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Marching
to a Different Drummer
Unrecognized Heroes of American History
By Robin Kadison Berson
Lucy Craft Laney
(1854-1933)
Born in slavery, Lucy Craft Laney (1854-1933)
became one of the most influential education in
post-Reconstruction Georgia. Both her mother Louisa and
father David Laney, a skilled carpenter, were slaves;
however, her father bought his freedom as a young man
and in turn bought the freedom of his wife and children.
Lucy was seven of their ten children. The Reverend David
Laney also received ordination through the Northern
Presbyterian branch of the church in that they set no
racial limitation of ministry. Generous support,
integrity, and dignity were general traits of this
family.
Her mother Louis continued to work for the Miss
Campbell who had owned her. Miss Campbell opened her private
library to the young Lucy and guided her study.
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With the encouragement and
financial support of Miss Campbell , Lucy attended Lewis
High School in Macon. At this point, Atlanta University
was just taking shape with the support of the American
Missionary Association, an abolitionist organization
responsible for founding many of the South's fine black
colleges. Lucy Laney was selected as a member of the first
class at Atlanta University. An eager student, she was one
of four members of the first graduating class in 1873. (Berson,
188). |
Lucy entered the first class of
Atlanta University in 1869 at the age of 15. After graduation from Atlanta
University, Laney began a lifelong career as an educator and the
founder of numerous institutions for the uplift of freedmen and
their children. She taught first, for ten years, in the
public schools of Savannah, Macon, and Milledgeville. Much of her
efforts were curtailed by the reactionary phases of Reconstruction
and post Reconstruction Georgia.
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African American teachers
were paid far less than white teachers, usually no more
than twelve to eighteen dollars a month. Out of every
dollar spent on public education, ninety-three cents went
to white schools and only seven cents to black education.
But budgetary constraints, however distorted, were not
really the most basic consideration: if that was the case,
Southern whites would have welcomed the teachers who came
to the black schools through the Northern philanthropies
and freedmen's aid societies and freedmen's aid societies,
since these teachers placed no financial burden on
local school districts. What underlay all of Southern
educational policy was a determination not to lose the
inexpensive, subservient agricultural labor pool the
freedmen represented. . . . Even more pernicious was the
widespread attitude that a liberal education might leave
African Americans dissatisfied with the only role in
Southern society whites intended to permit them (Berson,
189). |
Believing that she could provide a higher standard of
education than Georgia's public schools for Negroes, Lucy Laney
decided to open her own school with the encouragement of the Christ
Presbyterian Church, USA, and chose the city of Augusta which provided no
schools for black children. Various Negro aid societies
provided some funds. The school opened on January 6, 1883 in the basement
of the Christ Presbyterian Church (10 and Telfair Street), starting with
five children, Laney had within a couple of years over 200
students enrolled in her school.
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Laney's school offered
literature, classics, mathematics, and a required course
in African American history. Laney was an early and
passionate believer in the centrality of racial and family
pride in the education of a confident, competent, humane
individual. Her curriculum emphasized the contributions of
blacks in a variety of fields. She brought local African
American artists and craftspeople to the school to
demonstrate and discuss their work. With the assistance of
an early German immigrant, she launched a school
orchestra. All of this ran directly counter to the
prevailing trend of "industrial" education for
blacks. the accommodationist philosophy of Booker T.
Washington was what whites wanted to hear (Berson, 189). |
In 1885, the first class was graduated from Ms. Laney’s
school. The school was chartered in the state of Georgia in 1886,
but with over 20 students Laney's school was in need of a larger
facility. In 1887 Laney traveled to Minnesota to tell the Presbyterian Church Convention about
her school and the need for funding. Though the Church did not fill the need for
greater resources, Francine Haines, the secretary of the Women's
Executive Committee of Home Missions, was impressed by Lucy
Laney's appeal.
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Haines was deeply struck by Laney's sense
of purpose and determination that she launched her own
crusade for the school among her wealthy friends.
Eventually, Haines's campaign would bear fruit in the form
of major contributions from several Northern women; the
buildings erected with the entire school were named in
honor Haines, the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute.
(Berson, 190-191) |
Haines came up with
$10,000 for the expansion of the school. Relocated to
800 Gwinett (Laney-Walker Blvd.) Street, Haines Institute survived until the
onset of the Depression. Before her death from nephritis and
hypertension in October 1933, Lucy Craft Laney started the first black kindergarten in Augusta, Georgia
and the first black nursing school in the city, the Lamar School of
Nursing. She influenced many by her work at Haines, including John Hope, a
Haines graduate and the first African American president of
Atlanta University; and Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of
Bethune-Cookman.
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W.E.B. DuBois called her "the dark
vestal virgin who kept the fires of Negro education
fiercely flaming in the rich but mean-spirited city of
Augusta, Georgia" (James, 651). For sixty years she
had maintained a fierce, compelling vision of the precious
worth of each individual; she had lived with a moral
urgency to elicit from each child the personal excellence
she believed innate in all people. |
Sources:
Anderson, James D. "Northern Foundations
and the Shaping of Southern Black Rural Education,
1902-1935." In B. Edward McClellan and William J. Reese,
eds.
The Social History of American Education. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Daniel, Sadie.
Women Builders.
Washington, DC: Associated Publishing, 1931.
Griggs, A.C. "Lucy Craft Laney." Journal
of Negro History 52 (August, 1986): 97-102. [Fist published
January 1934.]
Grimke, Francis J.
The Works of Francis J. Grimke. Edited by Carter Woodson. Washington, DC: Associated
Publishing, 1942. Vol. 4.
James, Edward T., ed.
Notable American
Women. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Laney, Lucy. "A Progress Report from the
Founder of the Haines School." In Gerda Lerner, ed.
Black
Women in White America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
Loewenberg, Bert James and Ruth Bogin, eds.
Black
Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life: Their Words, Their
Thoughts, Their Feelings. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1976.
McCrorey, Mary Jackson. "Lucy
Laney." The Crisis 41 (June 1934): 161.
Ovington, Mary White.
Portraits in Color.
New York: Viking Press, 1927.
Sterne, Emma Gelders.
Mary McLeod Bethune.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. *
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updated 8 April 2008 |
