On a recent research trip to Virginia, I came across a brochure, “Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail” that identifies 41 sites significant in the development of the free public education system in Virginia. We should do likewise in North Carolina.
One spot should be New Bern and the year, 1864. This is when James Walker Hood arrived for the purpose of forming a congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He did so – the first in North Carolina and the entire South. More importantly for civil rights in education, he took the AME Zion message of religious freedom, equal political rights for blacks, and the importance of education to the Freedmen’s Convention in October of 1865 where he was elected to serve as president. This was one of the first formal assemblages of African Americans after the Civil War in the South and they created the first collective political document of African Americans in North Carolina. In the form of a resolution submitted to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1865, it sought those freedoms Hood had been preaching, including seeking “education for our children, that they may be made useful in all the relations of life.”
Hood then was nominated as a delegate for the next constitutional convention that met in 1868 and successfully formed a new constitution for North Carolina. This constitution is the basis for the one we have today. Hood was one of the most impassioned speakers to argue against providing for separate schools in the constitution. As he argued, “make this distinction in your organic law and in many places the white children will have good schools at the expense of the whole people, while the colored people will have none better or what will be but little than none.” While he prevailed at the constitutional convention, the constitution was amended in 1876 to provide for separate schools. Sadly, Hood’s remarks proved to be prescient.
After the convention, Hood was appointed as the state associate superintendent to oversee public schools for blacks, an appointment he held for two years utnil the General Assembly removed his salary.
What is his relevance today? Our good fortune is the key education provisions crafted by the 1868 Constitutional Convention continue in our current NC Constitution. In the landmark 1997 Leandro v. State opinion, our Supreme Court held, “at the time this provision was originally written in 1868...the intent of the framers was that every child have a fundamental right to a sound basic education which would prepare the child to participate fully in society as it existed in his or her lifetime.” Bishop Hood was a member of the education committee that drafted the education article of the constitution and a frequent orator on the floor of the convention. He is one of these framers that we can thank for creating a fundamental right to education.
Under Judge Manning’s watchful eye, the right to a sound, basic educatin continues to shape public education in this state. He has scheduled the next hearing to address his concerns regarding inadequacies in educational opportunities for Tuesday, May 4 at the Wake County Courthouse.
I’ll be talking about James Walker Hood on Thursday, April 15 at Tryon Palace in New Bern. Interestingly, at the same time in Raleigh, civil rights leaders are coming together for the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee. No doubt they will be discussing other events that should be celebrated and recognized in a North Carolina Civil Rights Heritage Trail, including events coordinated at Shaw University. But let’s not forget about what happened 100 years earlier.
