Politics, Passions, and Partisanship

The plot now thickens. While newly-freed slaves and other Blacks were extremely interested in education, they were suspicious of the Methodist and Congregationalists missionaries. They were suspicious, especially of the Congregationalists (the AMA), because they thought they would tamper with their religious beliefs while educating them. White people were suspicious of both for other reasons. Educated Blacks would be dangerous and threatening to them. The Southern Methodists were suspicious of the Northern Methodists, coming South with the Bible and the book.

The trustees found land for the school and a small building for classes. Two years later on September 10, 1868, the trustees agreed to turn over the school to the American Missionary Association, and that they should run it for a period of ten years. All trustees did not fully agree to turning the school over to the AMA. One, Alexander Curtis, a Baptist, was most suspicious as I will show later.

A local white man named Porter King gave the AMA land "out west" in Marion in 1869. Previous and possibly inaccurate information, drawn from Lincolnite Reunion Programs, indicated that "on this land a three-room school house was built." Bailey reports in Neither Carpetbaggers nor Scalawags that a school building much more impressive and useful was built about the same time:

On Sunday afternoon 11 April, 1869, AMA missionary Thomas Steward and other AMA officials dedicated a school building in Marion. The [Freedman's] Bureau contributed approximately $2,800 of the $4,200 cost for the school; the African American citizens of Marion and the American Missionary Association contributed the remainder.

Mr. Bailey lists as his source, the article, "American Missionary Association and Northern Philantropy" that appeared in the Alabama Historical Quarterly 32, Nos. 3 and 4 (Fall and Winter 1970). Bailey continues:

The new building was of frame construction, fifty feet square, two stories high, and well lighted. The building also housed four large class rooms, a recitation room for a normal class, and was finished with the Sherwood desk and seat combination. The exercise was marked by singing, prayer, and addresses by a Mr. Cowan of Crawfordville, Indiana, and Rev. J. Silsby. One black man, a Deacon Harris, spoke at the end of the program and advised African Americans to "heed the words to which they had listened, and to profit by them that they might refute the saying, that 'a nigger is only fit for the plough and the hoe.'"