The Education of Borden Scott: A Prologue

Before Sydney Borden Scott was a 30-ish-year-old man graduating from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at the University of Illinois, he was a just a boy in Georgia. And somewhere around the age of 18, that boy graduated – for the first time – from what would later become Morehouse College. The year was 1898.

Uncle Ned's School

One of the many travesties of slavery was that millions of people were deprived of the chance to get an education, to even learn the basics of reading and writing, simply because of the color of their skin and the place of their ancestors’ birth. In Georgia, in fact, it had been a crime to teach enslaved people to read since 1829 .

Yet, enslaved people persevered. They learned, in secret, and passed that knowledge on to others. They operated clandestine schools, and as the Civil War ended, these were some of the first schools to officially open in 1865. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, by 1866, there were 8,000 black students in schools, 20,000 by 1873. Many were children, but adults attended as well, crowding into classrooms for night school and “Sabbath-day schools” as well.

 

Freedmen's School, Edisto Island, SC, between 1862 and 1865

Many of the new schools were opened or supported by the Freedman’s Bureau, more formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Others were supported by northern benevolence societies and religious organizations. But people of African descent were at the forefront. They worked to acquire the land for the schools and to purchase or raise the buildings, to find and hire teachers, to raise funds for the teachers' pay, and to locate and purchase the necessary books and other supplies.  

What does this have to do with Sydney Borden Scott?

In 1867, a cabinetmaker and Baptist minister named Rev. William Jefferson White collaborated with Reverends Richard C. Coulter and Edmund Turney to open one such school, called the Augusta Institute, in the basement of Springfield Baptist Church. In 1879, the school moved to Friendship Baptist Church, in Atlanta, and changed its name to the Atlanta Baptist Seminary. In the mid-to-late 1880s, the school moved again, to a 14-acre campus in the West End neighborhood of the city. This is the school, and this is the campus, at which Borden studied for at least 7 years of his life.  

What did Borden do at Atlanta Baptist Seminary? What was his life like? Stay tuned for more posts!

Image Citations

1. Marian S. Carson Collection. Uncle Ned's School. , 1873. [March] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017650748/.

2. Cooley, Sam A, photographer. Freedmen's school, Edisto Island, S.C. / Samuel A. Cooley, photographer, Savannah, Ga., Hilton Head, S.C., Beaufort, S.C. Edisto Island South Carolina United States, None. [Between 1862 and 1865] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010647918/.