A
side from engaging with the subject of religion and violence in the Black struggle, and the creative manner he sought to use religion to advance both integration and separatism, Delany was also passionate about education. In fact, he considered education perhaps the most important force that would enhance the chances of Black elevation and empowerment. As a crucial component of moral suasion, Delany had to discuss the state of Black education in his lectures and writings as well as address strategies of ensuring Blacks would attain the best education. He took considerable time and effort not only to explain the importance of education but also to theorize on how Blacks could benefit from education, what type of education to pursue, and the most effective strategy for accomplishing it. In order to understand the place of edu-cation in Delany’s thought, it is necessary first to examine the broader historical context that compelled Delany and many of his peers to prioritize the quest for knowledge, and for this we have to turn to the beginning in slavery.Keeping Blacks (slave and free) ignorant and uneducated was a major func-tion of slavery. It enabled slaveholders’ justificafunc-tion for enslavement and subor-dination of Blacks and the denial of the rights, privileges, and opportunities af-forded to Whites. It was no coincidence, therefore, that, early in their struggles, Blacks realized the importance of education, and it assumed preeminence in their liberation thoughts and strategies. For leading Blacks, gaining knowledge became a countervailing repertoire of resistance, the antidote for overcoming subordination and impoverishment, and ultimately achieving true freedom and equality. The pursuit of knowledge became the lifeline to freedom and equal-ity, an existential goal. This association of education with freedom and equality prompted many to attempt seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the quest for knowledge. According to Heather Williams,
Despite laws and customs in slave states prohibiting enslaved people from learning to read and write, a small percentage managed, through ingenuity and will, to acquire a degree of literacy in the antebellum period. Access to the written word whether scriptural or political revealed a world beyond bondage in which African Americans would make themselves free to think and behave as they chose.1
One such was David Walker who, Heather Williams contends, “linked literacy to slavery’s demise.”2 Walker accused Whites of depriving Blacks education be-cause they were afraid that educated Blacks would expose “their infernal deeds of cruelty” to the world.3 This desire to prevent Blacks access to education was widespread and not limited to the slaveholding South. There were similar at-tempts in Connecticut and other Northern states where antislavery laws were passed to complement and reinforce extra-legal measures of restricting Black ed-ucation.4 Hilary Green describes how in the aftermath of the bloody Nat Turner insurrection there emerged “a hostile environment for African American educa-tion” which prompted introduction of strict laws “that made educating enslaved African Americans illegal.”5
Fredrick Douglass was one of those who “through ingenuity and will” ac-quired literacy. In his epic autobiography, Douglass captured a poignant mo-ment of existential epiphany: revelation of the dialectics of education and free-dom. Douglass was a slave who escaped, and subsequently published, among many other works, a Narrative (1842) of his life. He recalled, with dramatic effects, the moment his master Thomas Auld berated his wife for teaching him (i.e., Douglass) the alphabet. Within earshot of Douglass, Auld pleaded with his wife to terminate the lesson on the ground that it was both “unlawful and unsafe” to teach slaves to read.6 Auld informed his wife that, “learning would spoil the best nigger in the world . . . if you teach that nigger how to read (refer-ring to Douglass), there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. . . . It would make him discontent and unhappy.”7 Auld’s words, ac-cording to Douglass, “sank deep into my heart, stirred sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entire new train of thoughts. . . . I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the White man’s power to enslave the Black man. It was a great achievement, and I prized it highly.”8 Douglass would not soon forget this moment. He now “under-stood the pathway from slavery to freedom.”9 Though Mrs. Auld, in deference to her husband, terminated the lessons and became mean-spirited, Douglass’s
desire for knowledge, once ignited, would not be extinguished. He would go on to self-educate, and Thomas Auld’s words would prove prophetic. The attain-ment of literacy fired Douglass’s desire for freedom. Subsequently, he escaped!
Such revelation, however, was not a uniquely Douglassean experience. It was an experience shared by many of Douglass’s contemporaries. Nationwide, Heather Williams argues, “Blacks, free and slave . . . devised different strategies of sub-verting those anti-literacy laws.”10
The quest for education was a burning desire among Blacks (free and slave) in nineteenth-century America, and it would dominate the debate within the leadership of the emerging Black abolitionist movement from the 1830s as rep-resented in the minutes and proceedings of both state and national Negro Con-ventions. The question, “Why education?” was a recurrent theme in Black liber-ation thought. Along with the “why” there were also the “which” and the “how”
questions: Which form of education would guarantee the desired freedom and meaningful equality? How would that education be accomplished? On these questions, the free Black leadership was divided into two opposing viewpoints:
on the one hand, there were those in favor of classical education, also referred to as collegiate or “education of the mind”; and on the other, there were advocates of industrial education, also referred to as practical, normal, or “education of the hand.” The minutes and deliberations of the conventions (state and national alike) clearly underscored this division. At times, the delegates seemed to prior-itize practical education, and at other times they seemed to prefer collegiate or classical education.11
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this division had be-come even more pronounced, especially during those crucial turn-of-the-century controversies over contending strategies of resistance and accommodation. The debate over which education better advanced the cause of Blacks engaged two of the leading nineteenth-century minds: Booker T. Washington and William E. B. Du Bois. The former was associated with practical education and the latter with collegiate or classical education. A Harvard trained historian, Du Bois was an activist, first through the National Association for the Advancement of Col-ored People (NAACP), of which he was a founding member and, later, in the Pan-African movement. He had very strong views on which education was right for Blacks, one that he believed would better enhance their chances of elevation in America. His ideas sharply contradicted those of Booker T. Washington. A graduate of Hampton Institute and a staunch advocate of practical education, Washington would go on to help establish a trade school that would train gen-erations of Blacks: the Tuskegee Institute.12
In this chapter, I hope to analyze and reconstruct the educational thoughts and philosophy of Martin Delany, the one individual who seemed to have an-ticipated, and theorized about, much of the themes and values that dominated discourses on education among Black Americans from the very earliest of times.
Curiously, he is barely acknowledged in the historiography of African Ameri-can education.13 Though Delany was not a professional educator, his writings and speeches are suffused with ideas about the importance of education and strategies of enhancing literacy. He underscored the importance of education as critical for achieving meaningful freedom and equality for Blacks in America.
His contributions to the discourses on Black education addressed the “why,”
the “which,” and the “how” dimensions. His answers would resurface in the ideas and philosophies of future generations of American educators, most prom-inently Booker T. Washington.