Calhoun Colored School

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Calhoun Colored School
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
The principal's house at Calhoun Colored School
Location:	Lowndes County, Alabama
Nearest city:	Montgomery, Alabama
Built/Founded:	1892
Added to NRHP:	1976
NRHP Reference#:	76000340
Governing body:	Alabama

The Calhoun Colored School (1892-1945) was a private boarding and day school in Calhoun, Lowndes County, Alabama, about 28 miles (45 km) southwest of Montgomery. Founded in 1892 by Miss Charlotte Thorn and Miss Mabel Dillingham in partnership with Booker T. Washington, the Calhoun Colored School was designed to educate colored students according to the industrial school model so they could become financially independent and improve their lives.^[1] The principal's house, the last original building, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of the school's importance in the history of education of African Americans.

Contents 1 History 2 Hampton-Tuskegee model 3 Land Bank and Road Building 4 Literacy Program 5 Academic department heads 6 Present day 7 References 8 External links

[edit] History

In 1891, the United States was still adjusting to the aftermath of the American Civil War and Reconstruction and the Financial Panic of 1873. African Americans living in the rural south mostly worked under the sharecropping system and the dependence of southern agriculture on cotton, whose price continued to drop, contributed to difficulties in their making progress. African Americans, then called "colored" or "Negro", living in Calhoun (Lowndes County), Alabama were subject to white political and social domination although they comprised the majority of the county's population.

Conservative white Democrats had regained power in the state legislature and begun to pass statutes that stripped African Americans from voter rolls or made elections so complicated they were effectively disfranchised. In 1901 the state passed a new constitution with provisions for requirements for voter registration that suppressed voting by blacks and many poor whites.

Lowndes County, in the Black Belt, had been an area of large cotton plantations before the Civil War. Devoted to agriculture, in 1890 the county had the highest proportion of Negroes to whites in Alabama. Most of them were sharecroppers cultivating cotton.

Mr. Washington, a graduate of Hampton Institute and then president of Tuskegee Institute, spoke at Hampton Institute to recruit teachers to help with Alabama education. He spoke of the people of Calhoun and their great desire to educate their children. Hampton teachers Charlotte Thorn and Mabel Dillingham, white women from New England, responded to his plea for help and traveled with Mr. Washington to Calhoun to find a site and get a school built and operating.^[2]

[edit] Hampton-Tuskegee model

The Calhoun Colored School was a high school developed according to the Hampton-Tuskegee model. First, students would receive a basic elementary education and then an industrial education. This model envisioned community-based economic development for African Americans to prepare them for the rural areas in which most of them lived. It also prepared them for the limited number of jobs and type of employment locally available. Boys would become farmers and girls would become wives and homemakers, as well as laundresses, dressmakers, or domestic workers. The best students were encouraged to become teachers and work in the community or outlying areas to promote education along the Hampton-Tuskegee model.

Second, the school was to be apolitical. The education offered was not designed to encourage African Americans to challenge the status quo. African Americans were offered a basic education that enabled them to return to their communities and support themselves within the system. Washington feared that if a colored school challenged the politics of the day, white citizens might refuse to allow it to open or would later shut it down. This was not the classical type offered to many white students in the north. Many highly educated African Americans thought the Tuskegee model was too limited and did not support it.^{[citation needed]}

In October 1892 Co-Principals Thorn and Dillingham met with 300 African Americans who wanted to learn more about their plans to start a school. Many of the adults who came to the first meeting would work on building the teachers' cottages, schoolhouses, barn, shop and dormitories that together comprised the full campus by 1896. N.J. Bell of Montgomery donated the initial ten acres of land for the site of the school. By 1896 the school also had a working farm of 100 acres; 300 pupils, of which 40 were boarders; and 13 teachers.^[3][4]

The Hampton-Tuskegee model was based on educating African Americans to build their lives from basic skills. Essentially it conformed to white expectations of low aspirations for African Americans in the South during this period. It also related to the chiefly rural economy of Alabama, especially in the Black Belt. The idea of human agency or empowerment for change was not emphasized. Most white citizens and some African American citizens would not have supported such an idea then.^[5]

[edit] Land Bank and Road Building

The founders, their community and board had two major ideas that went beyond the Hampton-Tuskegee model. Knowing that land ownership was as or more critical than education to enable African Americans to be self-supporting, in 1894 the school organized a land company. With a land bank containing more than 4,000 acres (16 km²), they sold land in 40- to 60 acre tracts, with financing by northern friends of the school. In the first 13 years, the school issued 92 deeds for land to 85 people. The new landowners then could build real houses on their land. Their three- to eight-room houses were each better than the sharecroppers' cabins they had lived in before.^[6]

Although Calhoun was near a railway, freight charges were too high for small farmers. The school tried to get the roads improved so farmers could get their goods to market. It took nearly 40 years, but Thorn Dickinson, Miss Thorn's nephew, arranged for a joint venture with the county. Calhoun had been isolated by poor dirt roads that turned to slick clay in rain. A graduate of Williams College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Dickinson laid out the road, the school graded it, and the county surfaced with gravel what became Lowndes County Route 33.^[7]

[edit] Literacy Program

Initially the school’s literacy program included oral reading, elocution, rote memory, literature appreciation, and home, school, and community connections. Additionally, outside materials were brought in to appeal to student interests, extensive discussions about words were held, poems were memorized, students were given help with articulation and expression, and students were taught to write their thoughts and spell correctly. "Connecting school and home" and the emphasis on composition were in addition to the Hampton-Tuskegee model.

Later the literacy program included night classes for adults. These nongraded classes were part of the Hampton-Tuskegee model. The missionary committee led community outreach. Students and teachers went into the homes of freedmen to teach them to read and write, skills they eagerly worked for. Outreach included mothers’ meetings, Sunday afternoon church services, and holiday community celebrations on campus. Thorn and Dillingham networked among their friends and families' friends to raise funds and receive donations of all kinds. They also used the Hampton Institute publication The Southern Workman to put out news of the school and aid fundraising.

Donations of money and books created the library at the school. While the co-principals officially adhered closely to the two-pronged Hampton-Tuskegee model, their literacy practice revealed a much richer model of teaching.

The Calhoun Colored School (CCS) began as a strict follower of the Hampton-Tuskegee model, but the school eventually developed a classical education. This emphasized thinking and problem solving. It included a multifaceted literacy program. When CCS hired college-trained Academic Department heads, they began to use teaching methods and materials that followed national trends. As new teachers from outside CCS came to dominate the teaching force, they created a literacy program that resembled those at some of the better northern schools.

Despite good teaching methods, solid curriculum and quality materials, the students of CCS did not make the desired progress in literacy.^{[citation needed]} While these students were living in poverty, they were interested in education and had family support. The social attitudes of that era may have limited the thinking of the faculty and staff. "…it hindered their ability to envision African Americans as users of literacy; that is, while minimal access to literacy was made available, opportunities to use literacy in meaningful ways were delimited."^[8]

[edit] Academic department heads

From 1892-1945 there were six different Academic Department heads. Each brought improvements to the curriculum of the school. The first was Susan Showers (1896), who initiated literacy societies for students, home visits by teachers, single grade assignments for teachers, community socials, holiday celebrations, and evening religious services. (Partnering with the community was not part of the Hampton-Tuskegee model).

Clara Hart (1898) succeeded Susan Showers. She began the first free kindergarten at CCS, put reading instruction in every grade level, ensured the use of good literature for all the children, and furthered composition work.

Mabel Edna Brown (1907) was the first African American to work as Academic Department head. Her focus was to offer a more classical education, which was a major departure from the Hampton-Tuskegee model. She declared, "In all grades we are trying to raise the standards of thinking, accuracy, quickness, articulation, and correct expression."^[8] Time devoted to literacy instruction doubled in the primary grades through the sixth grade. It comprised one-half of the school day. By 1909, the kindergarten was using games to teach reading, writing and math. The school also began to solicit donations of books written by African Americans for the school library.

Jessie Guernsey, who earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from New York's Columbia Teachers College, came to Calhoun in 1912 to begin her tenure as Academic Department head. Under her leadership, high-interest grade-level books were used to teach reading. She also increased weekly recitations, and reinstated using creative writing to teach spelling and grammar. She continued literary societies, debates, musical training and social gatherings. The elementary grades began using state-adopted textbooks, while the secondary grades used more literature, newspapers and magazines. The school added another year of study, to include grade ten. The growth in curriculum and community outreach strained financial resources. At the same time the county-run elementary schools for African American children were becoming more and more popular. Many of the CCS graduates had become teachers in the county school system.

In the mid-1920s Edward Allen became the first man to be Academic Department head at CCS. He shifted the curriculum focus from teaching the basics of reading to teaching higher order thinking skills. This was a major departure from the Hampton-Tuskegee model. During Mr. Allen’s tenure, he managed to expand the library greatly, both in number and types of books.

In the late 1920s R. Luella Jones came to CCS. She emphasized making the curriculum more rigorous, both to earn accreditation and to ensure placement of graduates in institutions of higher learning. She added college preparatory classes like Latin, additional science and math classes, and made industrial arts an elective option. She also added grades eleven and twelve so that students could graduate from CCS. The library’s collection expanded to over 6,000 volumes.

Charlotte Thorn died on August 29, 1932. She led the school for years after Mabel Dillingham's death from yellow fever in 1895. Mabel's brother Rev. Pitt Dillingham worked with her as co-principal for several years after Mabel's death, and also helped with fundraising in the North.^[9] Although Calhoun continued as a private school for several more years, the Depression and changing agricultural practices that reduced rural labor and population made it impossible to continue financially.^[8]

[edit] Present day

In 1943, the state of Alabama acquired the Calhoun Colored School. It serves as a predominantly African-American public high school run by the Lowndes County Board of Education. The principal's house on County Route 53 is the last remaining structure from the original school. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of the important achievements of the school and the role it played in African-American education in Lowndes County.^[10]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Calhoun High School Website