Chapter 1: “I must learn now or not at all”: Social and Cultural Capital in the Educational Initiatives of Formerly Enslaved African Americans in Mississippi, 1862-1869

In June 1937, at the age of 91, an ex-slave from Holly Spring, Mississippi, by the name of George Washington Albright was interviewed by the Daily Worker regarding his legislative and educational activities during and after the Civil War.¹ Albright proffered the above statement and his intentions seemed unmistakable. Cognizant of Mississippi blacks’ existing educational opportunities and their extremely vulnerable and denigrated status, he wanted to inform the public of the important contributions African Americans—in particular former slaves—played in the establishment of the state’s first comprehensive public school system. Albright knew firsthand that the status of African Americans in the years immediately after slavery and in contemporary Jim Crow Mississippi was markedly different. Prior to the end of the Reconstruction era and the rise of state-sanctioned segregation, Mississippi blacks—despite the overwhelming majority being former slaves—viewed freedom optimistically and had rights that extended beyond second-class citizenship. For nearly a decade after the war they voted, became landowners, determined and negotiated their working conditions, and were leaders and contributors in their local communities, regions, and the entire state.