(Excerpt from The Education of the Negro: Its Rise Progres...)
Excerpt from The Education of the Negro: Its Rise Progress and Present Status; Being an Address Delivered Before the National Educational Association at Its Late Meeting at Chautauqua, N. Y Claflin University, now united with the Colored Agricultural leg'e, 'and located at Orangeburg, receives from the State of South Carolina $7,500'per annum. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Gustavus John Orr was born on August 9, 1819, in Orrville, Anderson County, South Carolina, the son of James and Anne (Anderson) Orr. In 1821 the family moved to Jackson County, Georgia, and there young Orr grew into manhood, working on the farm.
In 1839 Gustavus set out for East Tennessee to attend the Maryville academy and then entered the University of Georgia but, owing to a high if not exaggerated sense of honor, left the university at the end of his junior year rather than help the faculty in a matter of discipline. He entered Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, and was graduated in 1844.
Orr's record at Emory had been so good that he was offered a position as a teacher in the preparatory department and as a tutor in the college. He returned to Jefferson after two years, however, and began the study of law with one of the resident attorneys, but by the end of the year he gave up the idea of becoming a lawyer. In 1847 he accepted a position in a girls' school at Covington, Georgia. The next year Emory College offered him the professorship of mathematics. His ability as a mathematician was recognized in 1859, when Gov. Joseph E. Brown appointed him Georgia's commissioner to settle by survey a troublesome boundary dispute with Florida. By 1867 the Civil War and Reconstruction had reduced the college to the vanishing point, and he accepted the presidency of the Southern Masonic Female College at Covington. There he remained until 1870, when he became professor of mathematics at Oglethorpe College, which was removed from Midway to Atlanta that year. However, the work on which his fame was to rest was yet to be done.
In January 1872 the Democrats took control of the state from the Carpet-baggers, and among the first acts of the new governor was the appointment of Orr as state school commissioner. The law for the establishment of a common-school system, passed in 1870, was based on a report he had made in 1869 to the Georgia teachers' association. Thoroughly revised and rewritten in 1872, this new act became the basis of the state's common-school system and served admirably the purpose for many years. He was reappointed successively by the succeeding governors and remained school commissioner until his death. Owing to a school debt caused by his predecessor, he did not open the schools until 1873, and in his work of setting up an educational system he met and overcame many prejudices that had grown up under Carpet-bag management.
Orr wrote many articles for the newspapers and many letters to individuals, and he made hundreds of speeches throughout the state. He early reached the conviction that the federal government might find ways to help education in the states, and in the advocacy of this program he spoke widely over the United States and appeared at various times before congressional committees. In 1881 he was made vice-president of the National Education Association, and the following year he became its president. He had a high sense of justice and a broad outlook in a day when sectional narrowness was too common. He plead for justice to the negro and lost no popularity in his state in doing so. He became the agent for the Peabody Fund in Georgia and directed the use of much of this money for normal institutes and free scholarships.
Gustavus Orr died on December 11, 1887, in Georgia.
While serving as vice-president and president of the Georgia Teachers Association, Gustavus Orr drafted an education plan promoting a free public education for all Georgia children, which was drafted as a bill and passed as the School Law of 1970. While serving as Georgia's second State Commissioner of Education (1872-1887), Gustavus Orr helped the public school system work out of a $300, 000 debt incurred by his predecessor, encouraged Georgia school enrollment to grow from 49, 000 in 1871 to more than 340, 000 in 1887, developed a licensure system for Georgia's teachers, and founded three Normal Schools for the development of teachers.
(Excerpt from The Education of the Negro: Its Rise Progres...)
Gustavus Orr served as vice-president and president of the Georgia Teachers Association.
In 1847 Gustavus Orr was married to Eliza Caroline Anderson, who bore him ten children,
