About Us History

Pioneering African-American Women Educators in Memphis

In knowledge there is freedom. Accordingly, many opposed the teaching of people living in slavery. Local historian, Perre Magness, quotes the Memphis Daily Appeal of August 25, 1856 that educating any black people was “a direct blow at the institution of slavery itself as well as the peace and security of Southern society…(because) enlightened men cannot be enslaved.” African Americans in Memphis lived in a time when being free was not a given and staying free was a challenge. Dr. Beverly Bond of the University of Memphis has researched the lives of the first African American women to become educators in Memphis.  Among them were Celia Burris and Graftie Moody.

Celia Burton’s family members were free people of color living in Memphis in 1848. Though free, the law required that they had to register with the city to stay in town.  Her mother was a seamstress and her sisters were chambermaids.   Of all the children, only Celia and her brother, who worked as a barber, learned to read.

Celia married a free man named Andrew Burris and became a teacher. For most of the Civil War and Reconstruction period, teachers in African American schools were white missionaries.  However, independent schoolrooms were also operated out of houses or churches by African–American congregations or private individuals like Celia.   In 1864, she opened a school at Linden and Turley in her home with the Freedman’s Bureau paying the $150 rent.  She also taught in a private school on Beale Street operated by Reverend Samuel Silliman.  There was no formal public system for educating African-Americans until 1864 when the missionary schools were incorporated into the city school system.   

Teachers were in great demand after the war.  Thousands of newly freed slaves were eager for the education they had been denied. They flocked to the new schools to help build new lives for themselves and their families. By 1865, nearly 2,000 black students attended schools in Memphis. Although the black schools and church buildings were destroyed in the race riot of 1866, and the teachers left town for their own safety, the schools were rebuilt. By the end of 1870, there were 15,421 African American students in schools.

According to Dr. Bond, Graftie Moody was the only African American listed among the first 23 teachers in the Memphis public schools. By 1870, she was one of three African American women teaching in the city schools, and  in 1874 Clay Street School had been built for African American students  by the City of Memphis.  Born in Alabama, she married Alex Moody who worked as an expressman.  Sadly, her life was cut short when she died at age 30 in September of 1878 during the most devastating yellow fever epidemic in Memphis history.

One book about Memphis written in 1892 notes that of the 15,000 children of school age in the city, 6,100 were registered in attendance at the public schools. 3,544 of these were white and 2,530 black.  At that time, there were four schools provided for the black students. Celia Burton Burris and Graftie Moody were among the pioneer African American women who became the teachers who led the way to education for African Americans in Memphis.

Sources: 

Memphis in Black and White by Beverly Bond and Janann Sherman   2003                   

“City’s First Black Educators Recalled” by Perre Magness in the Commercial Appeal  April 1997