Klan and White Supremacists Burn Freedmen's Schools Across South

Between 1865 and 1877, hundreds of Freedmen's Bureau-affiliated schools and Black churches used for education were burned by white supremacists across the South. The Bureau documented dozens of school burnings in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Teachers — particularly Northern white women — were attacked, threatened, and driven out. The Memphis massacre's burning of 12 schools was among the most dramatic examples of a systematic campaign to deny Black children education as a tool of social co