I was so amazed when I read this a few weeks ago I knew I had to come back to this excerpt from, Into the Past, Finding Oprah’s Roots, Gates (2007). We can not afford to ‘forget’ our history, our past, where we come from, who our Ancestors are because it it our foundation for building our future projections.
Peep this rural 1920s scenario when education in the Black community had value for the whole community:
Mississippi Department of Archives
$700 from the Rosenwald Fund
$300 from local White residents
$2650 from local Black residents
for every $1 the local authorities spent on white kids, they spend $0.07 on black kids!
The Freed People Commitment to Educating the Community
They had few resources and infact they were so impoverished makes it all the more impressive, the enormous commitments that they made to education. In many parts of the South, free people held mass meetings in which they agreed to tax themselves to support schools. Many free people paid tuition for their children’s education. A great deal of labor in kind was contributed to schools. They would build the school. ..Freed people in the neighborhood provided room and board to teachers. The northern teachers who were in the South often commented on the number of gifts that freed people off for them: eggs, cakes, etc. Freed people did everything they could to support their schools. Often, because they had little money, what they gave was their time and labor.
..Free men often formed companies that would guard the schools at night because the schools were always subject to attack by white neighbors who did not welcome a black school. Hundreds of black schools were burned in the Reconstruction Era. In the Memphis Riot of 1866, for example, black schools and black churches were targeted and most were destroyed.”
