degradation and incapable of leading themselves. (Hines, 2016, p. 637)
Reflecting this paternalistic relationship was the fact that up until the 1830s the teaching and administrative staff of the schools, like the membership of the Manumission Society itself, was entirely White. The language communicated to parents in the NY African Free School publication from 1818 suggests how that patrimony and disdain for the efforts of Black parents were expressed in relation to their children's development:
“It has been a subject of much regret to the Manumission Society, that many of the children who have been educated in their school, have, after leaving it, been suffered to waste their time in idleness, to mingle in bad company, and to contract those vicious habits, which are calculated to render the subjects of them pests to society.”
“To suffer children to run the streets freely, with promiscuous herds of idle wicked companions, is only fitting them for close Confinement at maturer age in a state prison or house of correction.” ‘(‘Examination of Children,’ 1818)
As New York City’s Black community grew larger and more vocal, however, this paternalism was increasingly challenged. Tensions mounted, especially around the ability and fitness of white teachers to educate black students. In 1832, after forcing the removal of then headmaster Charles Andrews for expressing views sympathetic to the colonization movement, black leaders organized the community and succeeded in pushing the Manumission Society to employ black teachers and assistants.” Most of the African Free School’s teachers were Black by the end of 1832, men selected for both their qualifications, and the ‘confidence of the coloured people.’” (Rury, 1983, p. 193). Enrollment continued to soar at the NY AFS as Black teachers and principals established themselves in the schools.
The dissolution of the NY AFT into the Public School Society (which will later become the Board of Education for New York City) aligns with this expanded leadership and the move in the Black community towards more ‘radical’ notions of abolition (rejecting recolonization, and insisting on full citizenship). The end of the New York African Free School as a model for Black community leadership also aligns with the moment when abolition efforts are moving from religious to political arenas and efforts -- slavery is initially seen as immoral in the eyes of God, and then as unconstitutional: the 13th and 15th amendments in 1865 and 1870 finally end slavery at the federal level. (Learn more: "A Contradictory Timeline of Education, Slavery, and Liberation for African Americans in Early New York City (1626-1870)")
Interestingly the Quakers (who were influential in the Manumission Society and other charitable schools of the time) also founded the first prison in New York City located in the West Village. Newgate Prison's founding and dates of active status (1797-1829) mimic the same timeline and population expansions as that of the NY AFS.
Returning to our original question:
Q: What do you get when you mix White Supremacy + Charity + Education?
The roots of White saviorism, charity and paternalism are deeply enmeshed in the founding of the public schools in New York City. These origins have continued to inform the modes of governance and bias that still exist over 250 years later in the most segregated school system in the United States. (See more: "Exploring the New York African Free School and Segregation in New York City Schools, Then and Now: 1787 - 2021")
A: White Savior Complex -- Hard at work in public education since 1787.
REFERENCES
‘Examination of Children’ (1818) An Address to the Parents and Guardians of the Children Belonging to the New York African Free School (New York: Samuel Wood and Sons, 1818), 20–21 (cited in New York Historical Society, Examination Days website: https://www.nyhistory.org/web/africanfreeschool/pdfs/primarydocuments_1.pdf)
Andrews, C. (1830, republished 1969). The history of the New York African free-schools, from their establishment in 1787 to the present time, embracing a period of more than forty years; also a brief account of the successful labors of the New York Manumission Society, with an appendix by Charles C. Andrews: Teacher of the Male School. New York: Negro Universities Press.
Hines, M. (2016), Learning Freedom: Education, Elevation, and New York’s African-American Community, 1827–1829 in History of Education Quarterly Vol. 56 No. 4, pp. 618-645
Harris, L. (2001), ‘African-Americans in New York City, 1626-1863’ Emory University Department of History Newsletter, Online Edition: http://www.history.emory.edu/newsletter01/newsl01/african.htm
New York Historical Society, Examination Days: The New York African Free School Collection: https://www.nyhistory.org/web/africanfreeschool/history/teachers-vs-parents.html
McCarthy, A. (2014), ‘Class Act: Researching New York City Schools with Local History Collections’, Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History & Genealogy, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, October 20, 2014: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/10/20/researching-nyc-schools
Ravitch, D. (1974). 'Early New York Social Conditions and School' in The great school wars : New York City, 1805-1973; a history of the public schools as battlefield of social change. Basic Books. pp. 3-19
Rury, J. (1983). ‘The New York African Free School, 1827-1836: Conflict over Community Control of Black Education’ in Phylon (1960-) , 3rd Qtr., 1983, Vol. 44, No. 3 (3rd Qtr., 1983), pp. 187-197