Newspapers Birmingham-Pittsburgh Traveler

The Role of Education in the African-American Community

One of the recurring themes in our interviews with the editors of the black newspapers was that education was always the main focus of their papers.

Print Shop at Parker High School, 1930

Education has always played a major role in African-Americans' lives. They struggled to obtain equality in the public school system and demanded equal access to predominately white colleges and universities. Due to the fact the blacks were denied the opportunity to learn to read or write during slavery, they always had a desire to learn the unknown.

Photo of a Shoe Shop at Parker High School. c.1930

The first public schools for blacks were established during the Reconstruction period. Blacks for the first time had the chance to read and write. The schools were financially supported by the federal government and private institutions.

White Southerners opposed to education for Blacks. They feared that education would enable to become discontent with the inferior position that they imposed upon freed Blacks. Northerners had some interest in the Black population, but Black literacy was not a priority for whites.

Industrial training colleges were a creation of white missionaries. General S.C. Armstrong established the industrial school known as Hampton Institute in Virginia for Blacks and Native Americans. It became the prototype for Black higher education in the South. Tuskegee Institute was one of the schools that received but financial and professorial support from General Armstrong. The founder of the Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington, was a disciple of Armstrong. He was one of his most prized students at the Hampton Institute.

Educators such as Booker T. Washington and Arthur H. Parker brought industrial education to the black communities in Alabama. They believed that blacks needed to work with the hands as well as the heads.

Photo taken of classroom in Tuskegee, 1911