Education

In the chaotic year of 1844, before Marthtasville had changed its name to Atlanta, Miss Martha Reed courageously opened a small private school in a shack near what is now the intersection of Decatur and King Streets. Here "for about a year" she taught the children of "lumbermen, saw-mill workers, teamsters, trainmen, blacksmiths, commissary-keepers, mechanics and laborers" in the town's first school. Its second school, a one-room shack that also served as a church on Sunday, was erected by private subscription and opened in 1845 on the site now bounded by Peachtree, Pryor, and Houston Streets. No references are available indicating who taught this school or how long it remained in existence. Apparently both of these schools were short-lived, for during the following year the town seems to have been without any educational institution.

Then, in the spring of 1847, Dr. Nedam L. Angier came to Atlanta from New England and erected a building known as Angier's Academy on the southwest corner of Forsyth and Garnett Streets. His wife taught this school for several months during the summer, but the venture failed, for the little town was still too engrossed in its struggle for survival to find time for cultural enterprises. During the year almost 200 buildings had been constructed and the population had leapt from a few hundred to more than 2,000. Children had been pressed into service helping their parents clear the land and split logs so that they might have shelter before winter set in. Regular schooling, for the time being, was out of the question.

By fall, however, with noisy children kept indoors by cold and rain, parents were more than ready to avail themselves of the services of Dr. William N. White, an idealistic young man who had but recently come south from Utica, New York, to regain his health while earning his living as a teacher,"... which, with God's blessing, I trust I shall be able to do." On October 21, 1847, he made this entry in his diary: There are lots of children who I am assured would go to a school worth patronizing, and from what I can see I am sure, with a good building, in a very short time I could make a thousand dollars a year. But there is a difficulty; the only building I can get is a miserable shell of a thing without ceiling, and it cannot be finished this winter. I have been to all prominent men of the place, who promise their influence, and those who have children, their patronage. For two years there will be great difficulties on account of the unfixed character of the inhabitants, the poverty of most of the present settlers and, this year, the discomforts of the old building.

On November 8, White took over Dr. Angier's academy, "which has a bell, but is quite unfinished and is merely covered and enclosed, and opened his first class with an enrollment of 25 pupils. On November 18, he writes: "School goes off very pleasantly; have several new scholars. A few days later, however, he declares mournfully, Surely there is no work in the world as onerous as the employment of the teacher. It needs all the wisdom in the world. ..." This entry offers some clue as to why White, never the stern disciplinarian, closed school within three months and departed for Athens to enter the book business. Yet he was not embittered; he left believing my scholars love me, and I am sure I love them. Other teachers of the period were not so sensitive, for various writers with first-hand information stress the fact that a bundle of "wyths" or hickory sticks was always kept in sight of the whole school. Thrashings were administered not only for misconduct but for "missing lessons," and the mildest punishment the derelict student could hope for was the wearing of a red dunce cap.

Records indicate that the academy was taken over by a teacher named Adair, who was followed by W.W. Janes. Janes' charges for instruction are interesting: For orthography, reading and writing, $4 per term; arithmetic, grammar and geography, $6; Latin, Greek and Mathematics, $8." Mrs. T.S. Ogilbie, who opened a school early in 1851 on the corner of Hunter and Pryor Streets, offered instruction in these same subjects at the same price, but added "... philosophy, botany, rhetoric, astronomy, geography of the heavens, ancient and modern history, moral and intellectual philosophy, $6; waxwork, fruit and flowers, $10; music and use of the piano, $12.50; painting and embroidery, $5."

Several other institutions also opened in 1851, among them Miss Nevers' "school for the instruction of children of both sexes" on Marietta Street, Miss C.W. Dews' "School for females," T.O. Adair's "literary school on the Humphries lot," the Misses Bettison's and Daniel's school" near Walton and Spring on the site of the present old post office building, and two schools by the name of Atlanta Male Academy, one directed by J.T. McGinty and the other by G.A. Austin.

It was not until 1853, when Atlanta's population had increased to 4,000, that the first free school was opened. This was the Holland Free School, named for Edmund Weyman Holland, a banker who leased the old Angier Academy property free of rent to the city for five years. A South Carolinian who had been a schoolmaster in Alabama, Holland decided upon a free school as a fitting philanthropic gesture toward his adopted city where he had made his fortune. Although the students' tuitions were financed by the State poor school fund, an aid usually resented and spurned by the citizens, the school continued in successful operation for six years after Holland's extension of the lease. But, as Atlanta continued to grow, some of its people began to show certain genteel snobberies of attitude frequently found in a new society, and it was this element that revived the old feeling toward the poor school fund.

In 1858 a group of citizens, unwilling to utilize this educational system and unable to afford private tuition, began agitating for the establishment of public schools. Foremost in this progressive group was the Scotch-Irish schoolmaster and unionist Alexander N. Wilson, who at that time was teaching his classical and English school in the building first occupied by Martha Reed. Wilson made a special trip to Providence, Rhode Island, to study its public school system and returned enthusiastic for the establishment of a similar one in Atlanta.

Mass meetings were called and success seemed at hand, but an opposing group, which regarded a public school system as merely a substitute for the old poor school fund, came forward and began soliciting for the founding of a female institute. It is difficult to understand why such an institute was deemed an acceptable alternative for a public school system providing for both sexes and for a greater range in ages. Nevertheless, the majority of the people supported this proposal and, when council refused to appropriate funds for its establishment, raised $15,000 by private subscription. The Female Institute was opened in 1860 on the corner of Ellis and Courtland Streets. The defeated proponents of a public school system, seeing that victory must be deferred, adopted a conciliatory attitude and expressed approval of the new school for young ladies first because they believed education from that source was better than none, and second because they believed that educated women would be the strongest advocates in the future of a system of public schools."

By 1860 more than a score of private schools had been established, but during the years of the war all were closed and those that were spared destruction in the burning of the city were converted into hospitals. Yet, as soon as the more urgent needs of the reconstructed town were met, attention was given to the re-establishment of schools, and by 1866 there were 19 private institutions operating. But Atlanta's population had now grown to 10,000, and, while these private institutions were more than sufficient to accommodate the children of the few families of means, many less fortunate were growing up in a state of illiteracy. Some momentum for the public school movement was left from the pre-war period, but this alone was not sufficient for an advance. Also at this time the carpetbaggers began to agitate for racial equality in the schools throughout the State. The result was that a public school system, which would have been subject to this racial intermingling, was further delayed and the position of the private schools strengthened.

In 1866 four schools were established for Negro children. The American Missionary Society sent the Reverend E.M. Gravath to Atlanta early in the year and he immediately organized a class in the African Methodist Church on Gilmer Street. Within a few months a second school was opened in a building brought from Chattanooga and re-erected on Walton Street. These two schools housed about 1,000 children. During the summer this overcrowding was relieved somewhat by the Freedmen's Bureau which made available a small structure on the site of the present Candler Building. Later in the year the Missionary Society and the Freedmen's Bureau co-operated in collecting funds for a larger building. Dr. Storr's church, of Cincinnati, gave the largest sum, $1,000, and, accordingly, the new building completed in December 1866 was called Storr's School. This building stood on the corner of Piedmont Avenue and Houston Street and was for years the principal grammar school for Negroes.

By 1870 it had become apparent that the Negro children of the city were provided with better educational facilities than the white children. But, with the removal of the threat of racial intermingling in the withdrawal of the military government in the latter part of that year, the position of the earlier advocates of a public school system was now fortified by economic conditions, and citizens who had formerly been in opposition began to clamor for it.

The council hastily amended the city charter to permit the establishment of public schools and imposed taxes and issued bonds to assure their maintenance. A board of education, consisting of 12 members, was appointed, and in November 1871, M.B. Mallon was elected superintendent. In January 1872, the first three buildings were opened with an enrollment of 1,839 pupils and with a faculty of "24 females and 6 males." By the end of the scholastic year, the number of children in attendance was almost 4,000, the faculty had increased to 56, and the buildings, either rented or erected for the purpose, included seven grammar and two high schools for white children and three schools for Negroes. Most of the "private and select" schools were forced to close their doors and many of the teachers were absorbed into the public system.

Running parallel to the expansion of the public schools was the growth of institutions of higher learning. In this direction Negroes received more outside philanthropic aid than the white citizens, and from 1865 through 1885 six Negro colleges and universities were founded in Atlanta. These institutions are now known as Clark College, Gammon Theological Seminary, Morris Brown College, Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Atlanta University. The last three, and the Atlanta School of Social Work, are affiliated under the Atlanta University System, and Atlanta University is the only Negro institution in the city offering a degree for graduate work.

In 1870 Oglethorpe University, formerly located in Milledgeville and closed during the war, reopened in Atlanta. Financial difficulties forced it to close two years later. The Southern Medical College was founded in 1879 and was later combined with the old Atlanta Medical College, which had been established in 1855. In 1882 the general assembly, recognizing the need for skilled technicians to develop the natural resources and build up the industries of the State, passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a technical school. As a result, the Georgia School of Technology was opened in Atlanta six years later. Decatur Female Seminary, which was opened in 1889, is now Agnes Scott College, an outstanding institution for the higher education of women.

Educational progress was not made, however, without much opposition from reactionaries. An editorial in the Atlanta Journal of 1883 expresses the passing mood of an era. "Some of our best men appear to rest under the impression that education is a sort of panacea for every evil which affects the body politic. This is a mistaken notion. What is education doing for the Negro? A Southern editor who has been a close observer of affairs since the war answers this interrogatory with the statement that every educated Negro goes into politics or into the penitentiary. The truth is, education in the customary sense of the word makes better citizens of those only whose natural bent inclines them to a moral and law-abiding mode of life; with the naturally vicious the education of the schools goes for nothing, except that it increases their power for evil. Perhaps it would be well to make haste slowly in the matter of public education. A too rapid growth would inevitablymake us a nation without a conscience, and give us over to infidelity and dangerous political heresy.

Despite these views, the establishment of schools went forward and by 1892 Atlanta had 16 grammar and 2 high schools. There were also many private preparatory schools and several special schools. Washington Seminary, which had been established in 1878 as an elementary school, was continually adding more advanced subjects to its curriculum. In 1895 the Peacock School for Boys was opened to teach college preparatory work, and the Southern Female Seminary moved to College Park from LaGrange and reopened as Cox College. In 1900 the Georgia Military Academy was established in the same Atlanta suburb. These were followed by Marist College, a Roman Catholic preparatory school for boys, in 1901 and by the Southern College of Pharmacy in 1903. In 1909 the Sacred Heart Church, under the ministration of Father John E. Gunn, established a parish school, thereby fulfilling the desire which the Catholics had harbored since the seventies. In the same year members of the North Avenue Presbyterian Church opened an elementary school for girls and boys in the Sunday school room of the church; high school work for girls was added in 1912.

In 1914 the old Emory College at Oxford was moved to Atlanta and established as a university, and it later took over the combined Atlanta School of Medicine and the Southern College of Physicians and Surgeons; Oglethorpe University reopened in 1916, aided in its re-establishment by a gift from Atlanta citizens of $250,000 and 137 acres of land.

The Negroes again assumed a prominent position in the educational field with the founding of the Atlanta School of Social Work in 1925. Set up through the efforts of leading educators of both white and colored races, the institution achieved such excellent standing that within three years it was admitted to the American Association of Schools of Social Work, holding the only Negro membership in that organization.

In 1933 the University System of Georgia took over the Georgia Tech Evening School of Commerce, which had been established downtown in 1914, and developed a university extension center. The evening college grants only the degree of Bachelor of Commercial Science, but credit for three years work toward a Bachelor of Arts degree can be earned here and transferred to a senior college in the university system. A junior college was added in 1934, with day classes.

During all these years the city had been hard pressed to build enough public schools for its rapidly growing population, but, with growth slowing after the boom years of the 1920's, Atlanta had time to adapt itself to the building needs of the system and to consider the quality of its educational facilities. The progressive methods of Atlanta's public schools now compare favorably with systems found in cities of much larger size. Textbooks and curriculum constantly undergo modernizing processes designed to keep them attuned to the trends of public opinion. In addition to the basic studies found in every modern system, the Atlanta schools give instruction in creative art, music, and physical training. Free textbooks are supplied to all grades, free lunches to undernourished children, and free clinical service to the entire student body.

The system is administered by a board of 6 members, one from each city ward elected for a 4-year term, who appoint and have control over the general superintendent and his 3 assistant superintendents. There are 73 school buildings, housing 44 elementary schools for white children and 12 for Negroes, 6 junior and 4 senior high schools for white children, and 2 senior high schools for Negroes. The remaining buildings are allotted to special classes, such as those for the blind, the mentally defective, and the hard-of-heanng.

The enrollment numbered 64,950 for the 1939-40 term. Maintenance cost approximates $3,500,000 yearly, a sum amounting to 30 per cent of the city's annual revenue. As funds become available, a further expenditure of $6,000,000 is planned to modernize and increase the number of buildings and facilities.

Because of the city's metropolitan spread, three other school systems are operated within the vicinity: the Fulton County Schools, the DeKalb County Schools, and the Decatur Schools. Fulton County maintains 94 schools, of which 39 are for Negroes, and has an enrollment of 21,733. DeKalb County, with Decatur as its seat, has 51 schools with 10,122 pupils. Decatur organized its public school system in 1902 and now has 9 schools with an enrollment of 3,066 children.

Atlanta children can obtain complete schooling from kindergarten to college without going out of the city. Further co-operative plans among the city's institutions are contemplated for Emory University, Agnes Scott, and Georgia Tech. Actual realization of this plan will definitely establish Atlanta as the leading educational center of the South.

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