Schools
Below you will find links to documents related to thirteen Harford County schools for African American students during the Reconstruction Era. While the term “Freedmen’s Bureau School” has been used to describe schools for black students in the South during Reconstruction, it is something of a misnomer. The Freedmen’s Bureau did not themselves build schools or hire teachers. Rather, they supplied building materials to black communities who wanted a school, and cooperated with freedmen's aid societies to connect those schools with teachers who under the employ of those societies. The Bureau also acted in the capacity of school superintendent, requiring teachers to submit montly reports. The hard work of forming boards of trustees, obtaining land, erecting, furnishing, and maintaining the schoolhouses, and boarding the teachers, relied on the determination of the local people.
The schools below do not constitute the entirety of black education in Harford County during this time. Teaching also took place informally in homes and churches, and in small private schools that had no relationship with the Freedmen's Bureau.
Most schools in Harford County were given a unique name by their trustees or local community. Examples include “Anderson Institute” and “Clark’s Chapel.” However, in the Freedmen’s Bureau documents that constitute most of the material on this website, they tend to be referred to by the name of the nearest town or village. Therefore, in most cases, we have chosen to make the geographical name the primary one.
