Francis L. Cardozo

Born February 1, 1837
Charleston, South Carolina

Died July 22, 1903
Washington, D.C.

Minister, educator, and politician

"One of the greatest of slavery bulwarks was the infernal plantation system.… I maintain that our freedom will be of no effect if we allow it to continue. What is the main cause of the prosperity of the North? It is because every man has his own farm and is free and independent. Let the lands of the South be similarly divided."

Francis L. Cardozo served as an educator and politician in his native South Carolina and in Washington, D.C. His efforts in education resulted in two highly respected high schools: the Avery Institute in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. Cardozo was an effective elected official during the Reconstruction era in South Carolina, helping smooth the transition from an economy based on slavery to one that aimed to provide equal opportunity.

From carpenter to minister

Francis Louis Cardozo was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1837. His father, a journalist, was white, and Cardozo's mother was of mixed African and Native American ancestry. Cardozo had at least two siblings, a brother and a sister. He attended a school for African Americans in Charleston until he was twelve. Cardozo was then apprenticed (bound by contract) to a carpenter. As an apprentice, Cardozo had on-the-job training to learn the skills of carpentry. He remained an apprentice for five years and then became a journeyman (one who possesses the skills to be licensed as a professional carpenter).

During this time, Cardozo had joined the Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston. He saved enough money from his carpentry work to travel to Scotland, where he attended the University of Glasgow while continuing to support himself through odd jobs. Cardozo moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh, Scotland, and then to London, England, to study for the ministry. He returned to the United States in 1864 at age twenty-seven and was appointed minister to the Temple Street Congregational Church in New Haven, Connecticut.

Edward Bouchet, Educator and Scientist

Like Francis Cardozo, there were many educators who improved schools for African American children following the Civil War. Edward Bouchet was one of them. He spent twenty-six years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, teaching at the Institute for Colored Youth and speaking often before church, trade, and community groups. Bouchet was the first African American to receive a doctorate degree, graduating from Yale University with his Ph.D. in physics in 1876.

Bouchet was born on September 15, 1852, in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended the Artisan Street Colored School, the oldest of four primary schools for African American children in New Haven. An excellent student, Bouchet moved to a private school, where he graduated first in his class and gave the valedictory address (the speech given by the most outstanding member of a graduating class) at graduation. He entered Yale College in 1870 and was one of the top students of his class. In his senior year, Bouchet was approached by Alfred Cope about remaining at Yale and obtaining his doctorate in physics. Cope was on the Board of Managers of the Institute for Colored Youth (ICY), a Quaker school for African American children located in Philadelphia. Cope wanted to develop a science program for ICY and wanted Bouchet to direct the department.

After receiving his Ph.D., Bouchet started the science department and taught at ICY for twenty-six years. During this period, he became a member of the Franklin Institute, one of the country's oldest scientific societies, founded in 1824. He was also a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and sat on the board of directors of the Century Building and Loan Association in Philadelphia, which was organized in 1886.

In 1902, the curriculum of ICY changed, de-emphasizing the humanities and science to focus on the mechanical trades to prepare young people to enter the workforce. Bouchet left the Institute in protest and spent the rest of his life in a variety of positions. He taught in a college preparatory program at Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1902; worked as a business manager at a St. Louis hospital the following year; moved to New Orleans in 1905 and worked for two years as U.S. Inspector of Customs for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition; returned to education in 1905 as the director of academics at St. Paul's Normal and Industrial School in Lawrenceville, Virginia; and then became principal of Lincoln High School in Galipolis, Ohio, in 1908.

Bouchet's five years at Lincoln High School were typical of his career. He arrived at a school in neglect and helped students overcome obstacles to learning, improving the facilities and curriculum and pursuing his philosophy of training young African Americans so they were prepared to enter college.

In 1913, Bouchet joined the faculty of Bishop College in Marshall, Texas. However, he soon began suffering heart problems and was forced to retire. By this time, he was seventy-six years old. Bouchet returned to his hometown of New Haven and lived there until his death in 1918.

Cardozo married Catherine Romena Howell of New Haven. The couple would have four sons, two daughters, and a few famous grandchildren. Among them were Eslanda Goode Robeson (1896–1965), an anthropologist and wife of noted actor Paul Robeson (1898–1976), and W. Warrick Cardozo (1905–1962), a physician who was a pioneer researcher in the disease sickle cell anemia.

Teacher and politician

Cardozo discovered he wanted to be an educator rather than a minister. His brother and sister were both teaching in Flushing, New York. Following the end of the Civil War (1861–65) in the spring of 1865, Cardozo asked the American Missionary Association (AMA) to send him to the South to establish a school to train black teachers. Cardozo was appointed head of an AMA school back in his hometown of Charleston. Cardozo and his family were joined by his brother and sister and their families in Charleston, and the Cardozo siblings all taught at the school. Cardozo ran the school until April 1868, helping to establish what would become the Avery Institute, an acclaimed teacher training facility.

At the school, Cardozo directed an integrated staff of white teachers from the North and African American teachers from both the North and South. Cardozo led his school under difficult conditions. The ownership of the school building was under dispute: It had been taken over by the AMA during the Civil War, but some townspeople claimed they were the real owners. Meanwhile, Cardozo had heard of a plan by the estate of Charles Avery to contribute $10,000 to build a school in Atlanta, Georgia. Avery had created a fortune earlier in the century as a medicine supplier based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A staunch abolitionist (antislavery activist), Avery had helped slaves escape the South through the Underground Railroad, a series of safe havens where runaway slaves stayed as they moved north toward freedom in Canada. Upon his death, Avery left an estate that provided a large sum of money to help in "the education and elevation of the colored people of the United States and Canada."

Cardozo was able to gain support from local politicians, who provided letters of recommendation that helped him secure money from the Avery estate. He also received financial assistance from the Freedmen's Bureau, a banking institution established by the federal government after the Civil War to assist African Americans to become economically stable. In April 1867, Cardozo and his teachers moved to a temporary location for their school while a new school was being built. The Avery Institute opened the following April as a school and as an institute for teacher training.

Enters politics

Meanwhile, Cardozo had become well known in the Charleston community. He served on a board advising South Carolina's military commander about voter registration regulations in 1866. (A military governor is appointed by the government of an occupying military force. During the Reconstruction era—from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the end of Reconstruction in 1877—Southern states that had seceded from the Union were run by military governors to ensure that peace and civil rights were protected.) In 1868, he was elected to the South Carolina state constitutional convention. States like South Carolina that had seceded from and fought against the Union in the Civil War were required to amend or rewrite their state constitutions to include approval of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments (outlawing slavery and protecting voting rights, respectively), as part of the requirements for rejoining the Union.

At the convention, Cardozo emphasized the need to make land grants available to freedmen. Land grants provide parcels of land by loan or for free with the condition that the land is used and maintained. Cardozo claimed that the plantation system of the South, where huge tracts of land were owned by one family, had fostered slavery and would stifle economic growth opportunities. Cardozo argued that plantations should be divided into smaller tracts that could be developed independently so many more people would enjoy economic freedom and earn a living.

Cardozo and Plantations

The following is an excerpt from Francis Cardozo's speech at the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868 on the subject of plantations.

One of the greatest of slavery bulwarks was the infernal plantation system, one man owning his thousand, another his twenty, another fifty thousand acres of land. [Providing land grants for freedmen] is the only way by which we will break up that system, and I maintain that our freedom will be of no effect if we allow it to continue. What is the main cause of the prosperity of the North? It is because every man has his own farm and is free and independent. Let the lands of the South be similarly divided. I would not say for one moment they should be confiscated, but if sold to maintain the war, now that slavery is destroyed, let the plantation system go with it. We will never have true freedom until we abolish the system of agriculture which existed in the Southern States. It is useless to have any schools while we maintain the stronghold of slavery as the agricultural system of the country.

Cardozo attended the convention while he was still heading the school, but he no longer had the time to teach. His participation in the convention led Republicans to recommend that Cardozo should run for state government office. Cardozo ran for and was elected secretary of state, becoming the first African American to hold an elected position in the history of South Carolina. Still, his election victory was bittersweet. The new responsibilities led Cardozo to resign from his school position just days before the formal dedication of the Avery Institute, for which he had worked so hard. Cardozo was reelected in 1870 and served in the office until 1872, when he became state treasurer.

Political career

As secretary of state, Cardozo reorganized the state's Land Commission, which administered the use and sale of land. He made the agency honest and effective. In his role as state treasurer from 1872 to 1877, he supported the efforts of state Republicans to reform taxes and ensure that the state spent its money wisely. After Southern Democrats won control of the state in the elections of 1876, Cardozo and his family left South Carolina in 1877 for Washington, D.C.

Cardozo accepted a position in the Treasury Department during the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893; served 1877–81; see entry). In 1881, Cardozo became principal of the Colored Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C., and molded it into the leading black college preparatory school in the United States. In addition to classes that prepared students for college, Cardozo introduced business courses intended solely to teach business skills to students, regardless of their career choices. The institution was later renamed Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, after the famous poet.

Cardozo began easing his workload as the nineteenth century ended and he reached his sixties. Cardozo died on July 22, 1903. In 1928, a new business and vocational high school in Washington, D.C., was named in his honor.

For More Information

Books

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999.

Drago, Edmund L. Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations: Charleston's Avery Normal Institute. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.

Smith, Jessie Carney. Black Firsts. 2nd ed. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2003.

Web Sites

"Politician, Minister, and Educator, Francis Cardozo." The African American Registry.http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/ 1643/Politician_minister_and_educator_Francis_Cardozo (accessed on June 17, 2004).

"South Carolina Encyclopedia Project: Avery Normal Institute." College of Charleston School of Humanities & Social Sciences.http://www.cofc.edu/~history/avery_sc_encyclopedia.htm (accessed on June 17, 2004).