Pioneer of public school

Alexander Graham has been called the father of the graded school system of his hometown of Fayetteville, of Charlotte, and of the state of North Carolina. The histories of Alexander and of the local school system are justifiable sources of pride for Fayetteville.

In early years, educational opportunities in and around Fayetteville were primarily available through private schools. These schools required payment of a fee or tuition, and thus they tended to be populated with students from families of at least a moderate degree of affluence and from white families. In addition, it seems there was no particular system for dividing students into classes based on age or educational level. Many of these private schools were chartered by legislative act, going as far back as the Fayetteville Academy in 1799. Others followed, among them the Fayetteville Female School of Industry, Ravenscroft Academy, and the Donaldson Academy and Manual Labor School.

After the Civil War, a movement in support of graded public schools gained momentum across North Carolina — graded in order to separate students of different ages into different classes, and public to indicate at least partial funding from local governments. It was in this milieu that Alexander Graham came to prominence.

Alexander had strong family roots in Cumberland County. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Scotland, ultimately settling in the late 1700s in the Long Street section of the county (on what is now Fort Liberty). His parents, Archibald and Anne McLean Graham, moved into Fayetteville where Archibald was a tailor and dry goods merchant. The family home was downtown on Maiden Lane across the street from where Cumberland County Public Library currently stands.

Alexander received a private school education in Fayetteville and then served in the Confederate army, according to the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s army captured Alexander, but released him at the close of the Civil War. After the war, Alexander taught briefly in Bladen County before enrolling at UNC-Chapel Hill where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1869. He then moved to New York City, teaching Greek while studying law at Columbia University. He obtained his bachelor of laws degree in 1873. He returned to Fayetteville to practice law; it was there that his interest in graded public school education blossomed.

In Fayetteville, support for public schools at that time was evidenced by editorial comments that appeared in the North Carolina Gazette, a local newspaper. In its Jan. 10, 1878, edition, the Gazette bemoaned that good schools all over North Carolina could “be patronized by only people of means” and that to date the public school effort in North Carolina had been a “disastrous failure.” In closing, the article stated: “… the toilers and the laborers — ‘the bone and sinew’ — where is the provision for their benefit? Not a single large public school, not a single graded school, in Fayetteville.” Later that same year, the impetus for public education received an unexpected boost among Fayetteville’s white citizenry from a rather intriguing situation.

In “Our Early Graded Schools and Their Founders,” an article by M. C. S. Noble in The High School Journal, that situation is recounted. It seems that during the summer of 1878, an affray occurred in Fayetteville resulting in a court trial. At the trial, called to be witnesses were 11 young boys, six of them Black and five of them white. The Black lads signed their names to their testimony; however, the white lads signed with an “x,” or some other marking. The article posits that this difference reflected the education received by the Black students at the Howard School — precursor to Fayetteville State University, which was established in 1867 with backing from the Freedmen’s Bureau, the American Missionary Association and the Peabody Fund. The episode astonished and humiliated the white citizens, whereupon they “in their humiliation and shame, determined to place a good school within reach of all the white children of the town.”

The white citizenry of Fayetteville immediately mounted a subscription campaign for the cause of public education, raising about $3,000. An appropriation was also received from the Peabody Fund and a small amount from North Carolina’s public education fund. In its Aug. 29, 1878, edition, the North Carolina Gazette reported that existing school buildings, the Donaldson Academy (Haymount), the Female Seminary (Hay Street) and the Mission School House (Campbellton section of town), had been selected to house the new school system.

But the paper further reported no school superintendent had been selected by the school’s board of trustees. That vacancy was soon filled as a result of another somewhat unexpected “turn of events.” The initial trustees for the new graded school system were leading citizens of the town, Alexander Graham among them. According to a letter written by Alexander, referenced in Hometown Heritage by Lucile Miller Johnson, at a meeting of the trustees to consider appointment of a superintendent, several candidates were nominated; but after several ballots, no nominee had received a majority vote. The stalemate in the voting was broken by the nomination of Alexander. As it happened, Alexander was not in attendance at the meeting. Not being there to refuse the nomination, he was thereupon elected superintendent in absentia. Fortunately, he agreed to serve.

The Fayetteville system of graded public schools went into operation in mid-September 1878. The faculty included Alexander, as well as seven other instructors.

Newspaper articles from across the state, like the Goldsboro Messenger, lauded the success of the initial, and subsequent, years of operation of the Fayetteville schools. One notable comment quoting Alexander, which appeared in the Fayetteville Examiner, said, “The children of the rich and poor sit side by side and contend for the same honors.” Much credit for this success was accorded to Alexander.

As often happens, experience and success lead to new opportunities. In 1888, after 10 years of service in Fayetteville, Alexander was offered and accepted the position of superintendent of the Charlotte Graded Schools — a position he served in for 25 years.

In addition to his positions as superintendent of schools in Fayetteville and Charlotte, Alexander Graham’s accomplishments over the years were legion. Here are just a few of them:

• President of the North Carolina Education Association

• Trustee of A&T College at Greensboro

• Distinguished historian, including work to establish the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, according to the Fayetteville Observer

• First person in North Carolina to put high school studies in a graded school (Fayetteville, 1878), according to his eulogy in the Greensboro Record

• Founder of the first manual training school in North Carolina (Charlotte, 1892)

• First person to canvass the state in order to promote establishing graded schools

• First person to ask that females be accepted at UNC upon completion of high school

• Vigorous opponent of cigarette smoking which he banished in the schools

• Advocate for affording educational advantages to Black students and strong supporter of the Second Ward School, Charlotte’s first public high school for Black students

One of the first public school buildings built in Fayetteville, Central School, was constructed at the corner of Burgess Street and Maiden Lane, the site of Alexander’s childhood home. Whether this was an intentional nod to Alexander is not known. However, when a new high school on McGilvary Street was dedicated in 1924, it was named in his honor. In later years, that building and the former Fayetteville High School building on Robeson Street together comprised Alexander Graham Junior High. Both buildings were later torn down.

In 1915, the Weekly Observer of Fayetteville reprinted an article from the Charlotte Observer that contained a sterling tribute to Alexander: “That one man — despite political differences, despite the rise and fall of factions, despite the out-croppings of resentment at this act and that, despite machinations, despite criticism — should be able to retain for 25 years that most vulnerable and delicate of posts — superintendent of schools — and through it all should be able to keep true to his educational ideals and build a school system that is the admiration of the State — surely that fact carries its own commentary on the unique ability of Alexander Graham — scholar, diplomat, teacher, politician, historian, patriot and Southern gentleman.”

Alexander Graham, native son of Fayetteville, died on Nov. 2, 1934. His death was headline news across North Carolina. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Charlotte.

Read CityView Magazine’s “Back to School” August 2024 e-edition here.