Educating the Freedpeople: Black Savannahians Journey to Self-Education

Abstract

During the Civil War, and especially after, the war-torn southern states faced a new population in need of education. Southern African Americans, many former slaves, had a strong determination to acquire literacy and numeracy after their bondage. Simultaneously, they were attempting to satisfy their basic material needs. However, in southern politics, the need to educate the freedpeople was neither a dominant nor well-received theme. Soon, blacks in the southern countryside realized they could not attain their dream of schooling in the rural areas they had been living and flocked to cities where education was a more debated topic. One of these southern cities was Savannah, Georgia. This paper will examine how the African American community faced numerous hardships when fighting for an education and analyzes those who were educating the black residents in Savannah.