Category: Race

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Columbia Economist Market Race

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, Brailsford Reese Brazeal, 1942

Brazeal01

 

Two quick quotes from the brief biographical articles below about Brailsford R. Brazeal, an African American economics Ph.D. (Columbia, 1942), as amuse-bouche for this post.

“Dr. Brazeal conducted some of the research for his dissertation [on the Pullman sleeping car porters] by working as an assistant cook in the trains’ kitchens on the New York City line that traveled south.”

“It was Dr. Brazeal, who first recommended the young minister [Martin Luther King!] for acceptance at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.  Dr.  Brazeal wrote that King would mix well with the white race.” [The letter of recommendation]

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BRAILSFORD REESE BRAZEAL
b. Mar 8, 1903; d. Apr 22 1981

Ph.D., Columbia University, 1942.

TITLE OF DISSERTATION: “The Origin and Development of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.” (published: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946.

_______________________

BRAILSFORD BRAZEAL
A Man of Morehouse

Posted by Scott B. Thompsons, Sr.

When you think of Morehouse College, you think of tradition — a tradition of higher learning for African-American college students.  When you go back seventy-five years, you think of a day unlike today when a mere few, the lucky few, had the opportunity to attend an institution of higher learning, much less one with the honorable tradition as Morehouse.  For nearly four decades, one Laurens County native helped the school rise to the prominence it still retains today.

Brailsford Reese Brazeal was born in Dublin, Georgia on March 8, 1903.  The son of the Rev. George Reese Brazeal and Walton Troup Brazeal, young Brailsford attended Georgia State College and Ballard Normal School in Macon.    Late in his life Dr. Brazeal recalled that it was his Baptist preacher father’s guidance and teachings that kindled his imagination as to what was beyond his neighborhood.  Brazeal recalled that his mother and his oldest aunt, Flora L. Troup pushed him to leave Dublin because he wouldn’t be able to obtain anything but an elementary education in Dublin.  His uncle and namesake Brailsford Troup gave him a job during summers as a carpenter’s helper.  Brazeal realized that the life of a laborer is not what he wanted and promised himself that he would do all that he could to break the barriers of race and segregation.

He completed his studies  at Morehouse Academy, a high school, in 1923.  While at Morehouse College, Brazeal came to know Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, who served as his debate coach in college and would later serve as President of Morehouse.   After graduating from Morehouse in 1927, Brazeal continued his studies and obtained a master’s degree in Economics  from the ultimately prestigious Columbia University in 1928.

Brazeal was immediately hired as a Professor of Economics by Dr. John Hope, his alma mater’s first black president.    By 1934, Brazeal was chosen to chair the Department of Economics and Business.  He was also selected to serve as the Dean of Men, a post which he held until 1936.

In his early years at Morehouse, Brailsford met and married Ernestine Erskine of Jackson, Mississippi.  Mrs. Brazeal was a graduate of Spellman College in Atlanta.  An educator in her own right, Mrs. Brazeal held a Master’s Degree in American History from the University of Chicago.  She taught at Spelman and served for many years as the Alumni Secretary.  To those who knew and loved her, Mrs. Brazeal was known to the be the superlative historian of Spelman History, though she never published the culmination of  her vast knowledge.

The Brazeals were the parents of two daughters.  Aurelia Brazeal is a career diplomat and has recently served as the United States Ambassador to Ethopia, Kenya and Micronesia.  Ernestine Brazeal has long been an advocate for the Headstart Program.

The Brazeal home in Atlanta was often a home away from home for Morehouse students.  Especially present were the freshmen who inhabited the home on weekends and after supper for the fellowship and guidance from the Brazeals.  Among these students were the nation’s greatest civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Maynard Jackson, the first black mayor of Atlanta.   It was Dr. Brazeal, who first recommended the young minister for acceptance at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.  Dr.  Brazeal wrote that King would mix well with the white race. The Brazeal’s bought the four square home near Morehouse in 1940.  Today, the home at 193 Ashby Street (now Joseph Lowery Boulevard) was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Through scholarships, Brailsford Brazeal was named a Julius Rosenwald Fellow and in 1942, obtained his Ph. D. from Columbia University in economics.  As a part of his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Brazeal wrote about the formation of the of one of the first labor unions for black workers.  In 1946, Brazeal published his signature work The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.    For decades, labor researchers often cited Brazeal’s writings  in his landmark work and other papers and journal articles.

During the 1950s, Brazeal worked in voter registration movements.  He wrote extensively about racial discrimination in voting, especially in his native state. He detailed many of the activities in his home county of Laurens. In his Studies of Negro Voting in Eight Rural Counties in Georgia and One in South Carolina, Brazeal examined and wrote of the  efforts of H.H. Dudley and C.H. Harris to promote more black participation in voting in Laurens County.  He chronicled the wars between the well entrenched county sheriff Carlus Gay and State Representative Herschel Lovett and their desire and competition for the black vote.   He wrote of fair employment practices, desegregation of higher education, voter disfranchisement of black voters, voter registration, and many other civil rights matters.

The members of the National Association of College Deans elected Dr. Brazeal as their president in 1947. Brazeal a member of the Executive Committee of the American Conference of Academic Deans and as a vice-president of the American Baptist Educational Institutions.

During his career Dr. Brazeal was a member of the American Economic Association, the Academy of Political Science, the Southern Sociological Society, the Advisory Council of Academic Freedom Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, the N.A.A.C.P., the Twenty Seven Club, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Sigma Pi Phil, Delta Sigma Rho and the Friendship Baptist Church.

In 1967, Dr. Brazeal was inducted into the prestigious national honor society, Phi Beta Kappa as an alumni member of Delta Chapter  of Columbia University.  He organized a chapter at Morehouse, known to many as one of the “Ivy League” schools for African Americans.

Dr. Brazeal retired in 1972 after a career of more than forty years, many of which he served as Dean of the College.  At the age of seventy eight he died in Atlanta on April 22, 1981. His body lies next to that of his wife, who died in 2002, in Southview Cemetery in Atlanta.

Source:  Laurens County African American History (blog). Monday, February 3, 2014

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HE WAS A MOREHOUSE MAN:
THE LEGACY OF BRAILSFORD REESE BRAZEAL

Jeanne Cyriaque, African American Programs Coordinator
Historic Preservation Division

Brailsford Reese Brazeal was an African American economist and Dean of Academics at Morehouse College. From the late 1920s until he retired from Morehouse College in 1972, Dr. Brazeal’s leadership in research, publications, and academic standards helped Morehouse College achieve national significance as an institution of higher learning. Brazeal was a native of Dublin (Laurens County). He attended Macon’s Ballard Normal School until his family moved to Atlanta, where Brazeal completed high school at Morehouse Academy in 1923. Brazeal received his bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College in 1927, and completed his master’s degree in economics at Columbia University in 1928.

Dr. John Hope, who was Morehouse College’s first African American president, hired Brazeal as an economics instructor in 1928. By 1934, Brazeal was a professor of economics, head of the Department of Economics and Business Administration, and Dean of Men. Brailsford Brazeal was the recipient of two fellowships from the Julius Rosenwald Fund to pursue advanced studies in economics. While the history of the Rosenwald Fund community school building program is widely known, the fund also provided fellowships to many African American scholars. With this assistance and aid from Morehouse College, Brazeal received his Ph.D. in economics and political science from Columbia University in 1942.

Brailsford Brazeal published The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1946. This book was based upon his dissertation research on the Pullman train-car porters and their successful efforts to form America’s first African American labor union. This book remains a standard reference in labor history, American economic history and race relations. Brazeal subsequently wrote an unpublished biography about the Brotherhood’s union leader, A. Philip Randolph.

When George Pullman first arrived in Chicago in 1859, he had learned the art of moving buildings from his father, Lewis Pullman, who had patented a device to roll huge edifices away from the banks of the Erie Canal. After successfully applying this skill in a number of public works projects in Chicago, George Pullman envisioned a hotel on wheels with his luxurious, “palace” sleeping cars. To provide overnight accommodations and dining to the emerging middle class traveler, Pullman needed a workforce to provide personal services. This workforce who provided the necessary work of bellhop, cook, dining car attendant, maid and janitor were called Pullman porters, and they were African American men. Dr. Brazeal conducted some of the research for his dissertation by working as an assistant cook in the trains’ kitchens on the New York City line that traveled south.

Pullman porters worked longer hours and made considerably lower wages than whites, as they monopolized other positions such as conductors on the Pullman sleeping cars. Yet, a porter job provided unique employment opportunities that encouraged the Great Migration of thousands of African Americans from the segregated south. The Pullman porters relied on tips from their expert personal services, and were discouraged from forming unions.

By 1925, the Pullman Company was the nation’s largest private employer of African Americans, and the company used intimidation tactics, company spies, and harassment to deny the porters’ pensions and company benefits. Dr. Brazeal’s book discussed how A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organized an eleven-year effort to eventually be presented an international charter by the American Federation of Labor in 1936.

In 1962, Cornelius V. Troup published Distinguished Negro Georgians. Brailsford Brazeal wrote the introduction to this book while he was Academic Dean at Morehouse College. “Although I am a native Georgian and have lived and worked in Georgia virtually all of my life, I have learned for the first time that many distinguished persons whom I know or have read about are also natives of this state. Many of them were born in remote places in the state and had to obtain their education in vicarious ways which were enough to baffle and discourage persons of even extra-ordinary ability.” Brazeal’s comments on African American education in Georgia pointed out the fact that “without private, church-supported schools many of the persons mentioned in this book would never have attained an education which proved to be the key to their achievements.”

In 1933, Brailsford Reese Brazeal married Ernestine Erskine of Jackson, Mississippi. Ernestine Brazeal was a graduate of Spelman College. She received her master’s degree in American history at the University of Chicago. Mrs. Brazeal taught at Spelman and served as the college’s alumnae secretary. In 2003, the Spelman College Messenger featured an article about Mrs. Ernestine Erksine Brazeal that was written by one of her former students, Taronda Spencer. She is the Spelman College archivist and historian. “I learned how to be a Spelman woman from her example. Because of Mrs. Brazeal’s foresight, scholars and researchers are documenting the importance of Spelman’s place in the history of women’s education nationally and internationally. Her legacy and her spirit will forever be an integral part of the essence of Spelman.”

In 1940, Brailsford Reese Brazeal purchased an American Foursquare-type house that is located just west of Morehouse College. Brazeal made few changes to this house during his lifetime. In 1962, a rear addition was added that reflected mid-20th- century ranch house influences, such as built-in bookcases and a stone fireplace.

The home, now on Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard (formerly 193 Ashby Street), was constructed in 1927 by the Adair Construction Company. It was occupied by members of the Adair family until 1939. Charles Hubert, acting president of Morehouse College, leased the home prior to the Brazeal purchase (1940). The home was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 8, 2005.

Soon, the Brazeals had two daughters: Ernestine and Aurelia. Though the Brazeals lived in a segregated south, Ernestine Brazeal did not want her children to be born in segregated hospitals, and traveled to Chicago to have both of her daughters. Ernestine and Aurelia Brazeal attended a private girls’ school in Massachusetts, and both are Spelman alumnae.

Aurelia Brazeal is a diplomat in residence at Howard University. She is a former Ambassador to Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Federated States of Micronesia. She promotes job opportunities for the Department of State to students who are pursuing Foreign Service careers. Ernestine Brazeal recently retired from her advocacy career at Head Start in the greater Atlanta area. She lives in the Brazeal home. Ernestine Brazeal supports the work and ideas of the Spelman College Women’s Research and Resource Center. The center ensures a feminist environment for scholarship, activism, leadership and change.

The Brazeal House was always a place where students could gather for mentoring sessions with Dr. Brazeal in a family atmosphere. One Morehouse tradition that Dr. Brazeal particularly liked was to invite freshmen students to his home during their first week at Morehouse College. The students would have a chance to socialize with distinguished faculty and alumni. Maynard Jackson,Martin Luther King, Jr. and Warner Meadows were guests at these sessions in the Brazeal House during their college careers at Morehouse.

The Delta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa elected Brailsford Brazeal for alumnus membership at Columbia University. Brazeal envisioned a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at his institution, and by 1967, it was approved for Morehouse College. In 1961, while serving as the advisor for the honors program at Morehouse College, Brazeal achieved additional support from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Under his guidance, Morehouse College was second among Georgia institutions in the number of students receiving Woodrow Wilson fellowships.

Brailsford Reese Brazeal was an active participant in voter education and registration drives throughout Georgia in the 1960s. He retired from the faculty of Morehouse College in 1972, after a career that spanned over 40 years. He died in his home in 1981. Brailsford and Ernestine Brazeal are buried at South View Cemetery, an African American cemetery that was established in 1886 by nine Atlanta black businessmen.

Source: Reflections: Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network. Vol. VI, No. 1 (April, 2006).

 

Categories
Chicago Economists Policy Race Socialism

Chicago. Laughlin’s anti-bank-deposit-insurance talk, 1908

 

There are two things that I have not been able to figure out about the following report of a talk given by the founding head of the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Economy, J. Laurence Laughlin, against the bank-deposit guarantees promised in the 1908 Democratic Party Platform: (1) what was the point of his joke about the black man and the razor and (2) does “Shivers” refer to a person’s name or does it refer to the physical “shivers” of nervous bank depositors? William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate in the Presidential election of 1908, is clearly Laughlin’s target.

Image Source: From the election of 1908.  Davenport, Homer, 1867-1912, “William Jennings Bryan, bank deposits, political cartoon,” Nebraska U, accessed December 16, 2019.

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Shivers Bryan Bank Plank
Chicago University Financial Expert Declares It Chimerical.
Points Out Its Injustice

Guaranty of Deposits Is Described as a Socialistic Scheme.

Prof. J. Laurence Laughlin, head of the department of political economy of the University of Chicago, who is a national authority on monetary matters, took another hard rap yesterday at the democratic plank for the guaranty of bank deposits.

In concluding his statements, which were made in Cobb hall at the university, the economist declared his opinion about the democratic plank was epitomized by the story of a negro who went into a shop to buy a razor.

“The negro,” said Prof. Laughlin, “was asked if he wished a common razor or a safety razor. “

‘No, sah,’ returned the negro, ‘I just want one for social purposes.’ There you have the bank deposits guaranty idea.

“No one,” continued the speaker, “is so senseless to promote an immediate fund to secure all deposits. It is purely chimerical. Immediate redemption in cash is impossible, especially in any serious crisis since there is no ready money.

Would Work in Insane Asylum.

“The 1907 panic would have spread far and wide if this guaranty of deposits had been in effect then. This guaranty would have been a mere bagatelle. The proposal shows mere ignorance in asking absolute security—just as if any one in this world could give absolute security.

“It is just as well to ask a clergyman on becoming a pastor of a church to guarantee that every member of his flock will not tell a lie, be guilty of any misconduct or go to everlasting damnation,

“It is like A robbing B and going up on the hill to rob C so that B could be reimbursed. In this way C would have to pay for all the deviltry in town. Yes; the bank deposits guaranty would work perfectly-in an insane asylum.

Safety in Bank’s Integrity.

“Do these advocates really know what they are talking about? Good banks can’t prevent bad banks from making poor loans. They can’t stop the initial loans. Why, it would be worse than a disease.”

 

Source: Chicago Tribune, 7 October 1908, p. 5.

Image Source:  Caricature of J. Laurence Laughlin in the University of Chicago yearbook, Cap and Gown, 1907.

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Categories
Race Sociology Statistics

Atlanta University. W.E.B. Dubois’ choice of economics and sociology textbooks, 1897-98

 

This post follows up the previous one that reports the economics textbooks used at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. at the time W. E. B. Du Bois was an undergraduate. Artifacts transcribed below highlight the “sociological turn” taken by Du Bois upon his appointment to a professorship in economics at history at Atlanta University after he obtained his Harvard Ph.D. in political science for a dissertation on the history of the slave trade.

As can be seen in the department descriptions  for 1896-97 and 1897-98, the name of the department of instruction was changed from “Political Science and History” to “Sociology and History” in the first year that Du Bois was included among the faculty of Atlanta University. Du Bois’ research on “Negro problems” would have been unduly restricted if conducted within the methodology of economics of his time (or ours for that matter) which we can see must have been a factor that pushed him to the broader perspective offered by the sociology of his time with its emphasis on empirical material and statistical methods.

A relevant artifact here is the library card issued to W. E. B. Du Bois by the Royal Prussian Statistical Bureau in 1893 during his time as a student in Berlin.

Source:  University of Massachusetts Amherst. Special Collections and University Archives. W. E. B. Du Bois papers, Series 1A. General Correspondence. Bücherzammlung [sic] des königlich preussischen statistischen Bureaus zu Berlin, Zulassungscarte.  

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VI. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY.
[1896-97, Du Bois not yet listed as a member of the faculty]

It is intended to develop this department more fully, especially along the line of Sociology. Interest has been awakened throughout the country in the annual conferences held at Atlanta University in May — the first in 1896 — concerning problems in city life among the colored population. The library will soon be rich in books pertaining to Sociology.

As it now stands, the work of this department is as follows:

Political Science. Dole’s American Citizen, studied during the first year of the Normal and Preparatory courses, gives to our younger students an excellent introduction to this department. Civil Government in the Senior Normal year, and Civil Liberty in the Junior College, enrich this department still more; while International Law in the Senior year introduces the student to the principles underlying many burning questions of the day.

Economics. During Senior year Walker’s Political Economy, and White’s Money and Banking, also introduce the student to important national questions.

History, General and United States, is studied in the second and third years of the Normal course; while the College students have Guizot’s History of Civilization. For Greek History in the College, see Greek.

 

Source:  Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Atlanta University, 1896-97, p. 31,

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W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Ph.D., Professor of Economics and History

VII. SOCIOLOGY AND HISTORY.
[1897-98]

It is intended to develop this department not only for the sake of the mental discipline but also in order to familiarize our students with the history of nations and with the great economic and social problems of the world, so that they may be able to apply broad and careful knowledge to the solving of the many intricate social questions affecting their own people. The department aims therefore at training in good intelligent citizenship, at a thorough comprehension of the chief problems of wealth, work and wages; and at a fair knowledge of the objects and methods of social reform. The following courses are established:

Citizenship. In the Junior Preparatory and Junior Normal classes Dole’s American Citizen is studied as an introduction. The Normal classes follow this by Fiske’s Civil Government in the Senior year, while Political Science has an important place in the Junior College year.

Wealth, Work and Wages. Some simple questions in this field are treated in the Junior Preparatory year, and the science of Economics is taken up in the Junior College year.

Social Reforms. Three terms of the Senior year are given to Sociology; the first term to a general study of principles, the second term to a general survey of social conditions, and the third term to a study of the social and economic condition of the American Negro, and to methods of reform.

In addition to this, graduate study of the social problems in the South by the most approved scientific methods, is carried on by the Atlanta Conference, composed of graduates of Atlanta, Fisk, and other institutions. The aim is to make Atlanta University the centre of an intelligent and thorough-going study of the Negro problems. Two reports of the Conference have been published, and a third is in preparation.

History. General and United States History are studied in the second and third years of the Normal course. Ancient history is taken in connection with the Ancient Languages and Bible study. Modern European history is studied in the Sophomore year; and some historical work is done in connection with other courses.

The library contains a good working collection of treatises in History and Sociology.

 

Source:  Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Atlanta University, 1897-98, p. 4, 13.

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Textbooks assigned in Economics and Sociology
[1898-99]

Junior year Economics. Fall term.  Hadley. (Economics)

Senior year Sociology. Fall term. Mayo-Smith (Statistics and Sociology).

 

Source:  Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Atlanta University, 1898-99.

 

Economics
[Fisk University, Junior Year College textbook]

Arthur Twining Hadley. Economics. An Account of the Relations Between Private Property and Public Welfare. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896.

Economics I. A Summary of Hadley’s Economics. Copyright Edw. W. Wheeler. Cambridge, Mass.: E. W. Wheeler, Printer, 1898. 53 pages.   “A convenient hand-book for preparing the weekly written questions and all examinations…with an appendix containing suggestive topics for review.” [included in this post as a  study guide]

Sociology and Statistics
[Fisk University, Senior Year College textbook]

“The present volume is issued as Part I. of a systematic Science of Statistics, and is intended to cover what is ordinarily termed Population Statistics…”

Mayo-Smith, Richmond. Statistics and Sociology. New York: Macmillan, 1895.

[Note:  Mayo-Smith later published the second part of his systematic Science of Statistics as…]

“Part II., Statistics and Economics [covers] the statistics of commerce, trade, finance, and economic social life generally.
Mayo-Smith, Richmond. Statistics and Economics. New York: Macmillan, 1899.

 

Image Source: “W.E.B. Du Bois Educational Series at Great Barrington” webpage at the Housatonic Heritage webpage.

Categories
Race Undergraduate

Fisk. Senior Year text in Political Economy was F.A. Walker’s Advanced Course, 1892-93

 

This post takes Economics in the Rear-View Mirror in a rather different direction. Instead of helping to establish the chronology of the economics curriculum at major universities in the United States, I was curious to see if I could find out something about the economics taught at one of the historical “schools for colored people”. As luck would have it, I was able to quickly find a catalogue of courses for Fisk University from the 1892-93 academic year at the hathitrust.org internet archive. This happened to be the first year of operation of the University of Chicago so I read through the catalogue where I was reminded that an 1888 graduate of Fisk University was none other than W. E. B. DuBois who went on to complete his Ph.D. at Harvard University on the history of the slave trade.

So for W. E. B. DuBois fans out there, backcasting it is quite likely that his first course in political economy was taught by Erastus M. Cravath (see the personal sketch and early history of Fisk University below, also  memorial addresses were published as a pamphlet). Furthermore his textbook for the course would likely have been the “advanced course” version of Francis A. Walker’s Political Economy (2nd edition, 1887). 

However for the 1883-84 academic year one finds that political economy was confined to the second term of the senior year with the textbook:  Elements of Political Economy by Francis Wayland (recast by Aaron L. Chapin, D.D.), 1878. Maybe this was what was still taught when DuBois was an undergraduate instead of two-terms with Walker’s “advanced course”. We’ll see if someone can find a catalogue for 1887-88.

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Senior year course at Fisk University, 1892-93

Rev. Erastus M. Cravath, D. D.
President, and Professor of Mental and Moral Science, Logic, and Political Economy.

College Department. Classical Course, Senior year (Fall and Spring terms).

Political Economy.  Advanced Course (Walker).

Source: Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Fisk University, Nashville Tennessee, for the Scholastic Year 1892-93.

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PERSONAL SKETCH.
REV. ERASTUS MILO CRAVATH, D.D.
PRESIDENT OF FISK UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN.

Born July 1st, 1833, in Homer, N. Y., of Huguenot ancestry on the father’s side. His father, Orin Cravath, was one of three men to form the Abolition party in Homer, his home was a station of the “underground railroad,” and the son learned the first lessons concerning slavery from the lips of runaway slaves.

His father was a farmer, and the son received the usual common school education, and at seventeen entered the Homer Academy. As his father had been one of the earliest supporters of Oberlin College, the son went to Oberlin in the fall of 1851 where he remained nine years, graduating from college in 1857, and from the theological seminary in 1860.

He taught school during the winters, and largely supported himself through college and theology; was married to Ruth Anna Jackson, a Quakeress in unbroken line (from the time of George Fox) of Kennett Square, Pa., in September, 1860, and settled at Berlin Heights, Ohio, as pastor of the Congregational Church. He entered the Union army in December, 1863, and served with his regiment in the army of the Cumberland during the Atlanta campaign and in the battles of Franklin and Nashville, and was mustered out with the regiment at Nashville in June, 1865. He returned to Nashville, October 3d, 1865, as Field Agent of the American Missionary Association.

The first work done was in connection with the purchase of the land for the Fisk school, which became headquarters for his field work, starting schools at Macon, Milledgeville and Atlanta, Ga., and at various points in Tennessee. He became District Secretary of the American Missionary Association at Cincinnati, September, 1866, and in 1870 Field Secretary at the office in New York City; in 1875 he became president of Fisk University spending three years abroad with the Jubilee Singers, returning to the University in 1878; since which time he has remained at Nashville in the discharge of the duties of the presidency.

Source:  The American Missionary (February 1894), Vol. XVIII. No. 2, p. 76.

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EARLY HISTORY OF FISK UNIVERSITY

Fisk University was founded by the American Missionary Association, of New York City, and is still under its fostering care.

In October, 1865, Rev. E. P. Smith and Rev. E. M. Cravath were sent, under its auspices, to Nashville, Tenn., for the purpose of opening a school for colored people. In searching for a location, their attention was called to the United States Hospital, west of the Chattanooga depot, which was about to be sold, as no longer needed for the use of the army. After due consultation, the ground on which the buildings stood was purchased for $16,000.

Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, who was then in command of the Freedman’s Bureau, entered heartily into the work of helping to establish the school, hence the name, Fisk University. The school opened with interesting exercises January 9, 1866, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association and the Western Freedman’s Aid Commission, which was then represented in Nashville by Prof. John Ogden.

The Jubilee Singers.

At the founding of the school, Mr. George L. White, who was on the staff of General Fisk, volunteered to give instruction in vocal music. Gradually a few select voices were developed and a choir formed. When the time came that a new site and permanent buildings for the University must be secured, a variety of circumstances pointed to Mr. White and his little company of singers as the best means of securing one building, which was at the time all that was hoped for. Mr. White had been for more than three years the Treasurer and Business Manager of the University.

With much hesitation and many doubts, they went out October 6, 1871, having little money and no experience. After struggles for many months, which cannot here be detailed, they won success, resulting in the purchase of the present site of the University and the erection of Jubilee Hall from the proceeds of concerts given in this country and in Europe during seven years of nearly continuous labor. They have also, by solicitation, obtained books, apparatus, works of art, and collections for the museum.

 

Source: Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Fisk University, Nashville Tennessee, for the Scholastic Year 1892-93, p. 71.

Image Source: Rev. Erastus Milo Cravath from from Graham Moore’s webpage “Cast of Characters for The Last Days of Night “.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Columbia Economic History Race

Columbia. John W. Burgess charged with “anti-Negro thought” by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1935

 

Preparing for class tomorrow, I was reading the concluding chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois‘s book, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, that includes the following unflattering portrait of the founder of Columbia University’s School of Political Science, John W. Burgess. Since Burgess’s School of Political Science was the home of graduate economics education at Columbia University and the boundaries between the disciplines of law, history, political science, economics, and sociology were much less well-defined then than today, I think it is worth including W.E.B. Du Bois’s observations here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror. 

Image Source: W.E.B. Du Bois (ca. 1919 by C. M. Battey) in Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

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Excerpt from
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
by W.E.B. Du Bois.

The real frontal attack on Reconstruction, as interpreted by the leaders of national thought in 1870 and for some time thereafter, came from the universities and particularly from Columbia and Johns Hopkins.

The movement began with Columbia University and with the advent of John W. Burgess of Tennessee and William A. Dunning of New Jersey as professors of political science and history.

Burgess was an ex-Confederate soldier who started to a little Southern college with a box of books, a box of tallow candles and a Negro boy; and his attitude toward the Negro race in after years was subtly colored by this early conception of Negroes as essentially property like books and candles. Dunning was a kindly and impressive professor who was deeply influenced by a growing group of young Southern students and began with them to re-write the history of the nation from 1860 to 1880, in more or less conscious opposition to the classic interpretations of New England.

Burgess was frank and determined in his anti-Negro thought. He expounded his theory of Nordic supremacy which colored all his political theories:

“The claim that there is nothing in the color of the skin from the point of view of political ethics is a great sophism. A black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself succeeded in subjecting passion to reason, has never, therefore, created any civilization of any kind. To put such a race of men in possession of a ‘state’ government in a system of federal government is to trust them with the development of political and legal civilization upon the most important subjects of human life, and to do this in communities with a large white population is simply to establish barbarism in power over civilization.” [Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, p.133 ]

Burgess is a Tory and open apostle of reaction. He tells us that the nation now believes “that it is the white man’s mission, his duty and his right, to hold the reins of political power in his own hands for the civilization of the world and the welfare of mankind.”4

4 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, pp. viii, ix.

For this reason America is following “the European idea of the duty of civilized races to impose their political sovereignty upon civilized, or half civilized, or not fully civilized, races anywhere and everywhere in the world.”5

5 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, p. 218.

He complacently believes that “There is something natural in the subordination of an inferior race to a superior race, even to the point of the enslavement of the inferior race, but there is nothing natural in the opposite.”6 He therefore denominates Reconstruction as the rule “of the uncivilized Negroes over the whites of the South.”7 This has been the teaching of one of our greatest universities for nearly fifty years.

6 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, pp. 244-245.
7 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, p. 218.

Dunning was less dogmatic as a writer, and his own statements are often judicious. But even Dunning can declare that “all the forces [in the South] that made for civilization were dominated by a mass of barbarous freedmen”; and that “the antithesis and antipathy of race and color were crucial and ineradicable.”7a The work of most of the students whom he taught and encouraged has been one-sided and partisan to the last degree. Johns Hopkins University has issued a series of studies similar to Columbia’s; Southern teachers have been welcomed to many Northern universities, where often Negro students have been systematically discouraged, and thus a nation-wide university attitude has arisen by which propaganda against the Negro has been carried on unquestioned.

7a Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, pp. 212, 213.

The Columbia school of historians and social investigators have issued between 1895 and the present time sixteen studies of Reconstruction in the Southern States, all based on the same thesis and all done according to the same method: first, endless sympathy with the white South; second, ridicule, contempt or silence for the Negro; third, a judicial attitude towards the North, which concludes that the North under great misapprehension did a grievous wrong, but eventually saw its mistake and retreated.

These studies vary, of course, in their methods. Dunning’s own work is usually silent so far as the Negro is concerned. Burgess is more than fair in law but reactionary in matters of race and property, regarding the treatment of a Negro as a man as nothing less than a crime, and admitting that “the mainstay of property is the courts.”

In the books on Reconstruction written by graduates of these universities and others, the studies of Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Louisiana are thoroughly bad, giving no complete picture of what happened during Reconstruction, written for the most part by men and women without broad historical or social background, and all designed not to seek the truth but to prove a thesis. Hamilton reaches the climax of this school when he characterizes the black codes, which even Burgess condemned, as “not only … on the whole reasonable, temperate and kindly, but, in the main, necessary.”8

8 Hamilton, “Southern Legislation in Respect to Freedmen” in Studies in Southern History and Politics, p. 156.

 

Source:   W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, Black Reconstruction. An Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, pp. 718-720.

Image Source: John W. Burgess in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2. Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899,  p. 481.