The Normal School Relocates to Montgomery

Trouble came between Howard College cadets and Lincoln Normal (The State Normal School for Colored Students) students - white and African American educational institutions located in the same community. Howard College was relocated to Birmingham in later years (now known as Samford University). Records indicate that there was a riot in Marion between students of Howard and Lincoln.

"The U" in Marion had a very brief tenure. It lasted all of about 14 years - from 1874 to 1887. A devastating fire burned the State Normal School to the ground. Fires were powerful weapons, and were used by slaves in the days before slavery ended, and by Whites in the days immediately after the Civil War. By burning to the ground Lincoln Normal University (or a part of it) meant that Blacks would have a harder time becoming educated. Educated Blacks frightened many white people, and furthermore, would not be suited only "for the plow and the hoe." Educated Blacks would exercise independent judgements going against local social customs, economic patterns, and otherwise remain no longer docile and compliant.

Mr. Patterson was angry and bitter. After muttering briefly about "self-defense" (Lincoln men defended themselves) growing out of the riot which led to the torching of his school, he set about searching for a new location.

The pot started to boil when a Normal School faculty member visited Montgomery to see how Blacks would feel about a college in their midst.

According to Professor Louis B. Harlan of the University of Maryland in his Booker T. Washington, the Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901, after Reconstruction ended, William Burns Patterson "made an uneasy peace with the Conservatives, appealing to their belief that only a white man could properly run a college." When Patterson noised that notion about, he did not realize that he was stirring up a hornet's nest, for Booker T. Washington was already running a college. Figuratively, he "slapped" Washington in the face. Washington was also quite nimble afoot as he moved adroitly between Conservatives and Radicals.

Washington became head of Tuskegee almost by accident. The state, indeed, had preferred a white man to be head of the new institution in Tuskegee. Alabama educational authorities wrote to J.T. Murfree of Marion Military Institute requesting that one of his bright young graduates run Tuskegee. Murfree replied that he had "not prepared any man for that work," and that he did "not approve of the methods of any negro school then in the States," except that one run by Col. Armstrong at Hampton.

When word reached Booker T. Washington that Mr. Patterson and others were looking at Montgomery as a possible site for relocation of the State Normal School for Colored Students, he did not like the idea at all. Washington, himself, was on the fast track and becoming a key figure in Alabama black educational circles. He had influence, and fought the move tooth and nail mainly because Tuskegee was only forty miles away. He protested mightily, as he thought the location would affect negatively his efforts.

William Burns Patterson didn't know that he was about to confront one of the wiliest, most deceptive, creative, and astute political operatives in the South. The first thing that Washington did was go to the State Legislature and try to get a larger appropriation for Tuskegee - meaning of course, that there would be less money [to go] around, and perhaps none for the State Normal School.

Washington then sent emissaries to the Negro Baptist Convention to fight the move to Montgomery. He paid a white Tuskegee lawyer to lobby in the legislature against the move. One of Washington's friends, William J. Stevens, editor of the weekly Selma Cyclone, tried to help by having the Normal School move to Selma. None of Washington's ploys worked.

Tuskegee was only forty miles from Montgomery. The State Normal School would be too close for comfort. Whites in Montgomery wanted the school in their city, with dollar signs leaping in their heads, with some saying "the 40,000 or $50,000 [appropriation] would be an item [to consider]," editorialized the Montgomery Advertiser. That money would be spent in Montgomery. Harlan says in his book that:

The legislature appointed a committee chaired by the governor to decide the relocation of the school, and a contest developed between advocates of Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, as well as some who sought to keep it [the State Normal School for Colored Students] in Marion.

Montgomery was chosen as the new site for the State Normal School for Colored Students. Washington was defeated. He reluctantly, accepted the reality that the school was going to move to Montgomery. He declared in a letter to a friend, "My faith is that Tuskegee will not greatly suffer for want of students even if the U. goes to Montgomery, but it is very unjust to put it there."

The tiny little school organized in Marion twenty years before by former slaves took much battering during the years of its existence. In many ways, the school had been a political football: plagued by locally generated sturm und drangbetween Black Baptists and Methodists, the Congregational Church, and their agent, the American Missionary Association. At the epicenter of it all was one Alexander Curtis.* The move to Montgomery represented a new beginning for the State Normal School for Colored Students as well as the end of an era. The fact remains that the germ of an idea originating somewhere in the red clay hills around Marion, Alabama; an idea in the minds of former slaves became thoroughly institutionalized. From a sympathetic Union Army soldier to Lincoln School nurtured by the AMA to the State Normal School for Colored Students to Alabama State Teachers' College to Alabama State University - in a straight, single and unbroken line.