This Just In – You never know who you’ll meet in a library.
Returning to college 15 years after my first attempt, I found myself sitting on the floor in the stacks in the basement of the James Shepard library at NCCU. I did half of my undergraduate work at NCCU before transferring to Chapel Hill. The experience at Central was invaluable to me. I’d never before been the only white face in a classroom or a workplace.
I was reading the Congressional Globe for a paper I was writing about Black elected officials during Reconstruction. In the aisle of that overheated library, I turned the crumbling pages (paper breaks down with excessive heat and the temperature in the library was just too high). It was on those pages that I met Senator Hiram Revels – (R) Mississippi.
Revels was in the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction representing Mississippi, but he was born to free parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He was an ordained minister, a school principal and a Union Army Chaplain. The story of his life (not recounted here) is a fascinating one, but what has stayed with me all these years is his floor speech on a completely hopeless cause in 1871.
Senator Revels rose to argue in favor of desegregating the District of Columbia schools. The Congress has authority over the DC schools, like county commissioners over local school boards.
His argument was respectful, logical and elegant. He knew this was going nowhere, but he was speaking to the record. Sitting on the floor of that library, I got chills thinking that he was speaking to me – to the future.
At its core, his argument was that improving the learning conditions for children of color had no measurable negative impact of white children.
“Sir, during the canvass in the state of Mississippi I traveled into different parts of that state, and this is the doctrine that I everywhere uttered: That while I was in favor of building up the colored race I was not in favor of tearing down the white race. Sir, the white race need not be harmed in order to build up the colored race. The colored race can be built up and assisted, as I before remarked, in acquiring property, in becoming intelligent, valuable, useful citizens, without one hair upon the head of any white man being harmed.”
Grave of Hiram Revels in Holly Springs (Wikimedia Commons)
He went on to invite his colleagues to visit some “mixed” schools in the Northeast. He explained that while the children took their lessons side by side, they went home at the end of the day and on Sundays, went to their separate churches. “Mixed schools are very far from bringing about social equality,” he said.
His argument was only about the harm to Black children, not about taking anything from White children. He discussed the segregation of street cars and other public accommodations. In short, he outlined for the Senate, the basis for the Brown vs. Board of Education case 80 years before it happened. His floor speech asks key questions that are answered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
He did all of this, in part, by simply finding out for himself what happens in places where these legal separations either didn’t exist or were abolished. He found in visiting other states that when racial restrictions were gone, the street cars kept running … without complaints.
In my very white, privileged suburban Connecticut upbringing, I didn’t get to meet Senator Revels or know his story. I learned it thanks to a college curriculum that showed it to me, for which I’m thankful. Hiram Revels, a great American and son of North Carolina, died at 73 and he is buried in Holly Springs, NC.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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