Queer Places:
Oberlin College, 173 W Lorain St, Oberlin, OH 44074, Stati Uniti
Holley Graded School, Callao, VA 22435, Stati Uniti
Caroline F. Putnam (29 July 1826 – 14 January 1917), abolitionist and
educator, from Massachusetts, devoted herself in abolitionist movement and
opened the Holley School for freed slaves.[1]
Putnam graduated from Oberlin College after finishing 4 years of study and
devoted herself in abolitionist movement. In the early 1860s Putnam emphasized
on aid for the freed slaves. Later, she moved to Lottsburg, Virginia, to open
the Holley School for freed slaves.[2]
She was an innovative and responsible teacher who devoted her life in
educating and delivering ideas of freedom to black children from labor
families.[3][4]
Putnam was born in 1826 in Massachusetts to a Unitarian physician, who died
while Caroline was a small child, and his wife Eliza (Carpenter) Putnam.[3]
Of her father's first name, her middle name, or the town of her birth, nothing
is known. Eliza Putnam second marriage to Levi Peet moved the family to
southwestern New York.[5][6]
Putnam enrolled at Oberlin College in 1848, where she met
Sallie Holley. Like Holley, who was to
become her lifelong companion, Putnam was out of step with Oberlin on
evangelical doctrine, eventually embracing Unitarianism. Also at odds with the
college's conservative evangelical abolitionism, she followed Holley into the
more radical Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement. Both women spent
their lives in greater female activism and more radical social reform than
were endorsed by Oberlin faculty.[7]
When Holley graduated in 1851, Putnam left Oberlin without completing her
studies. For the next decade she worked for the abolition of slavery, largely
in the shadow of Holley, who became a noted abolitionist lecturer. Putnam
traveled with Holley, wrote to newspapers about Holley's speaking engagements,
and called door-to-door in villages across the North to explain the tenets of
Garrisonianism, though she disliked the rootlessness of constant travel and
felt that she lacked the tenacity and emotional resilience required by the
work.[8][9]
In the early 1860s, Putnam and her lifelong companion Holley shifted their
attention from abolition to aid for the freed slaves. In 1868, Putnam stepped
from Holley's shadow, establishing new careers for both of them. Putnam moved
to Lottsburg, Virginia, to open a school for freed slaves.[10]
She taught, looked after administrative tasks, pioneered innovative means of
gaining financial support, and earned southern white acceptance without
yielding on racial issues. Holley taught alongside Putnam after 1870 but was
never reconciled to the isolation of rural Virginia, so she spent months at a
time traveling in the North.[6][7]
Putnam was an innovative, attentive teacher who adapted well to the
conditions of southern rural black life. She held classes year-round in order
to accommodate the labor demands on black children of different ages; she did
not impose strict punctuality on a community without clocks; she and her
assistants integrated a wide variety of print sources, objects, and the
surrounding fields into the classroom.[5]
She remained at her post for forty-five years, teaching the children and
grandchildren of the freedmen she had taught when she first ventured into the
South. Though she retired in 1903, she remained at the school until her death
in Lottsburg, Virginia. Holley had died in 1893.[2]
Putnam maintained her larger reform and abolition commitments throughout
her decades in the South. She was a strident activist in the struggle to
assure the freedmen access to the ballot box in the 1870s, and she served as
their advocate and adviser throughout the rise of the Jim Crow laws. She was
uncompromising in her demand for racial equality during a time when most
Americans turned their backs on African Americans. After Putnam's retirement
she encouraged the emergence of the NAACP and also worked for temperance,
world peace, and the protection of animals.[2][9]
In November 1868, Putnam became more directly involved with the freedmen,
moving to Lottsburg, Virginia, to establish a freedmen’s school. Though named
for Sallie Holley, the school was Caroline Putnam’s. She devised the
curriculum, made innovations in pedagogy and policy, raised funds from
northern friends, and taught in the school year-around. Holley joined her in
1870, but taught only intermittently.[9][11]
The Holley School was notable for emphasizing a political curriculum and
stressed the historical struggle for African-Americans and criticized
industrial education unmercifully. As a prolific correspondent, Putnam never
wrote for publication.[3]
Putnam retired in 1903, after thirty-five years of schoolwork, but she
remained in Lottsburg, superintending the school and assisting in the
community until her death in 1917. Among the northern white women who assisted
in establishing southern African-American education in the 1860s, only Laura
M. Towne taught longer; none remained longer in the South. Putnam is interred
in Lottsburg, near the school founded.[3][8][10]
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_F._Putnam