Acknowledgments; Introduction; PART ONE: 1862-1870; 1 LIBERATION THROUGH LITERACY; 2 EDUCATED LABOR; 3 EDUCATION FOR SERVITUDE; PART TWO: 1870-1875; 4 UNIVERSAL SCHOOLING; 5 PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1871-1875; Epilogue; APPENDIX: KNOWN AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICIANS AND LEGISLATIORS IN MISSISSIPPI DURING RECONSTRUCTION, 1870 -1875; Notes; Bibliography; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y
Summary
In the years immediately following the Civil War, debates over the general purpose of schools for African Americans (mostly freedpeople) centered on whether the schools should seek to develop blacks as citizens, train them to be free but subordinate laborers, or produce some other outcome. This book is the first comprehensive examination of Mississippi's politics and policies of postwar racial education. Span finds that newly freed slaves made heroic efforts to participate in their own education, but too often the schooling was used to control and redirect the aspirations of the newly freed
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-235) and index
