




































 
 

The First Black History Textbook by a Black Educator for Black Students: 

Edward A. Johnson’s 

A School History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1890 

 

O. L. Davis, Jr., 

The University of Texas at Austin 

Matthew D. Davis, Shante' J. Lyons 

University of Missouri, Saint Louis 
 

Abstract: 

 This paper explores the content of the 

the first Black history textbook written, 

published, and used in American schools by 

Black students.  In addition, it explores the 

biography of its author and textbook 

publication history. 

 

 “But how must the little colored 

child feel when he has completed the 

assigned course of U. S. History and in 

it found not one word of credit, not one 

word of favorable comment for even 

one among the millions of his 

foreparents, who have lived through 

nearly three centuries of his country‟s 

history? . . .  Much, of course, will 

depend on you, dear teachers into 

whose hands I hope to place this book.  

By your efforts, and those of the 

children, you are to teach from the 

truth of history that complexions do 

not govern patriotism, valor, and 

sterling integrity” (Johnson, 1891, iv). 

 

 Edward A. Johnson, the African 

American teaching principal of Washington 

School in Raleigh, N. C., forthrightly 

asserted the overriding purpose of his new 

history textbook for use by Black 

schoolchildren in his native state and, to 

some unknown extent, in other Southern 

states of the Union.  He wanted these 

students, most if not all born outside of 

slavery, to know about their racial past, 

especially in the United States, and to 

develop cultural pride in their being Black 

rather than being given only “a passing notice 

in many of the histories in the schools” 

(Johnson,1891, iv.).  Even in the few separate 

schools available to them, southern Black 

pupils of the times used textbooks written by 

white authors with white pupils in mind.  

Although his Raleigh superintendent of 

schools encouraged him to write this 

textbook, Johnson surely recognized that his 

book, narrowly focused as it was on the 

Black experience in America, would find its 

usefulness exclusively and strategically 

aimed at African American students.  A 

Black history textbook written by an African 

American for use by both Black and white 

pupils would have found no curricular home 

in that period.  Moreover, even when selected 

for use by Black pupils, Johnson‟s book 

likely was understood to supplement the 

regularly used textbook overview of the 

nation‟s history written by a white author.   

 Johnson‟s textbook in its several 

editions (printings) was published within the 

final decade of the 19th century.  This era 

witnessed a blossoming of American Black 



 

74 
 

history written by African American 

scholars.  For example, George Washington 

Williams, known as the dean of these new 

Black historians, wrote his History of the 

Negro Race in America from 1610 to 1880; 

Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as 

Citizens (1883) with attention to important 

primary and secondary sources.  It was 

highly regarded by historians throughout the 

nation (e.g., Franklin, 1946; Meier, 1963; 

Bruce, 1984).  In the Preface to Volume 1 of 

his two-volume work, historian Williams 

claimed that he wrote the book, “not as a 

partisan apologist,” but as one who searched 

for and wrote “the truth . . . I commit this 

work to the pubic, white and black, to the 

friends and foes of the Negro, in the hope 

that the obsolete antagonisms which grew out 

of master and slave may speedily sink as 

storms beneath the horizon; and that the day 

will hasten when there shall be no North or 

South, no Black, no White, - but all be 

American citizens, with equal duties and 

equal rights” (Williams, 1883, pages xii & 

xiii).   Johnsons‟ history textbook, although it 

carried a remarkably similar title to 

Williams‟ history was not written by one of 

the emerging Black historians of the times.   

Rather, its author was a school teacher and 

administrator, albeit an amateur historian.  

He had taught in all-Black, segregated 

schools in Georgia and North Carolina for 

eight years prior to the appearance of his 

textbook.  Johnson‟s practical experience 

within these schools prompted him to write 

this textbook for Black students in order that 

they might better understand African-

American achievement throughout the 

nation‟s history and that it should be 

considered as a part of the “apex of human 

achievement” (Hall, 2009, 155). 

 

Johnson: From Slave to Freedom, 

From Teacher to Author, From Teacher 

to Successful Attorney and Politician 

 Born enslaved in Raleigh, N. C., on 

November 23, 1860, Edward Austin (or 

Augustus, as he sometimes was referenced) 

Johnson was one of eleven children of 

Columbus and Eliza Johnson, the property of 

a prominent Wake county farmer.  Young 

Johnson received his initial education from a 

free Black woman, Nancy Walton.  At the 

conclusion of the Civil War, he attended 

Raleigh‟s Washington High School for 

Negroes at which two “Yankee” teachers 

from New England taught him.
1 

      Following the completion of his 

studies at Washington High School at age 

eighteen, Johnson considered continuing his 

education at Oberlin College, but he decided 

to enter Atlanta University in the winter term 

of 1879.  Like most other students at Atlanta 

University, Johnson sought a teaching 

position during the following summer terms.  

His efforts were unsuccessful at first until he 

accepted the teacher‟s post at the several 

thousand acre Lamar plantation.  Some 55 

mainly young children were his pupils in the 

school building in the “Quarters” where the 

plantation‟s Black laborers and their overseer 

lived.  Johnson also privately tutored the 

plantation owner‟s son in Latin.  Paid on the 

basis of the number of pupils attending each 

day‟s session, Johnson received $12.85 in 

salary for the summer.  This sum was 

supplemented by a gift of $25 from parents 

of his pupils (Johnson, 1942).  



 

75 
 

 Johnson‟s studies at Atlanta 

University continued in this general pattern 

for the next three years: class attendance 

toward a degree during the long term, 

October-May, and teaching in a school 

during the summer.  As well, he became a 

barber in order to pay for his college 

expenses.  He graduated from Atlanta 

University in 1883 and, that Fall, he became 

a teacher and the principal of Atlanta‟s 

Mitchell Street School.  Two years later, he 

returned to Raleigh, N.C., his hometown, to 

become a teacher and assumed the post of 

principal of its 1,250 pupil Washington High 

School that he had attended as a youngster 

some years earlier. 

He served pupils at Washington 

School during the following five years.  

Johnson was very busy during this particular 

eight-year period of his life.  He strongly 

advocated more and more suitable textbooks 

for use by Black pupils, ones that would 

enable these individuals to recognize the 

contributions made to their communities and 

nation by members of their race.   In 1888, 

while still teaching, Johnson also enrolled in 

Raleigh‟s Shaw University‟s program in law.  

Apparently, he attended law school for three 

years while he taught at Washington High 

School.  During this period, he recognized 

the need of a school history textbook for 

Black pupils.  Johnson understood that in 

order to instill pride and confidence within 

the recently enslaved, students needed to be 

acculturated with a legitimate understanding 

of the African-American experience through 

such an historical text (Hall, 2009). Warned 

that such a book might cost him his position 

as Principal, Johnson talked with Edward P. 

Moses, Raleigh‟s white superintendent of 

schools, about his idea to write a history of 

Blacks in America for use in schools.   

Superintendent Moses‟ verbal support 

spurred Johnson to rapid action.  He wrote 

the manuscript that became A School History 

of the Negro Race in America (1890) when 

he was 30 years old and saw it through 

publication the year before Shaw University 

conferred on him the LL.B. degree and the 

year before Johnson left the education field to 

engage in the full-time practice of law.  

 Johnson quickly made an impressive 

impact as an attorney in Raleigh.  He joined 

the law faculty at Shaw in 1893, became a 

professor and, later, served as dean of the law 

school until 1907.  During the sixteen years 

of his legal practice in North Carolina, 

Johnson won each of the many cases that he 

argued before the state‟s Supreme Court.  He 

also was involved in several real estate and 

business ventures.  For example, with six 

other Black men, he helped organize the 

North Carolina Mutual and Provident 

Association that became, after some years, 

the largest Black insurance company in the 

world. He was elected an Alderman in 

Raleigh and also served for seven years as 

Assistant U. S. District Attorney in North 

Carolina‟s Eastern District.  In addition, 

Johnson became very active in local and state 

Republican Party activities, including service 

as a delegate to two national Republican 

Party national conventions.  At age 47, 

having become deeply dispirited by the 

disenfranchisement of Black citizens in his 

home state, Johnson moved permanently to 

New York City to live and to work. 

 He opened his law offices in Harlem 

and became active in Republican politics.  

Ten years after he moved to NY City, he was 



 

76 
 

elected to the New York State Assembly, the 

first Black person to serve in that legislative 

body.  Johnson‟s major legislative 

accomplishment was the passage of a Civil 

Rights Bill that guaranteed privileges of 

access to all individuals without regard to 

race, to hotels, restaurants, schools, and 

places of amusement.  Having served a single 

term, he was defeated for reelection after the 

city was redistricted.  In 1928, Johnson chose 

to stand as a Republican for a seat in the U. 

S. House of Representatives, but he lost this 

election.  However, he continued his 

lucrative law practice, even though legally 

blind during the last decade of his life.  

Johnson died in New York City on July 24, 

1944 at age 84. 

Johnson‟s role as author of A School 

History of the Negro Race in America from 

1619 to 1890 and several other books appears 

to be straight forward.  Although a number of 

details remain murky at best, he appears to 

have self-published and marketed at least his 

school history textbook and perhaps his other 

books as well.  Names of the publisher on the 

title page of his school history book changed 

with each printing, ordinarily an indication of 

a new edition of the book.  However, the text 

remained the same throughout its printing 

history.  Johnson, therefore, very well could 

have found successively more favorable 

production prices for each subsequent 

printing than he had for earlier jobs.  

Moreover, the printing firm was identified as 

that year‟s (not an edition‟s) 

publisher/printer.   

 Note, in this regard, that the 1890 

initial printing, or as it was known as the 

First Edition, was undertaken by the Raleigh 

firm of Edwards and Broughton, a printing 

and binding firm that had published school 

textbooks for use in Confederate (mainly 

North Carolina) schools during the Civil 

War.  This First Edition may not have 

included a large number of copies, perhaps 

enough to satisfy the local market in Raleigh 

and possibly some other North Carolina 

schools.  The second printing carried an 1891 

date.  It also used Raleigh as the place of 

publication, but the publisher/printer was the 

W.B. Conkey Co. of Chicago, Illinois.  In 

fact, Johnson‟s school history textbook may 

well have been one of the early book printing 

jobs that the Conkey firm undertook.   

Johnson‟s use of Raleigh as the place of 

publication reasonably was politically based.  

He surely recognized that “Chicago” might 

“put off” prospective Southern purchasers 

and teachers but that his home city would not 

have this potential liability.    

That Johnson returned to use the 

Raleigh printers, Edwards & Broughton, 

rather than the Conkey firm for the 1892 

printing is not easily explained.  However, 

Johnson may have sold more copies of his 

school history than he had expected and ran 

short of time for the Conkey firm to print and 

bind another order of the history textbook.  In 

such a case, Edwards & Broughton could 

have been a simple and strategic choice.   

Johnson‟s possible need for additional copies 

to fill the number of orders for the book, 

actual and anticipated, may have prompted 

him to use this local printer because it 

perhaps could guarantee a faster production 

schedule than could Chicago‟s William B. 

Conkey printing firm.   By the following 

year, 1893, Johnson may have been able to 

arrange a favorable production schedule from 

the Conkey firm and chose it to produce the 



 

77 
 

projected needed copies of the book in its 

fourth printing.  Six years elapsed until 

Johnson contracted for the fifth printing of 

his school history with the Conkey firm, by 

then with its printing operations in 

Hammond, IN, and with one of the most 

modern printing plants in the world. This 

edition of the book appeared in 1901, eight 

years after the fourth printing and more than 

a decade after its first printing.  For this final 

printing likely under his control, Johnson 

again used his own name as publisher, but 

also listed Raleigh‟s Capital Printing Co. as a 

printer of the books. 

Whereas this account of the printing 

history of Johnson‟s book seems reasonable, 

it remains incomplete and somewhat 

speculative.  However, acknowledgement 

must be made of two other efforts to print 

and market this book contemporaneously, 

quite possibly without benefit of Johnson‟s 

involvement and without adherence to the 

federal copyright that Johnson held for the 

book.  In both 1892 and 1893, Sherman & 

Co. of Philadelphia reprinted the book likely 

from the 1892 or 1893 Conkey printings.  

Some years later, in 1911, a decade after 

Johnson‟s likely final printing was released, 

Isaac Goldman of New York city reprinted 

what possibly may have been the 1901 

Conkey edition. 

 Information is unavailable about 

Johnson‟s reactions to both these efforts to 

capitalize on his original work, perhaps 

without proper payment due him as the 

copyright holder, as well as about the nature 

of the commercial success or failure of these 

ventures, ones likely not condoned by 

Johnson.  That he did not seek legal 

recompense from the publishers of these 

likely unauthorized editions remains 

somewhat mystifying.  Some half-century 

later, and after Johnson‟s death, AMS Press 

issued a third printing of this textbook as part 

of the firm‟s efforts to make available for 

research and study notable books that had 

been long out of print.  By this time, 

Johnson‟s original copyright probably had 

expired and the title was in the public 

domain. 

              By his own efforts at marketing 

during the last decade of the 19
th

 century, 

Johnson likely added to his income amounts 

of money beyond what a publisher would 

have paid him in royalties. Also to be 

recognized is that no multi-state southern 

publisher of schoolbooks primarily for Black 

pupils existed at the time.  

The number of copies of Johnson‟s 

school history textbook that were produced, 

in each printing and overall, remains 

unknown.  Even though the book was placed 

on the state-adoption list of textbooks in both 

North Carolina and Virginia, the prospect of 

only limited sales of the book may have 

restricted the numbers of copies that Johnson 

had printed and available for sale.  In 1895, 

Johnson advertised for sales agents in Indiana 

who would buy this school history book at a 

substantial discount and then resell it for use 

by school pupils and, even, by adults (E.A. 

Johnson advertisement, The Freeman, 

Indianapolis, IN, 13 April 1895).   The use of 

local agents to sell books to individuals was 

popular during this period and reasonably 

could have been the principal means by 

which Johnson marketed this book.  One 

agent was quoted as claiming that he sold 

121 copies in two hours; another agent 

reported selling 200 copies during a period of 



 

78 
 

inclement weather. This advertisement also 

asserted several special virtues to attract 

interest in the book.  It claimed, for example, 

that the book “gives the race credit for what it 

has done.  It teaches race pride and self-

respect.  No white history gives these acts.  

They completely ignore or humiliate us.” 

Johnson also wrote to Booker T. 

Washington to solicit his endorsement of the 

textbook and hoping that Washington would 

adopt it for use at Tuskegee and, possibly, to 

act as a sales agent for the book (Letter from 

A. E. Johnson to B. T. Washington, 12 

January 1891, Booker T. Washington Papers, 

vol.3, 121).   This act appears to have been 

audacious, but Johnson lacked ready access 

to individual Black school teachers and 

principals, not only throughout North 

Carolina, but in other areas, particularly in 

the South, that were populated by large 

numbers of Black people who might 

purchase copies for their children‟s use on 

the recommendation of their teacher at 

school.   No record exists that Washington 

entertained Johnson‟s hopes.  On the other 

hand, Washington did send a copy of the 

book to Edward Atkinson, a Boston 

industrialist and economist.  In his 

accompanying letter, Washington 

commented on Johnson‟s portrayal of the 

progress of African Americans. “I do not 

know how accurate these figures or 

statements are [about the wealth of African 

Americans].  In some cases I feel that they 

are exaggerated . . .” (Letter from B. 

Washington to Edward Atkinson, 7 

November 1897, reprinted in Johnson‟s A 

School History).  Washington, himself a 

novice historian, was an active participant in 

the writing of African-American history.  

Essentially, his sociopolitical strategy in 

recording this history was to “reflect his self 

help agenda at Tuskegee and to present this 

historic personalities of the race in a realistic 

but uplifting manner” (Hall, 2009, pg. 212).  

A grandiose reflection of African-American 

participation within American history 

possibly would have threatened 

Washington‟s long-term goal of social uplift 

for southern Blacks within the eyes of white 

allies of the Hampton-Tuskegee model. 

Johnson‟s publication of his school 

history textbook brought him national 

recognition as an author.  Some critics like 

Washington commented about errors of 

excess and misinterpretations, but historian 

Charles H. Wesley probably understood the 

book in its context as well as any other 

observer and commented positively about it.  

“While this textbook has its limitations,” he 

wrote, “it was a first effort based upon a need 

and served this purpose in its day” (Wesley, 

1980, 198).  That purpose would have been 

to portray a history buried by vestiges of 

enslavement and would acknowledge the 

African-American experience as one worthy 

of exploration and illumination (Hall, 2009). 

 Johnson wrote several other books 

intended for adult audiences that  

never became as well known as did his 

school history textbook.  They included 

History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-

American War, and Other Items of Interest 

(1899), Negro Almanac and Statistics (1903), 

Light Ahead for the Negro (1904), and Adam 

vs. Ape Man (1931).     

Author Johnson‟s contributions to the 

education of the young freedmen mainly in 

the post-Civil War South pointed in a 

direction that the American school history 



 

79 
 

curriculum reasonably should have followed.  

That this direction was a path not taken for 

more than half a century was not only a loss 

to both Black and white children and youth, it 

was a loss to the nation as well.   

 

                                

 

The Content and Organization of 

Johnson’s Black History Textbook 

 

 Through its decade of five authorized 

printings, Edward A. Johnson‟s Black history 

textbook maintained its basic organization.  

Its Chapter One, appropriately titled 

“Introduction‟, constituted an eight-page 

discussion of the origin of the “race”.  Based 

on Biblical (Jewish Testament) accounts, the 

Negro race was asserted to have descended 

from Ham, one of the three sons of Noah, 

whose descendants customarily were alleged 

to have settled in Ethiopia and other parts of 

Africa.  Subsequently, these early African 

Negroes were understood to have helped 

construct the Egyptian pyramids as well as 

their having enjoyed the sciences and 

learning of ancient Greece and Rome.  Their 

decline in influence was Biblically 

prophesied, the text noted, because they 

forgot God and worshipped idols. 

 The book‟s story of Negroes in 

America began with a short account of the 

introduction of Black slavery in Jamestown, 

Virginia, in 1619.  Indeed, a general attention 

to slavery was the prominent focus of each of 

the chapters that treated the thirteen original 

British colonies (Chapters 2 - 10).  However, 

author Johnson also chose some prominent 

Black individuals in several but not all of the 

colonies/states whom he treated as a kind of 

hero, an exemplar that could serve as an 

emblem of pride to the young Black pupils 

who would use his book.  

For example, the book noted that the 

first and most of the subsequently purchased 

slaves in Virginia worked primarily in 

agriculture, particularly in the production of 

tobacco.  Johnson elaborated, “The greater 

part of the manual   labor of all kinds was 

performed by the slaves” (17).   Johnson 

claimed that “the ancestors of American 

slaves (i.e. African natives) were not so bad 

as many people think” (17); nevertheless, 

they were held in servitude and kept in 

ignorance even with respect to their religious 

instruction.   That is, to Johnson, slavery was 

a vile system that corrupted relationships and 

perpetuated economic, political, and social 

power structures.  Johnson did not designate 

one or more specific individual Negroes as 

“heroes” during Virginia‟s colonial period.  

However, he accorded generous attention to 

Thomas Fuller, known as “The Virginia 

Calculator”.   Fuller could not read or write, 

but he could calculate prodigious sums 

mentally and was widely accepted as a 

prodigy (pp. 20-22).  To be sure, Fuller‟s 

accomplishments served to negate general 

white claims of mental inferiority of enslaved 

African people. 

 The textbook‟s treatment of New 

York Negroes, both slave and free, was thin 

and slighting.  Johnson did acknowledge that 

Blacks in this colony could be taken to 

church and be baptized. Although no laws 

restricted them from   becoming educated, 

authorities commonly excluded them from 

schools.   Blacks could not own land and 

were subject to arrest for striking a 

“Christian” or “Jew”, even in self-defense.  



 

80 
 

In 1712, according to Johnson, Negroes in 

New York rebelled at such treatment.  They 

burned homes and killed whites until troops 

halted the riots (23-24).   

Johnson noted that African 

enslavement came to Massachusetts by 1633, 

only fourteen years after the arrival of slaves 

in the colony of Virginia.  Paradoxically, the 

Puritans came to America in search of 

liberty, but their involvement in the slave 

trade, their denial of some other people‟s 

humanity, was extensive.  Johnson conflated 

the treatment of slaves in Massachusetts with 

that in all the New England colonies.  He 

noted that the New England slave traders 

who went to Africa for shiploads of Blacks 

sold most of their cargos of slaves in the 

South, but they also sold quite a number in 

the northern colonies as well.    Johnson 

additionally recognized that British 

governors in the northern colonies opposed 

loosening the repressive slave regime on 

Negro slaves.  In keeping with his aim to 

highlight special virtues of individual 

Negroes, slave and free, Johnson devoted 

almost four pages of text praising the 

distinction of the early Black poet, Phillis 

Wheatley (27-31).    

As a companion to Wheatley‟s 

acceptance as a distinguished lady of letters, 

Johnson included two pages of text about 

Prudence Crandall, a white Quaker woman 

and white ally, whose efforts to educate black 

girls in Connecticut met strident frustration.  

When she admitted a Black girl to her school, 

parents of the white girls withdrew them 

from the school.  Then, Crandall opened her 

school only to Negro girls, but general white 

opposition to this move did not yield.  

Connecticut even passed legislation in 1833 

that prohibited schools for Negro children in 

the state.  Crandall kept her school open, but 

officials arrested and jailed her.  Freed at her 

trial, she reopened her school, but local 

opposition increased and, afraid for the girls, 

she closed the school.  This repressive 

legislation against schools for Black children 

was repealed in 1838 (31-33). 

Author Johnson highlighted 

Maryland-born Benjamin Banneker as the 

preeminent Black contributor to American 

culture in the northern states.  As 

mathematician and astronomer, Banneker 

(called “Banneka” by author Johnson) 

published an almanac in 1791, reputed to be 

the first to be published in America.  For this 

achievement, Thomas Jefferson accorded him 

high personal praise as well as the 

acknowledgement that Blacks were endowed 

with talents equal to those possessed by 

whites (37).   Johnson also included a poem, 

“Ellen Harris”, written by the black Maryland 

anti-slavery advocate Francis Ellen Watkins. 

 Surprisingly, North Carolinian 

Johnson wrote sparingly about his home 

state.  He did note that the slave laws of the 

state were harsh, but asserted that they were 

not routinely enforced.   Johnson correctly 

noted that the great majority of this North 

Carolina slaves lived in the eastern part of the 

state.   Even with most Negroes enslaved, 

numbers of free Blacks also resided in this 

state.  Johnson‟s choice of a North Carolinian 

to highlight for pupils was another poet, 

George M. Horton, a field hand who could 

read, but could not write.  Consequently, he 

dictated his poems to a person who wrote 

them on paper for him.  Some of his poems, 

Johnson wrote, managed to reach Boston and 

were used in argumentation against slavery. 



 

81 
 

 Johnson‟s textbook treatment of 

slavery appears superficial and clearly 

inadequate to present-day readers.  It likely 

was recognized as very thin gruel . . . 

insufficient, certainly casual, and superficial . 

. . for the Black children who read and 

studied his textbook when it was in popular 

use.  Nevertheless, his Black students and 

their parents and teachers reasonably may 

have recognized that the very availability of 

this textbook was a major step in the general 

acknowledgement of Blacks as individuals 

and as a group meriting public notice.   Also, 

this public acknowledgement could have 

signaled the achievement of humanity and 

polity that the institution of slavery had 

denied (Hall, 2009).   Furthermore, his 

writings for schoolchildren, however scant, 

may be understood as subversively radical. 

The Civil War was only twenty-six years in 

the past when the book‟s first edition was 

published.  Author Johnson likely decided 

that cautionary choices and tactical omission 

of blatantly contested situations were 

strategic options that would serve his purpose 

to get a history book about Blacks in the 

United States into the hands of Black 

schoolchildren more effectively than direct 

and public confrontation with prevailing 

Southern white attitudes toward African 

Americans.  For example, Johnson routinely 

failed to highlight the brutality of slavery, 

even as he identified general and different 

types of field and housework in which Black 

slaves engaged.  For almost all of his 

intended readers, however, they surely did 

not need to read about explicit slave 

mistreatment; they lived in families in which 

such accounts were staple elements of their 

home culture.   

Following his usual cursory treatment 

of the Black slave experience in the several 

American colonies, author Johnson wrote of 

the participation of Blacks in the American 

Revolution, the War of 1812 and in efforts to 

achieve freedom in the years prior to civil 

war that he labeled as The War of the 

Rebellion.   His concern, as usual, was to tout 

the exploits of individual Blacks.   To be 

sure, the most prominent of these 

revolutionary individuals was Crispus 

Attucks, a run-away slave of a Massachusetts 

master.  Attucks, one of a group of colonial 

protestors, was the first American killed by 

British soldiers in what quickly became 

known as the “Boston Massacre”.  By 

naming Attucks in this first “battle” of the 

American Revolution, author Johnson 

provided him with special visibility rather 

than his being left in anonymity among the 

several Americans who were killed in this 

rather minor event.   Johnson also highlighted 

the action of Peter Salem, another 

Massachusetts Black slave, who was killed in 

a ferocious attack that was credited as turning 

the tide against the British forces at a critical 

time in the Battle of Bunker Hill.    In his 

account, Johnson also noted that Blacks 

fought on both sides of the Revolutionary 

War.  Only about 5,000 Blacks, most of 

whom resided in northern colonies, fought 

against the British, but some 50,000 slaves 

supported the British with promises of 

freedom after the war ended and, of these, 

some 30,000 Negro slaves were from 

Virginia. 

 Blacks, freemen and slaves, also 

participated in the War of 1812.  They were 

members of U. S. army troops and of naval 

ship companies.  Their white commanding 



 

82 
 

officers, according to author Johnson, praised 

their performance.   Johnson also accorded 

prominence to an unverified claim that an 

unnamed Black man, an African native, 

suggested to General Andrew Jackson that he 

erect breast-works of cotton bales to thwart 

the anticipated onslaught of British regular 

soldiers against the outnumbered United 

States forces at the Battle of New Orleans.   

Such possible “folk history” appears to be 

commonplace in many remembered and 

recorded historical accounts.  Nevertheless, 

the story buttresses Johnson‟s case of the 

significance and merit of Black contributions 

to the American cause. 

Author Johnson depicted the period 

between the War of 1812 and the Civil War 

as a time that fostered a variety of anti-

slavery efforts in the United States.  

Although the period actually witnessed 

notable American advances in science, 

literature, and exploration, Johnson mainly 

ignored matters that did not deal directly with 

the highly politicized advocacies to abolish 

slavery and the roles of only a few notable 

Blacks in those endeavors.   Highlighted, of 

course, were the actions of the Quakers of 

Pennsylvania who early freed slaves in that 

state.   Johnson acknowledged the abolitionist 

advocacy of newspapers published by white 

journalists Benjamin Lundy and William 

Lloyd Garrison.  However, the author 

reserved his praise for Frederick Douglass, a 

former slave, and his speeches to northern 

assemblies that called for abolishment of 

slavery in the nation.  Johnson also 

applauded the work of the American 

Colonization Society that sought to develop 

the Republic of Liberia in Africa as a place of 

refuge, independence, and a life in freedom 

for American freed slaves. 

 Acknowledgement of peaceful anti-

slavery efforts in the politics of American life 

of this period, important as it was, could not 

obscure Johnson‟s attention to deliberate and 

sometimes violent actions by Black slaves to 

acquire freedom.   His inclusion of the story 

of Nat Turner’s “Insurrection” in Virginia, 

emblematic of long-feared slave uprisings 

throughout the South, served as the book‟s 

case study of direct action against 

slaveholders, their families, and property (90-

93).    

           According to Johnson‟s narrative, 

Turner and three of his friends decided to act 

in order to free slaves.  Although he 

announced that he rejected the idea of killing 

slave holders, Turner and his friends agreed 

that circumstances might arise when they 

would kill whites.   In August, 1831, their 

party set out to confront white slave holders.  

In the ensuing days, these Blacks 

indiscriminately killed 57 white persons, 

children and adults, men and women.   

Indeed, Johnson reported that one author 

noted that, in retribution, local whites 

“slaughtered” some 100 slaves; many of 

them were killed in cold blood . . . and 

grotesticly disfigured and butchered members 

of the Turner party who were captured.   

Turner himself escaped capture for several 

months, but he finally surrendered, was 

found guilty by an all-white jury, and was put 

to death on the gallows.  Author Johnson 

wrote of Turner, “ He was, undoubtedly, a 

wonderful character.  Knowing as he did, the 

risk he ran, what an immense courage he 

must have had to undertake this bold 

adventure.”  Although Johnson did not use 



 

83 
 

the honorific term, “martyr”, to categorize 

Turner, he clearly called schoolchildren‟s 

attention to Turner‟s worthy and meritorious 

behavior in an effort to free Black slaves.  

          Several other armed clashes between 

whites and enslaved Blacks in the pre-Civil 

War South were highlighted in this school 

history textbook.  They included, for 

example, a story about the Amistad captives.  

However, the predominant feature of efforts 

to free slaves within the nation focused on 

the swelling efforts of the vigorous anti-

slavery movement in its many variations 

within the civil society, most noticeably in 

the northern states.   Featured, in this regard, 

was the “Underground Railroad” by which 

escaped slaves from the South were aided in 

their flight to freedom.  Author Johnson 

noted several key developments of those pre-

war years that included effects of the federal 

Fugitive Slave Law, John Brown’s abortive 

attempt to capture the US arsenal at Harpers 

Ferry, Virginia, and the escalating 

sympathies of many northern politicians to 

the anti-slavery cause.  Although Johnson‟s 

treatment of the political maelstrom of those 

times was fragmentary and superficial, he 

emphasized the importance of the southern 

sentiment against Abraham Lincoln „s 

candidacy for the US presidency in 1860 and, 

with his inauguration the following year, the 

consequent secession of South Carolina from 

the United States.  Following that state‟s 

leadership, ten other southern states, all of 

which recognized the legitimacy of slave 

holding, seceded from the Union.  These acts 

of secession, author Johnson correctly 

observed, constituted “the signal for war” 

(103).  He called this war “The War of the 

Rebellion”, not the “Civil War” nor by other 

titles that became popular in subsequent 

years. 

     Johnson‟s treatment of the War of the 

Rebellion was sketchy by necessity.  His 

concern was not to portray the war, its many 

battles on several fronts, and to accord honor 

to victorious commanders.  Any history of 

that war is not a history of Blacks in 

America.  Rather, his treatment of the war 

matched his intention to illuminate for young 

Black schoolchildren some of the major 

contributions of Negroes in this major 

conflict.  He believed that they would find 

inspiration in the actions of adult Blacks who 

understood that the war, however described 

by different people, really was about the 

continuation or abandonment of slavery as an 

institution.  Strikingly, the federal army and 

navy, as well as the nascent forces raised by 

the southern states of the Confederacy, were 

reluctant to recruit and to arm Blacks to fight 

in this war.  Only slowly did public sentiment 

and military need combine to influence both 

Union and Confederate leaders to employ 

Black soldiers in combat roles.  Even so, 

discrimination of Blacks persisted in various 

forms. Black soldiers in both armies, for 

example, were enrolled in regiments 

commanded only by white officers. Black 

soldiers in the Union army received pay of 

seven dollars per month plus food and 

clothing whereas white troopers received 

thirteen dollars per month plus food and 

clothing (106-107).  Such incongruities 

surely were not lost on the Black children 

who used this textbook.  

Battles in which Black Union soldiers 

demonstrated conspicuous achievement 

included the Battle of Port Hudson in 1863.  

Their fighting skills as well as their bravery 



 

84 
 

and determination in this battle were praised 

in a New York Times report mentioned by 

Johnson in his textbook.  It also called their 

heroism to be “such as the proudest white 

men might emulate.  Their colors are literally 

bespattered with blood and brains.”  Even in 

praise, the fighting behaviors of Blacks in 

this battle were known primarily in 

comparison with the actions of white 

soldiers.  Acceptance of Black soldiers as 

valued and significant contributors to the 

warfare underway came haltingly from both 

northern and southern whites.   

Author Johnson included in the 

textbook an abbreviated account of a draft 

riot in New York City in the weeks following 

the battle of Port Hudson.  Some local 

newspapers stoked the resentment of the use 

of force (a draft) by which (white) men 

would “fight the battles of niggers and 

Abolitionists”.  Rioting whites killed some 

Black civilians and destroyed property owned 

by Blacks.  Union army troopers put down 

the riot by the use of force.  In those actions, 

a number of white rioters were killed and 

wounded.  Following these riots, Black 

soldiers continued to demonstrate their 

bravery and heroism on battlefields.  Their 

value to the Union became more widely 

accepted.  Only a few other important battles 

were highlighted in this textbook.  These 

battles included Fort Pillow near Memphis, 

Tennessee, the Wilderness at Petersburg, and 

at Richmond, Virginia.  In each of these 

engagements, the valor of Black Union 

troops drew very positive regard.  The war, 

as portrayed in this text, simply ended. 

Author Johnson did not report the 

date of Confederate General Lee‟s surrender 

at Appomattox, or even an approximation of 

the human casualties or other costs to both 

sides of the conflict.  Johnson did note that 

the freedom of the slaves, not a prominent 

goal at the beginning of the war, became one 

of its two central accomplishments.  He 

observed that civil government in the 

secessionist states was reestablished with the 

organization of provisional state governments 

and adoption of state constitutions that 

conformed to the federal constitution.  The 

fruits of freedom, voting and access, for 

example, were slow to become available to 

Blacks, but were later insured, at least for a 

time, by three new amendments to the U. S. 

constitution.  With the Fifteenth Amendment, 

for example, “the eleven Southern States 

were reconstructed on the basis of universal 

suffrage, and the colored race began to 

develop statesmen, orators, lawyers, judges, 

teachers of various kinds, ministers, and 

discreet, far-seeing business men” (139).  

This casual overgeneralization was followed 

by Johnson‟s short account of the 

Freedmen‟s Bureau.  This federal institution, 

according to Johnson, “was to educate the 

newly emancipated colored people into all 

the ways of freedom.  Schools were opened, 

to which there was a general rush, so great 

was the thirst for knowledge” (139).   

Johnson‟s enthusiasm for freedom‟s 

prospects were touted to his intended Black 

readers with only casual attention to the 

shocking disruptions and distortions that 

actually accompanied many efforts to provide 

full citizenship rights to Black citizens freed 

twenty five years earlier.     

The textbook closed with short 

chapters devoted to the progress of Negroes 

since their release from slavery and a rather 

longish chapter that featured notable Black 



 

85 
 

individuals, mainly from southern states not 

treated in previous sections.   Author Johnson 

proudly noted the rapid expansion of 

churches for Blacks as well as the leadership 

of Black ministers in building church related 

schools and other institutions.  In particular, 

the achievements of Black Methodists (i.e., 

African Methodist Episcopal Church and the 

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church) 

and Baptists were highlighted.  Particularly 

important to the burgeoning Black church 

membership was the development of 

congregational singing.   As author Johnson 

wrote, “They composed their own music, 

which expressed, in their own way, thanks 

and petitions to heaven.  Their music is 

original, entertaining, and pathetic -- and the 

only original music of the American 

Continent, when we remember that other than 

Negro techniques and melodies are all 

borrowed from the masters of Europe” (146).  

In this regard, the international popularity of 

the Fisk Jubilee Singers testified to the skill 

of these musicians and also to the Negro 

melodies and songs that they sang.   Very 

helpful to the progress of Black religious 

interests included not only the efforts of local 

Black congregants, but also the financial 

support of northern Christian church groups, 

notably the Methodist Episcopal Church, as 

well as northern Presbyterians, 

Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and 

others.  Not only did Black church expansion 

profit from this assistance, but, also, the 

formation and development of schools and 

colleges.   With political freedom, local 

Black leadership began the process of 

establishing schools for Black children and 

youth.  Attention to reading and other 

elements of literacy and numeracy was 

stressed early, but attention to all branches of 

instruction found a place in their schedules.  

Across years, these schools increased in 

number and prestige.   

By the end of the War of Rebellion, 

author Johnson claimed that only one of 

every four Black people in the entire United 

States could read.  Within twenty-five years, 

he observed that the number of Black citizens 

had doubled to eight million individuals and 

half of them were readers. “The colored 

people of the South have made more progress 

in education since the war than in anything 

else and they are still thirsty for knowledge . . 

. No people,” claimed Johnson, “ever learned 

more in so short a time” (161-162). 

According to this textbook, another 

area of special progress for freed people was 

the financial success of a few of them.  

Author Johnson deplored, however, the 

failure of the Freedman‟s Savings Bank, a 

disaster which devastated most of the bank‟s 

depositors/savers who were former slaves 

and from which experience most Blacks had 

not recovered their financial confidence.  On 

the other hand, Johnson asserted that “the 

Negro is putting his money into other 

enterprises, and through unsuccessful in his 

first, his last efforts at economy are bearing 

rich fruit”(162-163).  Quite possibly, 

Johnson‟s remark may have referenced his 

own general financial situation.  He 

continued to write, . . .many (Blacks) “though 

shut out almost entirely from the trades and 

business avenues, have accumulated 

handsome homes, and live in elegance and 

refinement” (163).   Especially noteworthy 

was Johnson‟s identification of twenty-seven 

Black American individuals and one family 

who had amassed substantial wealth since the 



 

86 
 

Civil War, in amounts ranging from $50,000 

by Frederick Douglas (of Washington, DC) 

to $400,000 held by Amanda Eubanks (of 

Georgia).  Johnson also called attention to the 

fact that 322 individual Blacks in eight 

former slave states possessed personal wealth 

of at least $10,000.  In this chapter, however, 

Johnson failed to comment on the common 

penury in which the vast majority of southern 

Blacks existed in these historical times.  The 

author closed the chapter with the following 

charge to his young Black readers: “What has 

been said in this chapter is not to make you 

content and satisfied, but rather, to inspire 

new zeal and fresh courage, that each one of 

you may add something more to what has 

already been accomplished.  You can, you 

must, and we believe you will.  Do not falter 

on account of difficulties.  Set your standard 

high and go to it, remembering that labor, 

coupled with a strong devotion to integrity, 

will surely conquer” (166). 

Again, in the book‟s final substantive 

chapter, Johnson highlighted the prominence 

of twenty-one additional Black individuals, 

all but five of who were men.  Some of these 

individuals enjoyed only meager 

identification, e.g., Hiram R. Revels, an 

A.M.E. minister who was the first Black 

person elected to the federal Senate; he took 

the Mississippi seat formerly held by 

Jefferson Davis; Robert Small, a former 

steamer pilot and captain; William Wells 

Brown, born enslaved but escaped and 

became a noted physician and a historian; P. 

B. S. Pinchback, soldier during the Civil War 

and, who, afterwards, was elected Governor 

of Louisiana; T. T. Fortune, born enslaved 

but became a newspaper editor in Florida 

and, later, a congressman; Madame Selika, 

“the colored Jenny Lind” (Author Johnson 

commented that “She would stand near the 

head of modern female voices were it not that 

she is colored” (183)); and Miss H. Q. 

Brown, an accomplished elocutionist.  

Individuals who received more attention in 

this chapter included Robert E. Elliott, an 

African Black with an English education and 

legal training who served as a congressman 

from South Carolina and gained considerable 

notice in debates about the post-war Civil 

Rights legislation; W. S. Scarborough, born 

in poverty, but a professor of classics at 

Wilberforce University and author of a set of 

Greek textbooks used at Yale and other 

universities; and Booker T. Washington, 

orphaned young but achieved widespread 

acclaim as Principal of Alabama‟s Tuskegee 

Institute.  

 The only one of this chapter‟s 

featured individuals who was not a U. S. 

citizen was Toussaint L’Ouverture, a Black 

Caribbean native of Haiti.  In fact, highlights 

of his life consumed almost four pages of the 

book.   L‟Ouverture, born enslaved, became 

commander in chief of the French forces on 

the island and, over time, came to believe 

that he was the one to lead a movement of 

Haitian slaves toward freedom.  The 

revolution began in August, 1791, and ended 

after widespread murder of whites and 

pillage of plantations owned by whites.  

General L‟Ouverture became the ruler of 

Haiti, but was deposed several years later, 

taken prisoner by French authorities, and, in 

1803, he died from hunger in a French 

dungeon.   

 Obviously, Johnson‟s inclusion of 

biographical sketches of some notable Black 

individuals in his history textbook added 



 

87 
 

accounts of real persons to the sweep of 

larger social movements.  In particular, these 

portrayals provided exemplars with whom 

Black children might identify and seek to 

emulate as they grew into adulthood.  

Moreover, the attention that Johnson gave to 

Black individuals from different occupations 

and coming from quite different backgrounds 

in different states, made possible Black 

pupils‟ thinking away from their isolated 

regions and their shallow vessels of family 

memory.  They could be proud of what 

Blacks had accomplished in a number of 

business occupations and prestigious roles 

and possibly might recognize that unrealized 

opportunities for Black people really did 

exist . . . even for themselves. 

 

A Small History Textbook to Meet a 

Particular Need: Inclusion of the Black 

Experience in the American Story, But for 

Black Pupils Only 

 

Edward A, Johnson‟s A School 

History of the Negro Race in America from 

1619 to 1890 was a notable publication.  

Prior to its appearance in 1891 and its use in 

some limited number of southern all-Black 

schools during the following decade, no 

singular book had been available previously 

for study by Black school pupils.  Its writing, 

production, publicity, and distribution was 

conducted solely by the busy author and, in 

all likelihood, was not extensive.  That 

Johnson reprinted the book five times and 

managed to sell a goodly number of copies, 

perhaps most or all of those available, is 

evidence enough of teachers‟ and others‟ 

interest in the book and their desire that it be 

used in the instruction of young freed 

persons.   Distribution, on the other hand, 

appeared to have been limited, perhaps 

mainly to schools for Blacks in North 

Carolina and Virginia.  One observer, on the 

other hand, noted, “Although brief and 

elementary, this book had a wide circulation 

and did much good inculcating an 

appreciation of the Negro.” (“Obituary”, 

506).    

      A history textbook about the Black 

experience in early post-Civil War America 

for Black pupils who attended southern 

segregated schools reasonably should have 

been popular.  However, no textbook 

publishing house in the nation, certainly not 

the major textbook publishers headquartered 

in Boston, New York City, Cincinnati, and 

Philadelphia would have found such a title 

socially inappropriate or economically 

unviable on their booklist.  White members 

of state education agencies and local school 

boards controlled purchasing decisions for 

schools of both Black and white students.    

Moreover, no national or regional (e.g., 

southern) textbook publisher confined its 

business plan to the provision of especially 

prepared textbooks for use in schools for 

Blacks only.  At the time, only one southern 

regional publisher, B. F. Johnson Publishing 

Co. of Richmond, Virginia, had begun 

operations and its first offerings, especially in 

its line of history textbooks, focused attention 

to particularly southern or former-

Confederate positions on matters of race 

relationships.  Segregated schools for Black 

pupils continued for more than half a century 

and, reasonably, they could have constituted 

a substantial market for Johnson‟s Black 

history textbook.  However, adoption and 

subsequent purchases of schoolbooks by 



 

88 
 

southern state departments of education, 

initiated by Texas (Bailey, 1994) and rapidly 

spread throughout the southern region, 

mitigated against special textbooks for Black 

pupils.  The overriding purpose of the state 

adoption movement was to select the “best” 

textbook available for each course and/or 

grade level such that a single standard of 

excellence or bias would be applied to all the 

instruction offered by the state and financed 

with state funds. 

 Notwithstanding the critical 

impediments to widespread use and to 

substantial financial success of Edward A. 

Johnson‟s Black history text, this book has 

the distinction of being the first Black history 

textbook to be written, published, and used in 

American schools by Black students. In 

addition, it well may have been the only 

Black history textbook to be so used.  This 

book offered children and adults in black 

communities a modest but quite realistic 

portrayal of African-American contributions 

to the larger American experience.  Very 

importantly, it created an opportunity for 

African Americans to visualize their human 

possibilities within the contemporary racist 

culture. 

 

Endnote 

1. For biographical accounts used in this 

biographical section, see “Obituary,” 

Journal of Negro History 29 (No. 4), 

505-507;  “Edward A. Johnson,” 1942; 

Gatewood, Dictionary of North Carolina 

Biography, 2012; n. a., “The Life Work 

of Edward A. Johnson,” The Crisis 40 

(April 1933), 79;  “Johnson, Edward A. 

(1860-1944),” An Online Reference 

Guide to African American History , 

2012); Jessica Jina Salo, “Johnson, 

Edward A. (1860-1944), The Black Past: 

Remembered and Reclaimed.  

http://www.BlackPast.org (May 3, 2008). 

 

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n.p. 

 Bruce, Dickson D. 1984.  “The Ironic 

Conception of American History: The 

Early Black Historians, 1883-1915.” 

Journal of Negro History 69 (Spring), 53-

62. 

Gatewood, William B., Jr.  1979-1996.  

“Edward A, Johnson  (Edward Austin), 

1860-1944.”  In William S. Powell, ed.  

Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. 

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

Press.   

Hall, Stephen G. 2009.  A Faithful Account of 

the Race; African American Historical 

Writing in Nineteenth-Century America.  

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Carolina Press. 

Johnson, Edward A.  1890.  A School History 

of the Negro Race in America from 1619 

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Johnson, Edward A.  1891.  A School History 

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to 1890, with a Short Introduction as to 

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Co. 

Johnson, Edward A.  1892.  A School History 

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89 
 

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Johnson, Edward A.  1893.  A School History 

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Chicago: W. B. Conkey Co, Printers and 

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Johnson, Edward A. 1901. A School History 

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The Origin of the Race; also a Short 

Sketch of Liberia. Raleigh; Edward A. 

Johnson and Capital Printing Co., 

Raleigh. 

Johnson, Edward A. 1889.  History of Negro 

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and Other Items of Interest.  Raleigh: 

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Johnson, Edward A.  Letter to Booker T. 

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Johnson, Edward A. 1903.  Negro Almanac 

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Printing Co. 

Johnson, Edward A. 1904.  Light Ahead for 

the Negro.  New York: Grafton Press.  

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Johnson, Edward A.  1931.  Adam vs. Ape 

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Johnson, Edward A. 1942.  “A Student at 

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Johnson, Edward A. 1942. An Online 

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Meier, Augustus. 1963.  Negro Thought in 

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Age of Booker T. Washington.  1963. Ann 

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Salo, Jessica Jina, “Johnson, Edward A. 

(1860-1944)”, The Black Past: 

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“The Life Work of Edward A. Johnson,” 

1933.  The Crisis 40 (April), 79. 

Washington, Booker T.  1897.  Letter to 

Edward Atkinson.  7 November.  In 

Edward A. Johnson, History of the Negro 

Race in America from 1619 to 1890, with 

a Short Introduction as to the Origin of 

the Race; also a Short Sketch of Liberia.  

Wesley, Charles H. 1980.  “Creating and 

Maintaining an Historical Tradition.” 

Journal of Negro History 65 (Autumn, 

1980), 298-311. 

Williams, George Washington. 1883.  

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