Lily Ann Granderson

Lily Ann Granderson  (also Milla Granson , Lila Grandison ; born in Virginia in 1816 ) was an American educator. Born a slave of Indian-white descent, she became a pioneering teacher.

Lily Ann's grandmother was a free woman of Native American descent. After her grandmother died, Lily Ann's mother was sold into slavery at the age of three. Lily Ann grew up in Virginia and later came to Kentucky, where she worked as a house slave because of her fair skin. Little is known about Lily Ann's father. He was a white man who was one of the First Families in Virginia . Lily Ann and her owner's family became very close. Her owner's children even taught Lily Ann to read and write, a common method used by enslaved people to become literate.

Lily Ann's situation worsened when her owner died and she was brought down the Mississippi and sold to a plantation owner in Natchez . There she worked in the cotton fields, which she was not used to. Working in the scorching fields of Mississippi made her sick; she was also whipped naked. Lily Ann asked her owner to get her off the field and give her a less unhealthy job. After long requests, her owner, Lily Ann, allows her to work in the kitchen of his house for a few hours a day. The house was not directly on the plantation, but in the village. Lily Ann had to walk into town every day, but that was much better than working in the scorching sun.

The walk into town enabled Lily Ann to start a school. However, in Mississippi it was forbidden to provide training to slaves for fear of slave revolts and the escape of slaves. Lily Ann got around this by teaching at night. Enslaved children sneaked into a closed room in a side street to attend classes from 11pm or midnight. The class size was limited to twelve children. The windows and door were tightly locked and the children used pine chips dipped in pitch to get light. After the children had learned to read and write, they got a "degree" and made room for other children. Lily Ann ran her school for seven years without being discovered. Then she was discovered after all. To her surprise, Lily Ann was not punished. Although there was a law against the training of slaves, there was a clause in Mississippi law that applied to Lily Ann. Mississippi law prohibited whites and freed slaves from teaching slaves, but nothing was said in law about slaves teaching other slaves. As a result, Lily Ann opened a Sunday school alongside her night school. Through their efforts, hundreds of slaves learned to read and write and were able to use that knowledge to achieve freedom. Lily Ann said that many of her students self-issued passports and made their way to Canada.

When northern troops took Natchez in the summer of 1863, missionaries wanted to set up schools for freed slaves. They were pleased and surprised that there was already a school and many slaves who could read and write. The American Missionary Association hired Lily Ann. She will teach for many years to come. She also became a deaconess for the Pine Street Baptist Church. In 1870, at the age of 54, she was one of the first colored people to open an account at Freedman's Bank.

Lily Ann later married and had two children.

literature

• David Freedman: African-American Schooling in the South Prior to 1861 . In: The Journal of Negro History . tape 84 , no. 1 . The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 1999, p. 21 , JSTOR : 2649081 (English).
• Herbert G. Gutman: Schools for Freedom: The Post-Emancipation Origins of Afro-American Education . In: Herbert G. Gutman, Ira Berlin (Ed.): Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class . Pantheon Books, New York 1987, ISBN 978-0-394-56026-7 , pp. 261-262 (English).
• Janet Halfmann: Midnight Teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and Her Secret School . Lee & Low Books, 2018, ISBN 978-1-62014-163-2 (English).
• Justin Behrend: Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War . University of Georgia Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-8203-4033-3 , pp. 60-61 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Justin Behrend: Slave Studies. Lily Ann Granderson. In: slave-studies.net. Archived from the original on December 6, 2013 ; accessed on May 2, 2018 . 
2. ^ Dorothy Schneider, Carl J. Schneider: Slavery in America . Facts on file, New York 2007, ISBN 0-8160-6241-2 , pp. 363 (English).
3. ↑ Darlene Clark Hine: A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America . Broadway Books, New York 1998, ISBN 0-7679-0110-X , pp. 74 (English).
4. ↑ Laura Haviland: A woman's life-work laboratories and experiences of Laura S. Haviland . Walden & Stowe, Cincinnati 1882, p. 300–301 (English, archive.org ).
5. ^ JP Bardwell. to Rev. ME Shicky, Jan. 5, 1865, Natchez, # 71719, Mississippi, Roll # 1, American Missionary Association Archives, Amistad Research Center, New Orleans.
6. ↑ Lily Ann Granderson, # 269082, Freedman's Bank Records , Progeny Software Inc., 1998-2000.