The teachers from the Freedmen's Bureau were very diverse. Many were single women form the north. They were devoted to social reform. Their job was very demanding and required a person who was truly devoted to this cause. The first group of 53 teachers included 12 women. Th
In addition to teaching, they were often required to provide for the basic needs of the freedmen. The needs of the freed enslaved people were extensive. They needed clothing, "I did not see one who had a change of clothing, and some had on but one garment, and that made of tent cloth.: (Miss Barnes, The National Freedman, 1865). The teachers accounted for their needs and made those public in search of support. Teachers taught the basics of learning such as reading and also gave lessons on management and life skills. Throughout slavery, there were teachers and autodidacts like Frederick Dougals and Harriel Tubman who also encouraged others to resist oppression. As Caroline E. Croome explains, "teaching school is only part of my business (of course, the chief part); but I am called upon to act as physician, nurse, notary publi, church-warden, justice of the peace (don't laugh, please, at my high-sounding letters, for they are very serious things;, undertaker, and corresponding secretary"
Mary Peake was a teacher for the first school for "contrabands: opened at Fortress Monroe in 1861. She was African-American. She started a school which included her young daugter and she also started an evening school for adults.
Charlotte Forten was the first African-American Freedmen's teacher from the North. She was a well-educated free black from a wealthy Philadelphia family who taught at the Oaks Plantation.
The schools were rustic building that serve both as churches and schools. they wre bit suitable specially during the winter.. Jane Briggs describes her school as modest, " it has sashed windows which make it something better than a barn." Another teacher, Charlotte Forten, describes her school as damp and cold and without a chimney.
What happened to these schools in the late 1870s and 1880s-1890s: Notes from "Schools for All: The Backs and Public Education in the South, 1865-1877 by William Preston Vaughn, North Texas State University.
In 1867, before the bureau closed, its commissioner, Oliver Otis Howard, proposed a plan for continuing education with funds from the U.S. Department of Education. Congress did not approve this plan and the Bureau closed in 1870. Thee Bureau helped established organizations of higher learning such as Saint Martin's School, National Theological Institute, and Howard University. It also gave support to schools in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. There was opposition to freedmen's schools: school burnings, destruction of textbooks, and threats to teachers. After the closure of the Bureau, education of the African American population was taken over by state governments and most of the southern states provided education in segregated schools.
In 1874, Alabama framed a new constitution which stated that separate schools were to be provided for African Americans. In 1965, laws in Arkansas kept students separate by race. Florida had separate schools despite their own laws against discrimination. Mississippi forbade teaching of mixed races in the same schools. The U.S. Congress itself had established a segregated school system in the District of Columbia. Louisiana was the only state that passes a law that stated “there shall be no separate schools or institutions of learning established exclusively for any race.”
By the 1860s literacy in the black population was 10% and in a decade it increased to over 25%. By the 1870s, northern teachers had left and most of the educators were African American southerners. “The closing of the bureau schools did not mean an abrupt cessation to black education in the South there was, instead, a relatively smooth period of transition in which most of the bureau schools were absorbed into the public school systems of each Southern state. The reorganization and general improvement of these systems for the education of both races on a tuition-free basis undoubtedly proved to be the most outstanding and durable achievement of the Radical state governments between 1868 and 1877." Integrated education was not successful. Philanthropic foundations like the Peabody Fund and the John F. Slater Fund upgraded education in a segregated way. Later the 14th and 15th amendments provided for laws regarding segregation to be changed.