Discourse, education and women's public culture in the port royal experiment: interpreting the life and work of Laura Towne

Breitborde examines the life and work of Laura Matilda Towne, founder of the Penn School in St. Helena Island in South Carolina in 1862. Towne was one of those Northern white teachers who went South during the War and Reconstruction to join with free black and Southern white women in bringing the po...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	American educational history journal 2011-01, Vol.38 (1-2), p.427
Main Author:	Breitborde, Mary-Lou
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	African American Education Appreciation Black students Community Development Community Relations Computer Assisted Instruction Education of women Educators Family Influence Females Literacy Management Personal profiles Race relations Racial Relations Reconstruction period-US Role of Education Social Change Social Class Teachers Towne, Laura Mathilda Towne, Laura Matilda (1825-1901) War White Teachers Whites Womens studies
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Summary:	Breitborde examines the life and work of Laura Matilda Towne, founder of the Penn School in St. Helena Island in South Carolina in 1862. Towne was one of those Northern white teachers who went South during the War and Reconstruction to join with free black and Southern white women in bringing the power of literacy to the freed people. Abolitionist, teacher, and homeopathic doctor, Laura Towne (1825-1901) came to St. Helena as part of the Port Royal Experiment, an attempt by Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase to prove that blacks would work without benefit of the whip and that they were capable of learning Christian behavior and self-reliance. Unlike most other northerners who came to help for a few weeks or months, Towne never left. Resisting repeated calls to "go home," she stayed on through gunfire, a yellow fever epidemic, hurricanes, crop failures, recessions, and after Northern funders had lost interest in the project. Northern white women like Towne who went south to educate the former slaves have been variously characterized as "sainfly souls," radical revolufionaries or, alternatively, purveyors of conservative norms and values that served to institutionalize the unequal power relationships between whites and blacks.
ISSN:	1535-0584