From Marion to Montgomery: The Early Years of Alabama State University, 1867-1925

By Joseph D. Caver and Quinton T. Ross

Alabama State University is well known as a historically black university and for the involvement of its faculty and students in the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the school's remarkable origins, having begun as the Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama, founded by nine former slaves. These men are rightly considered the progenitors of Alabama State University, as they had the drive and perseverance to face the challenges posed by a racial and political culture bent on preventing the establishment of black schools and universities. It is thanks to the actions of the Marion Nine that Alabama's rural Black Belt produces a disproportionate number of African American PhD recipients, a testament to the vision of the Lincoln Normal School's founders. From Marion to Montgomery is the story of the Lincoln Normal School's transformation into the legendary Alabama State University, including the school's move to Montgomery in 1887 and evolution from Normal School to junior college to full-fledged four-year university. It's a story of visionary leadership, endless tenacity, and a true belief in the value of education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781588383617

Joseph D. Caver

JOSEPH D. CAVER is a former senior archivist at the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama and current history lecturer at Alabama State University. He is a coauthor of The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History: 1939–1949 and a contributor to the Air Power History journal. Caver is a recipient of the Major General I. B. Holley Award, recognizing significant contributions in the field of Air Force history. He has been honored with the Spirit of Marion Award from Alabama State University.

Book preview

FROM MARION TO MONTGOMERY

ALSO BY JOSEPH D. CAVER

Touched by History

(with J. Mills Thornton)

The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History: 1939–1949

(with Jerome Ennels and Daniel Haulman)

FROM

MARION TO

MONTGOMERY

The Early Years of Alabama

State University, 1867–1925

Includes an Epilogue to Summarize

the School’s History to 2020

JOSEPH D. CAVER

FOREWORD BY QUINTON T. ROSS

NEWSOUTH BOOKS

Montgomery

NewSouth Books

105 S. Court Street

Montgomery, AL 36104

© 2020 by Joseph D. Caver

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, Montgomery, Alabama.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Caver, Joseph D., author.

Title: From Marion to Montgomery: the early years of Alabama State University, 1867–1925 / by Joseph D. Caver.

Description: Montgomery: NewSouth Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020018319 | ISBN 9781588383600 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Alabama State University—History. | African American universities and colleges—Alabama—Montgomery—History.

Classification: LCC LD59 .C38 2020 | DDC 378.761/47--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018319

ISBN: 978-1-58838-360-0 (trade cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-58838-361-7 (ebook)

Design by Randall Williams

Printed in the United States of America

by Sheridan Books

The Black Belt, defined by its dark, rich soil, stretches across central Alabama. It was the heart of the cotton belt. It was and is a place of great beauty, of extreme wealth and grinding poverty, of pain and joy. Here we take our stand, listening to the past, looking to the future.

To my wife, Mary,

my son Chris and daughter Ashley,

and to all the current and former students, faculty,

administrators, and staff of Alabama State University

I am so thrilled that some old family ‘stuff’ played such a role in serious research about his time.

— WILLIAM C BOWIE, great-grandson of Thomas Corwin Steward

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1The Lincoln School of Marion

2State Normal School and University, 1874–1886

3The Removal of the Colored University

4The Relocation of the Colored University

5The Arrival of the Colored University in Montgomery

6A New Beginning

7More Challenges for the Growing State Normal School

8The Final Years of William Burns Paterson

9A New Era: The John W. Beverly Years

10The George Washington Trenholm Years

Epilogue

Appendices

1: Articles of Incorporation

2: Agreement with American Missionary Association

3: Paterson Statement, 1888

4: Paterson Statement, 1890

5: Alabama State University Name Changes

6: Alumni, Catalog, Classes

Bibliography

Notes

Index

Foreword

QUINTON T. ROSS JR.

ASU President, 2017–

Iam proud to say that I am a true son of Alabama State University (ASU). My mother, Shirley A. Ross, graduated from Alabama State College in 1968, the same year that I was born at St. Martin De Porres Hospital, now known as Mobile Infirmary, in Mobile, Alabama. My father graduated from ASU the next year.

Eight months after my birth, my parents were recruited to teach in Pontiac, Michigan, where I spent my formative years. In Pontiac, my parents reconnected with other ASU alumni that they had known while attending the university, graduates like their close friend Charles Mitchell, one of the first ASU football players drafted to the NFL and a member of Omega Psi Phi. I grew up intrigued by the many stories they shared about an institution that provided my parents and their friends with the degrees and the network of alumni that allowed them to ascend more seamlessly to the nation’s black middle class and to provide for their families.

Alabama State University was a household name that would be ingrained in my DNA. Some might say I was born to be a Hornet. I wanted to attend ASU to carry on our family’s Hornet legacy. After graduating from Pontiac Northern High School, I began my college career at ASU in the fall of 1987. As a student, I was submerged in the rich history of a university that had served, to so many before me, as a beacon of light and hope. I joined hundreds of other freshmen in taking the required Orientation 101, learning the history of the institution, the school hymn, and the significance of the names on the buildings in which we lived and attended classes. The name George N. Card, who became the institution’s president in 1873, held great significance for me since I lived in Room 125 of the residence hall that carries his name.

From the first day and throughout my tenure as a student, O Mother Dear wrapped her arms around me. In turn, I embraced her vibrant culture and esteemed legacy as a leading institution of higher learning. I cut my teeth on school politics by serving as a freshman class senator in the Student Government Association (SGA). I went on to become the SGA president and graduated in 1992 with a BS degree in political science with a minor in English. I subsequently earned both my master’s and doctoral degrees from the university. The degrees and experiences that I received at Alabama State University allowed me to have a rewarding career as an educator and to go on to serve as one of seven African American senators in the Alabama Legislature.

As it did with my parents, Alabama State University has had a profound effect on my life. Learned professors and former presidents such as Dr. Leon Howard and Mr. C. C. Baker nurtured, encouraged, and inspired me. My testimony is like the testimonies of thousands of ASU graduates.

Legendary names, historic buildings, and accomplished alumni are the hallmarks of this great institution that is now more than 150 years old. Its history must be preserved and celebrated. As an esteemed historian and ASU alumnus, Joseph Caver has taken on the worthy task of doing both. This book represents decades of research and documentation, highlighting Alabama State University’s evolution from its humble beginnings in Marion, Alabama, to its established location in Montgomery, within walking distance of the Alabama Capitol.

Mr. Caver’s book captures the struggles and triumphs and the vision and visionaries that have been an integral part of the Alabama State University story. It is a story that continues to unfold. As the Fifteenth President of this great institution, I am grateful to Mr. Caver for his dedication to this project and to the preservation of the university’s history.

I know that you will be enlightened by the rich history documented in the pages that follow. Welcome to the Alabama State University.

Preface

My interest in researching the early history of Alabama State University began during my years of employment as an archivist at the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) in Montgomery, Alabama. I graduated from ASU in 1974 and started working at ADAH the following year. There I soon met Auburn University graduate student Helen Kitchens, who aroused my curiosity about ASU’s origins when she introduced me to the American Missionary Association (AMA) papers available on microfilm and directed me to the incorporation papers establishing the Lincoln School in Marion, Alabama. I was astonished by the information I gleaned from these documents about the beginnings of my alma mater, especially since the grand Centennial Year Commemoration had just occurred during my graduation year.

A Centennial Commission appointed by the university president had planned an array of programs and activities for the year’s celebration, including the selection of a student to reign as Miss Centennial. The 100th Year Celebration Convocation was held in May. In August, a Time Capsule containing items related to the university’s heritage was ceremoniously buried on the campus mall, to be opened in fifty years. These celebratory events had followed the 74th Annual Founder’s Day Observance in February—a tradition started in 1901 to honor William Burns Paterson’s birthday.

During all of these years, Paterson, a white man from Tullibody, Scotland, was revered as the founder of the school for ex-slaves in Marion, Alabama that eventually developed into ASU.

As I examined the documents in the ADAH collection, I was stunned to learn that the school in Marion was started several years before Paterson even arrived in Alabama. The former slaves in Marion, assisted by the Freedmen’s Bureau and the AMA, were the driving force in establishing the school in Marion for educating the members of their community as early as 1866–1867. I was especially amazed to discover that nine black men from this community filed incorporation papers on July 18, 1867 for the purpose of establishing and owning a Corporation for educating colored children. They named it The Lincoln School of Marion.

In the Archives’ Reading Room, I met noted Alabama historian J. Mills Thornton, who was doing research for one of his books.* I shared my newly discovered information with him, and he confirmed that the Lincoln School was the predecessor of Alabama State University. Through continued discussions and reading, I found that ownership of Lincoln was transferred to the State of Alabama, and the school opened in 1874 as the public institution that is now Alabama State University. I then realized that 1874 was the date of the school’s becoming state-supported, not the date of its actual founding, and that our centennial commemoration should have occurred in 1967.

Thus began my years of research and writing that culminated in this publication, From Marion to Montgomery: The Early Years of Alabama State University, 1867–1925. As the chief archivist of the ADAH Civil Archives Division, I provided reference services to patrons doing research in the facility’s vast holdings of primary documents. My interaction with the researchers gave me an opportunity to learn intimately and to understand the organization of the vast archival collection that I subsequently used extensively in writing this work.

HOWEVER, MY INTEREST IN state and local history began earlier, during my childhood. My paternal grandfather, Willie Caver, was born in rural Autauga County, Alabama, in 1878 and lived there until his death in 1973. He was a great storyteller. His stories about his childhood always intrigued me. When I visited him, he did most of the talking and I did most of the listening. I remember our conversations about his schooling. He had gone through the third grade at the community-sponsored common school at his church, Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church, about twenty miles from Prattville, Alabama. Common (elementary) schools existed throughout Alabama after the Civil War and through the mid-twentieth century. Some were funded by their counties, but most were supported by their local communities. The common schools in black communities were normally affiliated with a black church. My grandfather had gone to work on a farm after completing the third grade at his church. To continue his education would have required him to leave home and would have cost money that his family did not have. Only a few schools in Alabama then offered educational opportunities for black youth beyond the elementary grades. Lincoln in Marion was one of those schools. By 1915, only four schools in Alabama offered the equivalent of a twelfth-grade education for blacks. State Normal in Montgomery (now Alabama State) and State Normal in Huntsville (now Alabama A&M) were two of the four schools.

My parents, Albert and Thelma Caver, did not graduate from high school, but they instilled in their children the value of an education. They worked hard and did without so their children could have more opportunities than they had in their lives. They made sacrifices so their children could go to college, and the family’s college of choice was Alabama State. My own connection to ASU began in the fall of 1970 when I followed in the footsteps of my oldest sister, Mary Ann, the first college graduate of the immediate family. My other siblings Melvia, Linda, Afiya (Carolyn), Ruby, Hope, and Eric also earned college degrees. I still recall the smiles on Mom and Dad’s faces beaming with pride when their youngest child, Eric, graduated in May 1996. Following tradition, sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews of the Caver family have attended and graduated from the historic black university in Montgomery, Alabama.

Inspired by my grandfather’s storytelling, I majored in history as an undergraduate at ASU and continued my studies in the graduate school’s master’s program in 1982. I used my years of research on the Lincoln School to complete the master’s thesis mandated to satisfy graduation requirements. In my thesis, From Marion to Montgomery: A Twenty-Year History of Alabama State University, 1867–1887, I used mainly primary sources to tell the story of the school. I experienced immense pride as I explored and related interesting insights about the aggressive pursuit by black Alabamians of their own means of education before and immediately after the Civil War.

I delved deeply into and recorded the then largely untold story of how black Marionites, led by nine former slaves, formed a corporation and founded the private school for blacks called The Lincoln School of Marion. The nine incorporators who came together to educate their own and the other black children in Marion and surrounding areas were Ivey Parrish, Thomas Speed, Nickolas Dale, James Childs, Thomas Lee, John Freeman, Nathan Levert, David Harris, and Alexander H. Curtis.

These valiant pioneers did not allow their past bondage and the opposition of the local whites to hinder the realization of their vision for educating their community. Today, these black men, the Marion Nine, are recognized as the founders of Alabama State University. My research also led to changing the establishment date of the university from 1874 to 1867.

The focus of my thesis was on the beginning of the Lincoln School and its first twenty years of existence in Marion before relocating to Montgomery, where the institution experienced several name changes and finally became Alabama State University in 1969. I examined the racial and political culture which attempted to prohibit blacks’ participation in their own education process, and I detailed the methods used to thwart the establishment and operation of schools for blacks. During this hostile period of the school’s existence, its stakeholders were constantly fighting for its survival.

After writing the thesis, I served as a consultant and participant in the Alabama Public Television’s special documentary, Where Once We Stood. The film examined the history of the Lincoln School. Because of my expertise on the history of Alabama State University, I also served in 1991–1992 as a research consultant for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Knight v. State of Alabama. The university pursued legal action seeking desegregation of and equity within higher education in Alabama. My thesis was used with other documentation to describe the establishment of the school and the unfulfilled pledges of the State of Alabama to fund and maintain the institution over the years of its existence. The federal court affirmed the plaintiffs’ complaint that Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University were suffering from vestiges of state-sponsored racial segregation. After the trial, I became and am still an adjunct history instructor at my alma mater. I teach world history courses and enjoy the interaction with the faculty, staff, and, especially, the students.

I LEFT THE ADAH in 1981 and began a thirty-year career as an archivist with the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA) at Maxwell Air Force Base. While working at the Agency, I served as the Chief of Circulations and answered thousands of queries on the Tuskegee Airmen. This position led to my providing Lucas Films with documentation on the Tuskegee Airmen for the movie Red Tails (2012). Identifying and collecting the public domain documentation for that movie led me to approach NewSouth Books with a proposal to publish a book on the Tuskegee Airmen. The proposal was accepted, and I co-authored the publication with Jerome Ennels (Air Force historian Daniel Haulman also contributed a chronology of the Airmen). The book, The Tuskegee Airmen, an Illustrated History: 1939–1949, has been recognized for its authentic story of the famed black American aviators. I also worked with the U.S. National Park Service in developing Tuskegee’s Moton Field Municipal Airport as the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. Even while working for the AFHRA, I maintained connections from my State Archives days, attending conferences and social gatherings, conducting local historic tours, maintaining membership in historic, civic, and social groups, and readily providing research information on Alabama’s history.

After I retired from the Air Force Historical Research Agency in 2011, Randall Williams and Suzanne La Rosa of NewSouth Books encouraged me to expand my original master’s thesis. This encouragement spurred me to return to work on a topic that I had somewhat neglected but had continued to collect and absorb information on during my years working for the Air Force.

For the current publication, I resumed work on revising and extending my master’s thesis with additional information collected since 1982. This new material allowed me to magnify the insights first identified by Dr. Horace Mann Bond about the Lincoln School. Bond, while studying the number of black Americans holding doctorates, was struck by his discovery that a disproportionate number of these persons had family roots in Perry County, Alabama. Further study of their backgrounds led Dr. Bond to conclude that the Lincoln Normal School and its successors, located in the town of Marion in Perry County, was the decisive factor. Bond also found several other high achievements by black Americans who came from this predominantly rural, black, and impoverished county in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt.

Also, I have further examined and expanded discussion of the role the American Missionary Association (AMA) and the Freedmen’s Bureau played in launching the school for blacks in Marion. In addition, I have provided more information on each of the Marion Nine as well as on the leadership of Thomas Corwin Steward, George M. Card, William Burns Paterson, John William Beverly, and George Washington Trenholm.

For example:

• Thomas C. Steward, a former union army veteran and commissioned AMA teacher came to Marion in January 1867. He served as the first principal of the school. Steward also served several terms in the Alabama Legislature during the Reconstruction period. Steward was instrumental as well in launching and guiding the school through its humble beginnings and its most turbulent era. Using primary materials provided by Steward’s great-grandson, William Bowie, I have followed Steward during his time at the school and after his dismissal because of his advocacy for the education of blacks through his political activism. The valuable photos, diary, and correspondence shared by the Steward family provided a glimpse of the conditions surrounding the school during the early years of its founding. I am indeed grateful to the family for access to these resources.

• A Reconstruction act of the Alabama State Board of Education in December 1873 renamed Lincoln and created a state-supported Normal School and University for the Education of Colored Teachers and Students. New Yorker George Card was appointed as president of the institution in the fall of 1872. The school suffered and nearly closed due to the state reneging on promised funding from the state, with a corresponding decrease in enrollment. After serving for nearly six years, Card resigned and returned to New York. In 1878, William Burns Paterson, a recent immigrant from Scotland, was named Card’s successor. Judith Paterson’s 1996 memoir, Sweet Mystery, a Book of Remembering, offers pertinent information on the life of William Burns Paterson. Judith, Paterson’s great-granddaughter, shared valuable photos and other information about the family that I have used in this publication. I greatly appreciate her support in this effort.

• Paterson died in 1915, and John William Beverly, the second black teacher at the school, became the institution’s first black president. Beverly was dismissed in 1920, and George Washington Trenholm was appointed president of State Normal and served until his death in 1925. He was succeeded by his son, Harper Councill Trenholm.

I ENDED MY STUDY at the point of the elder Trenholm’s death. My main goal was to write the early history of Alabama State University and to identify primary archival documents to be used by future scholars. The university’s rich later history deserves additional study, and hopefully this publication will supplement the follow-on work.

I have spent many years researching and writing this publication. I have enjoyed the work, particularly the journey of discovery of information on this incredible and inspiring story of a great historically black university—an HBCU. I could not have accomplished the task without the assistance and support of many people. To list the many individuals who have given generously of their time and knowledge to its preparation would require many pages.

While I owe a debt of gratitude to many people, I particularly wish to thank my wife Mary, my son Joseph Christopher, and my daughter Ashley for their understanding, encouragement, support, and love. I also thank Helen Kitchens for arousing my interest in the topic, the staff of the Alabama Department of Archives and History for sharing its treasure trove of archival documents, and the staff of the Archives Division of the Levi Watkins Learning Center who provided valuable documentation on the school’s history. A special thank you goes to Mr. Kenneth Dean for editing and typing my original thesis from my very poor handwritten pages. I greatly appreciate his work before the advent of the computer. Dr. Alma Freeman’s assistance in the editing and making the manuscript more readable is deeply treasured. I owe the greatest debt to all who assisted in this publication. Thank You.

*His groundbreaking books include Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800–1860 (1978) and Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (2002)

FROM MARION TO MONTGOMERY

1

The Lincoln School of Marion

The education of blacks, enslaved or free, was unlawful in Alabama, as in most of the South, before the Civil War. After Nat Turner’s violent insurrection in Virginia in 1831, the Alabama Legislature passed a law in 1832 forbidding the education of black Alabamians. The white population deemed this necessary to prevent the threat of rebellion from its enslaved inhabitants. Except for a Creole school in Mobile, schools were not established for black Alabamians until the late 1860s. ¹

The end of the Civil War in 1865 resulted in the emancipation of nearly a half million former slaves in Alabama. These newly freed blacks found themselves in the precarious condition of trying to survive in a broken, hostile society. Because of the years spent in servitude, most were unprepared for the challenge, and they sought education as a panacea for their troubles. On October 16, 1865, the first edition of Alabama’s earliest black newspaper, the Mobile Nationalist, spoke of the eagerness of the black populace to avail themselves of the means of an education.² Blacks from across Alabama met in Mobile on November 20, 1865, to address the issues of racial progress. The participants decided immediate attention should be given to the task of wiping out illiteracy among the black population. However, the efforts of blacks in Alabama to obtain an education were met with many obstacles. Little help was forthcoming from the state’s whites, most of whom had not accepted the loss of their servant class. Therefore they opposed the education of freedmen, sometimes violently. Obviously, external help was required to launch educational opportunities for blacks in Alabama. As a result, the federal government took the initiative in the development of schools for Alabama’s freedmen.

The main thrust of federal assistance for the former slaves came through the Freedmen’s Bureau—the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, created by Congress on March 3, 1865. The educational work of the Bureau was carried out in cooperation with Northern benevolent associations. In addition to establishing and supporting its own schools, the Bureau was charged with the responsibility of protecting and supporting schools maintained by the associations. Teachers were often chosen by an association, and their transportation and living quarters were supplied by the Bureau. By the end of 1865, the Bureau and Northern aid societies supported thirteen schools for blacks in Alabama.

The most active of the benevolent agencies in Alabama was the American Missionary Association (AMA). The origin of the AMA can be traced to the Amistad Committee formed in 1836 to protect the legal rights of forty-two Africans who had been imprisoned in New Haven, Connecticut. The Africans aboard the Spanish slave vessel L’Amistad had mutinied, killed the captain, imprisoned the crew, and attempted to sail back to Africa before being captured. A lawsuit on behalf of the Africans was fought through the lower courts, and in 1841 a decision by the United States Supreme Court won their freedom. The Amistad Committee, the Union Missionary Society, the Committee for the West Indian Missions, and the Western Evangelical Missionary Society later merged into the American Missionary Association.³

Before the Civil War, the AMA was an anti-slavery crusader. During and immediately following the war, it became a relief agency for former slaves and served as an auxiliary of the Congregational Churches of America. The AMA emerged as an effective educational organization operating a chain of schools throughout the South. The AMA established or participated in the founding of the institutions now known as Hampton University, Fisk University, Talladega College, LeMoyne Owens College, Tougaloo College, Atlanta University, Dillard University, Alabama State University, and many secondary and primary schools which were later absorbed into various public school systems.

The AMA entered the field of education because of the depressed condition of religion found among the freedmen. As the missionary arm of the New England-based Congregational Church, the foremost function of the AMA was religious missionary work. It was also dedicated to the freedmen attaining an education, but religion came first. The Association believed that religion and formal education went hand in hand. In May 1865, the AMA established its first school in Alabama, the Trinity School for Negroes in Athens.

By 1866, the AMA was working jointly with the Freedmen’s Bureau to establish day schools for the new freedmen. Elliot Whipple, after graduating from Dartmouth College, came south in 1867 to teach in a Freedmen’s Bureau School in the east Alabama town of LaFayette. He reported to the Reverend E. T. Smith, an official of the AMA:

People at the North have no idea of the immense amount of good that is being accomplished, in which pupils have made the progress in few months that we should expect in the North in several years, but an influence for good is exerted on the minds of these people such as no race of men ever had an opportunity to exert since the world began, because the freedmen regard us as their deliverers from the errors of slavery, look upon us as the very messengers of God, sent in answer to their secret prayers, offered up through long years of suffering.⁴

Whipple’s letter documented the enthusiasm of the newly emancipated freedmen in LaFayette. The zeal was just as great among the freedmen throughout Alabama, particularly in the Black Belt where the largest number of blacks resided. Marion was a Black Belt town and the seat of Perry County. Immediately after the Civil War, blacks in Marion, believing education to be essential for true freedom, were determined to establish a school in their community. Their determination led to the establishment of the Lincoln School of Marion.

The town of Marion was founded in 1822. Locally and in the surrounding areas, a powerful white planter elite developed during the Antebellum Period. The prosperity came from the staple cotton and the free labor of slaves. Aided by the planter class, Marion became one of the cultural, educational, and religious centers in Alabama. By 1850, the town boasted two female colleges, the Marion Female Institute and Judson Institute. Howard College (later Samford University), a male military school, was organized in Marion in 1841 by the Alabama Baptists. Growth continued in Marion and Perry County until the mid-1860s when the end of the Civil War brought major changes to the county, but very little with respect to power and wealth. The same families that had controlled the large land holdings continued to do so. According to Jonathan M. Wiener in Social Origins of the New South, the Alabama planter elite preserved its social position and its land through war and Reconstruction with remarkable tenacity.⁵

After the Civil War, education for whites remained virtually unchanged in Marion as well. The 1866 Census reported a healthy education system for whites in Marion. Marion had three colleges with an enrollment of 253 students, two academies with an enrollment of 50, and several common (elementary) schools with an enrollment of 709 white pupils.

The greatest change in the area came, of course, from the emancipation of Perry County’s large population of enslaved blacks. The 1866 Census revealed that blacks were 18,166 of the county’s total population of 28,177. With a population of 2,646 in 1870, Marion, the largest town in the county, had the largest concentration of black inhabitants, many with a strong desire for education. In Black Families in White America, Andrew Billingsley, noted black sociologist and a native of Marion, indicates that Marion, as the cultural and educational center of Alabama before the Civil War, also had a higher proportion of domestic slaves to field hands than was found in other areas of the state.⁶ The promotion of education by and for the planter elite also helped create a relatively high degree of literacy among these domestic slaves in Marion and helped engender their pervasive thirst for education. To satisfy this desire for learning, some planters even set up schools for freedmen on their plantations after the war. Their overwhelming motive, however, was to maintain the labor force lost with emancipation. A Republican-controlled newspaper in Montgomery reported the following suggestive item from a Southern journal:

It related that a Mr. Saunders, of Marion, Perry County, Alabama, has employed a gentleman to teach a colored school on his plantation. Mr. Saunders bears all the expenses of boarding and paying the teacher, and yet expects to be the gainer by having plenty of good steady laborers well satisfied with their situation.⁷

Although the desire for learning was encouraged somewhat through the domestic environment in which many slaves lived, the literacy of slaves in Marion during the Antebellum Period resulted mainly from their introduction and assimilation into Christianity. Before coming to the Americas as slaves, many of the Africans were animists and religion was important. Most slaves brought into Alabama from the south Atlantic States after 1815 had already been introduced to Christianity, which offered a God more powerful than their earthly enslavers. The attractive religion provided a buffer to their inhumane treatment. Its promise of a better life in the afterlife gave them hope and comfort. Their cry for help was exhibited in the development of Negro spirituals in coded subversive messages with a plea to God. Numerous slaveholding families in Marion believed their religion required them to share their Christian faith with their enslaved blacks. Many Antebellum churches allowed black members. The enslaved blacks and their white enslavers interacted, creating a synthesis of African and American elements in the Southern Christian church that would go in different directions after emancipation. Marion’s Siloam Baptist Church is an example of such religious activity.

Siloam Baptist was established in 1822, around the same time as the town of Marion. Siloam became one of the most influential churches in Antebellum Alabama. Members of Siloam were instrumental in the establishing of Judson College in