Monday, February 3, 2025

Notes on Little Central and the Colored School around 1870

It's Black History Month and Macy's is closing.

It's a good time to revisit the "Colored School" in Little Central located on the corner of Marion and High Streets, the north side of the Macy's block.

Little Central, home for "Colored School" on Marion at High
(Streetview in 2012, State Library inset)

There's nothing really new here, but maybe we can refine a few details.

In her recent book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920, Manesha Sinha focuses on Black self-determination as she stresses bottom-up action in "grassroots Reconstruction" and "Black Reconstruction." On education she writes

In 1865, the Freedmen's Bureau ran 740 schools with 90,589 students and 1,314 teachers....This was a "drop in the bucket," though, as the Bureau received hundreds of applications for new schools from freedpeople....As a result of congressional appropriations during Reconstruction, the Bureau schools were put on a firmer footing. But the biggest driver of the educational success of the Bureau remained freedpeople themselves. By 1867, "colored pupils" were paying school tuition and freed people contributed considerably to the upkeep of freedmen's schools....Freedpeople's desire for education transcended age; many adults started "self-teaching." Freedpeople established their own schools in "cellars, sheds, or the corner of a negro meeting house"....

Our establishment histories haven't said much about the Colored School here, in part because little was known. As I read it, pretty much everything depends on and is a refinement of Sue Bell's 2002 piece in Historic Marion and later adapted for her Oregon Encyclopedia piece, "Salem's Colored School and Little Central."

The Salem Online History, now hosted at the Mill, discussed it in the context of Black History more generally.
In 1867, the African American community in Salem raised $427.50, which allowed them to operate a school for six months. They placed an announcement in the newspaper, saying that “Notice is hereby given that the colored people of Salem expect to pay all the expenses of the Evening School now being held by them, without aid from other citizens – no person is authorized to collect funds in our name.” The following year, the city of Salem continued what they had begun, and opened Little Central School. This segregated school was located near Central School on High Street between Center and Marion. Its fifteen minority students were taught by Marie Smith and Mrs. R. Mallory. Tuition at Little Central was $4 a term, the same that white children paid to attend “big” Central School.

And reference in the Mill's piece on Emancipation celebrations:

the African American community of Salem was renting a room in order to have a school that their children could attend, the city’s schools having barred their children entry (even though they were paying the taxes that supported the city’s school system).  Fed up, parents raised enough money to hire a teacher and rent a room to provide their children with an education.

Sinha's notes on history and self-determination suggest a broader reading of the Colored School as an expression of Reconstruction here in Salem. It was not just a local story but took place in that national context, and also would offer more evidence that Reconstruction was story for a much wider area than the South.

There is some evidence that locals understood it this broader way.

In a February piece from 1868 full of vile, racist language (bowdlerized here with brackets), the Albany State Rights Democrat quotes the Oregonian:

The colored people of Salem give notice that "they expect to pay all the expenses of the Evening School now being held by them, without aid of other citizens. No person is authorized to collect funds in their name."... In Democratic patois, "[the colored people] are getting sassy."
It directly linked the Salem school and the politics of local education with national themes.
What we oppose is the proposition sometimes advocated...to have [colored children] go to the same school with white children. We also oppose the [Freedmen's] Bureau because it wrings from the white men of the country from twenty to thirty millions of dollars annually to feed, clothe, educate and pamper worthless lazy [people]....

As for Salem, there appear to be two separate school sessions that are getting a little squishy sometimes. As I read it, there was first a daytime school for kids and then evening school for adults. The quotes about "expecting to pay" and " no person is authorized to collect funds" appear to be about the evening school, not the first daytime school. It's not possible to be certain at the moment, however.

Bell located the origin with William P. Johnson.

African American artist William P. Johnson had offered in 1861 a scholarship of $500 to one of the schools to allow his daughter-in-law to enroll, but his offer had been rejected. By March 1867, he had collected enough funds from friends and other Black families in Salem to open a school with about eight students and possibly some young adults. With $430.75 in hand, he rented a room for $10 a month and engaged a teacher to conduct classes.

If we can find it, there is surely more to say about Johnson!

March 13th, 1865

July 17th, 1872

He might have been more primarily a tradesman than artist, but that could have been a day job also to support his art. The list of references in his ad were leading Salemites. His obituary says he "commanded the respect of all who knew him" and that "he had amassed quite a snug little fortune." I read this as mainly sincere rather than patronizing.

We may never know much about the fund-raising for the school. An Albany notice from January 1867 suggests the money was in hand already. Maybe it was mostly Johnson's, or maybe there was a much broader distribution of contributions. Discussion and planning and soliciting must have been going on for a while, invisible to most white people.

January 26th, 1867
Albany State Rights Democrat

In 1867 a March start date for the school seems about right. This Oregon City note from September said it's been going for six months.

September 21st, 1867
Oregon City Enterprise

Of course $400 is not a trivial sum, and Johnson's ability to have it in 1861 or in 1867 indeed testifies to some actual wealth. Here's a clip from a list of building projects between January 1865 and January 1866.

March 5th, 1866

Ordinary shops and homes could be built for $400. That's a significant amount to raise from a small number of people.

Interestingly, Daniel Jones shows up for his barbershop. This has to be Rev. Daniel Jones before he was ordained! The Mill's history says he was in Salem "by 1868" and a note on last year's Juneteenth walk says his barbershop dates from "about 1866." We can push his arrival back a little more into the calendar year of 1865. He's also not racially tagged with "colored." Later accounts called him a "teacher" and he may have taught at the school also.

August 28th, 1865

Additionally, the mechanism of school funding might deserve more attention. 

Bell said

Even though the 1862 Oregon Code of Laws required that schools be free to all students “between the ages of four and twenty years,” the children of African American residents—seventeen in the 1860 census and fifty by 1870—continued to be excluded from attending the city’s public schools. Their parents, however, were required to pay the five-mill (5/10 of a penny) school assessment tax imposed by the school district.
But this does not seem like the best way to describe the funding. Here's a piece from a few years later. It was on a proposal that would provide funding for free schools, one of which would be the colored school. For whatever reasons, between 1862-1871 schools here for both Black people and white people were not "free."

April 26th, 1871

There were two other articles on free school in the same issue of the Weekly Statesman. It was a debate.

A few years later in 1887 the paper rehearsed the history and said it was more than a polite debate and called it "stormy time."

January 7th, 1887

This piece from 1951 also references the 1871 property tax and suggests we understand it as a rough capital/operations budget split.

March 28th, 1951

Until that moment in April of 1871 there was that five mill property tax, which Black Salemites had indeed been paying. But it was for buildings, and roughly seems to have been for the capital expense. The tuition fees paid the operations/staffing budget for teachers. Despite the 1862 law Bell cites, white families also had to pay tuition until the 1871 decision for "free schools" and a bump up in the property tax rate. 

The first 1871 clip had said that Lucy Mallory's husband, Rufus, was on the School Board. She taught in the Colored School.

January 7th, 1887

This second clip form 1871 gave approximate construction dates. Big Central was apparently completed in 1858. Little Central and the first East School (with which Big Central has been confused in photo captions - see notes below for a link to a more detailed discussion) completed between 1866 and 1869.

At the OE, reproducing an errant photo ID
This is the first East School
and later than 1863

It has seemed that Little Central was originally constructed as overflow, and not originally intended to be the Colored School. But the need for overflow didn't quite materialize, and the building became available for Black students. To say, as the online history piece now at the Mill does, that "the city of Salem continued what [the Black families] had begun, and opened Little Central School" may be a little misleading and optimistic about intent. (More certainty on this might surface with new evidence.)

The piece at the Mill says Marie Smith was a teacher in addition to Lucy Mallory. Here's a reference to Maggie Patton, also, teaching the evening classes for adults.

February 7th, 1872

Little has turned up on Marie Smith or Maggie Patton, and another time there might be more to say about them.

This work on education, even segregated as it was, along with organizing for woman suffrage and spiritualism in the early 1870s, has suggested that there were currents in Salem that can be understood also in the national context of Reconstruction.

March 30th, 1877

This reception for the Tennessee Jubilee Singers, hosted by George Williams, is ambiguous. You will recall "Major" George Williams, later banker and Mayor, and if this is the same person, this is evidence for social mixing that became more difficult in later decades. The singers also did not seem to have trouble with any hotel accommodations, which also became difficult or impossible in those same later decades. Recall the famous story about Mark Hatfield driving Marian Anderson (and others) to Portland for the night.

Still, as Bell notes, the census offers evidence that Blacks left Salem between 1870 and 1880, going from about 60 to only 16. This drain says something also.

Jeremy Okai Davis at Bush Barn right now
(via Elizabeth Leach)

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