Abstract
IN 1897, WHEN OSCAR SAMPSON SAT DOWN TO WRITE HIS REPORT ON education for the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association of the Croatan Indians, he was understandably proud of the progress that his community had made in recent years.1 “The time has been when there could hardly be found ten men of our race who could read and write, that time is no longer,” wrote Sampson. “We now have twenty-two district schools filled with teachers of our own race, and one normal school.” An act of the North Carolina General Assembly created these district primary schools for the Croatan Indians of Robeson County in 1885.
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Notes
Burnt Swamp Baptist Association, Minutes of the Annual Session of the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association (Raleigh, NC: Edwards and Broughton & Co, 1897), 7.
In the 1870s, churches became the first institutions to separate Indians from blacks. See Jospeh Michael Smith and Lula Jane Smith, The Lumbee Methodists: Getting to Know Them (Raleigh, NC, Commission of Archives and History, NC Methodist Conference, 1990).
Burnt Swamp Baptist Association, Proceedings of the Annual Session of the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association (Lumberton, NC: Robesonian Printing House, 1910), 10.
H. Leon Prather, Resurgent Politics and Educational Progressivism in the New South, North Carolina 1890–1913 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1979), 9.
North Carolina, Department of Public Instruction, Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina for the Scholastic Years 1898–99 to 1889–1900 (Raleigh, NC: Edwards & Broughton and E.M. Uzzell, State Printers, 1900), 155, 286, 288.
John D. Bellamy, Memoirs of an Octogenarian (Charlotte, NC: Observer Printing House, 1942), 134.
John D. Bellamy, Remarks of Hon. John D. Bellamy of North Carolina, in the House of Representatives, Thursday, February 1, 1900 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1900).
T. C. Henderson, “A Card from Prof. Henderson,” Robesonian, 3 July 1900.
W. H. Humphrey, “A Card,” Robesonian, 26 June 1900.
O. R. Sampson, “Strong Argument for the Amendment,” Robesonian, 17 July 1900.
A. N. Locklear, “Another Croatan for the Amendment,” Robesonian, 27 July 1900.
Charles Aycock, as quoted in Edgar W. Knight, Public Education in North Carolina (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 332–33.
North Carolina, Department of Public Instruction, Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina for the Scholastic Years 1904–1905 to 1905-1906 (Raleigh, NC: Ashe & Gatling, 1907), 34.
Burnt Swamp Baptist Association, Proceedings of the Annual Session of the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association (Lumberton, NC: Robesonian Printing House, 1906), 6.
Burnt Swamp Baptist Association, Proceedings of the Annual Session of the Burnt Swamp Baptist Association (Lumberton, NC: Robesonian Printing House, 1910), 10.
A. N. Locklear, “The MACS of Robeson,” Robesonian, 6 August 1908.
A. S. Locklear, “A Protest,” Robesonian, 14 February 1910.
Charles Pierce, “The Croatan Indians of North Carolina,” Indian School Journal 13 (March 1913): 305.
O. M. McPherson, Indians of North Carolina: Letter from the Secretary of the Interior Transmitting in Response to a Senate Resolution of June 30, 1914. A Report on the Condition and Tribal Rights of the Indians of Robeson and Adjoining Counties of North Carolina (Washington, DC: GPO, 1915), 7.
H. L. Edens, “Indian Race Problems: True Cause of frequent Contentions among Indians of Robeson over Indians’ School Matters: Fighting Amalgamation: Eternal Vigilance Price of Racial Preservation: A Suggestion,” Robesonian, 16 April 1914.
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 5.
For Indian education and assimilation, see David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995), and M. C. Coleman, American Indian Children at School, 1850–1930 (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1993).
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© 2008 Eileen H. Tamura
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Bailey, A. (2008). “It Is the Center to Which We Should Cling”: Indian Schools in Robeson County, North Carolina, 1900–1920. In: Tamura, E.H. (eds) The History of Discrimination in U.S. Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611030_4
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