The Freedmen’s Teacher Project: Teachers among the Freed People in the U.S. South, 1861-1877

The Freedmen’s Teacher Project (FTP) was initiated more than four decades ago. Its focus was on the people who responded to the overwhelming demand of formerly enslaved southern African Americans for access to literacy. Its temporal scope is from the first weeks of the American Civil War to the end of Reconstruction. The intent was to amass as much information on as many of the teachers as possible in order to, first, answer a number of historical questions about the teachers and, second, to measure the black response to educational opportunity. The project employs prosopography, or collective biography, to reveal commonalities and exceptions among the teachers. Originally imagined as a study of perhaps five thousand teachers, it grew to embrace every identifiable teacher in black schools during the focus time period, numbering now just shy of twelve thousand individuals. The conclusions that have been drawn have surprised, and usually delighted, activists and scholars working in black education, the social history of teachers and teaching, women’s history, social history, and teacher education.

自由民教师项目（Freedmen’s Teacher Project，缩写FTP）于四十余年前启动，其研究聚焦于响应此前遭奴役的南部非裔美国人对读写教育迫切需求的教师群体。该项目的时间跨度始于美国内战爆发初期，终于美国南部重建时期结束。项目初衷是尽可能多地收集每位相关教师的信息，以达成两大研究目标：其一，解答有关这些教师的诸多历史疑问；其二，衡量黑人群体对教育机会的响应程度。该项目采用集体传记研究法（prosopography）——一种系统性的集体生平研究方法——来揭示该教师群体的共性与特例。最初该项目仅计划研究约五千名教师，后续扩展至覆盖研究时段内黑人学校中所有可确认身份的教师，目前总数已接近一万两千人。目前得出的研究结论，既让从事黑人教育、教师与教学社会史、妇女史、社会史以及教师教育研究的活动家与学者们倍感意外，又普遍令他们感到欣喜。