Edmonia G. Highgate lived only 26 years, but she lived long enough to have a remarkable impact on the education of Black children during the Reconstruction era.
Born in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1844, Highgate received her teaching certificate after graduating from Syracuse High School in 1861 as the only Black student. At 19, she became a school principal before transferring to an American Missionary Association (AMA) school in Norfolk, Va.
Highgate “was one of the many upstate New Yorkers who responded to the appeal to aid those who had survived slavery,” the History of American Women Blog states. “Teaching in the South during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) took great courage. The women who traveled there to teach often feared for their lives but were determined to empower the freed slaves through literacy.”
In 1866, Highgate served as principal of the Frederick Douglass School, housed in a former slave pen in New Orleans. That summer, she was shot at twice by white rioters.
In a Dec. 17, 1866 letter, Highgate described her hostile surroundings:
“There has been much opposition to the school,” she wrote. “Twice I have been shot at in my room. Some of my night-school scholars have been shot but none killed. A week ago an aged freedman was shot so badly as to break his arm and leg – just across the way. The rebels here threatened to burn down the school and house in which I board before the first month was passed. Yet they have not materially harmed us.”
New Orleans School Board plans to segregate public schools angered Highgate so much that she left teaching to become a collection agent for the AMA in 1868.
Highgate said she would “rather starve than stoop one inch on that question.” She died in 1870 in Syracuse.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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