Challenges in Ohio
To understand the state of education in Athens, it is necessary to first understand the laws and tensions that arose across the state during the Civil War Era. In the decades preceding the Civil War, Ohio passed education laws that limited the availability of education for Black residents and advocated for segregated schools. An act passed in 1848 taxed the property of Black residents to pay for the education of their children. Though the 1848 act was repealed, a similar act passed in 1849, which added a means for Black residents to elect school trustees and to choose teachers for their schools.
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In 1853, the state required school districts with more than thirty Black children to establish Black schools.[1] This set a precedent for communities with a sizeable Black population, but even with these laws in place, Black communities faced challenges in establishing schools for their children. In Cincinnati, one of the new states’ largest cities and with a large African-American population, officials refused to give access to the funds set aside for Black education until the court ruled against them. Even then, the system was over-crowded and under-funded.[2] Small communities were at a disadvantage under this law as well. In a letter, former lawyer and state senator Arvin C. Wales voiced his concerns:
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When the number of a district is less than 15, the money shall be handed over to the Township Board. What shall be done when the number is over 15 and less than 30 as I believe is the case in [Logan, Hocking County] district? Your own sense of honor I know would exclaim against educating your children at the expense of colored tax payers who are debarred from all benefits of their money. […] Yet what shall we do? We are not permitted to establish a school for there are too few enumerated youth, we are not authorized to pay money to the Township Board for there are more than 15 colored children in the district.[3]
Excerpt of Arwine C. Wales' letter. Courtesy of Ohio History Connection.
Southeast Ohio faced its own challenges. Enos Van Camp, a man from Logan, Ohio, was prohibited from enrolling his children in the local school. Van Camp’s children were five-eighths white; legally, he argued, they were white. The court ruled that anyone of African descent could be categorized as “colored” and excluded from a white school. Despite their predominantly white ancestry, “the precise shade of color did not matter because white people did not wish to associate with any person who had a ‘perceptible mixture of African blood.’”[4] Under this law, school districts could choose to exclude any children who had Black ancestry. These laws made it even more difficult for Black families to educate their children, especially in rural communities where there were not enough students to fund separate schools.
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Notes
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1. Charles H. Wesley, Ohio Negroes in the Civil War (Columbus: Ohio State University Press for the Ohio Historical society, 1962), 9.
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2. Darrel E. Bigham, On Jordan’s Banks: Emancipation and its Aftermath in the Ohio River Valley (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 39.
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3. Arwine C. Wales, “Letter Regarding Van Camp v. Board of Education of the Incorporated Village of Logan”, November 22, 1862, Ohio History Connection. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p267401coll36/id/988.
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4. David W. Bishop, “Plessy V. Ferguson, a Reinterpretation,” The Journal of Negro History 62, no. 2 (April 1977): 128. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2717173 ; “William Virgil Peck”, Former Justices, The Supreme Court of Ohio & The Ohio Judicial System. Accessed September 14, 2020. https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/SCO/formerjustices/bios/peckWV.asp
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Image: "Arvine C. Wales letter regarding Van Camp v. Board of Education of the Incorporated Village of Logan, November 22, 1862," Thomas and Charity Rotch Papers C-211-43. Ohio History Connection. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll39/id/4012/rec/7
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