The History of Education Society recognized the dissertation, entitled "Opportunity and Opposition: The African-American Struggle for Education in New Haven, Baltimore, and Boston, 1825-1855," for its analysis of attitudes toward black learning in those three cities during the antebellum period.
According to Moss, the query around which the dissertation revolves is a blunt one. "Why, if access to education is expanding [during this time], are there fewer opportunities for black education?" she questioned.
Moss spent nearly eight years investigating the answer. The late 1820s and early 1830s, the years to which Moss dedicates her research, were, she claims, the "Age of Common Schools." America was increasingly preoccupied with reforming its education process. But even as education flourished for most Americans, one of the country's largest demographics, African-Americans, found their attempts to acquire knowledge the target of animosity and frequently violence.
Moss cited an incident of such violence that occurred; in New Hampshire a newly-integrated schoolhouse was hitched to a team of oxen and dragged into a swamp by furious townspeople. In the South, anti-literacy laws were becoming an accepted form of black repression. It was actually these unjust laws in particular that triggered Moss' interest in her dissertation topic. "Reading has always been a huge part of my life," she explained. "I was very struck by the idea that it was once a crime to teach people to read."
Although the anti-literacy laws were a Southern phenomenon, one of Moss's most essential points is that by no means was racism restricted to below the Mason-Dixon Line. "There's a tendency to believe in this myth that the 'Slave South' was bad and the 'Free North' was good," Moss said. However, Northern educational opportunities were as inequitable as their Southern counterparts.
To illustrate this point, Moss examined the aforementioned three cities in various stages of emancipation during the years surrounding 1830. Boston's slaves were entirely emancipated, New Haven, along with the rest of Connecticut, was gradually approaching free state status, and Baltimore was still a bastion of slavery. But despite their different conditions, there was vehement opposition to black schooling in all three cities.
Discovering the impetus for such hostility was the ultimate goal of Moss's paper. She postulated that by denying blacks an education, the white establishment was actually preventing them from becoming fully-fledged American citizens. At the time, immigration was on the rise; common schools were a means for foreigners to become acclimated to their new country. Schools served, according to Moss, as "citizen-makers." Thus, preventing blacks from receiving an education effectively served to prevent them from attaining citizenship.
Moss is in her second year at the College. Antebellum social history has long been an area of inquiry for Moss; her doctoral thesis at Brandeis University refined her interest to the specific issue of black education in the 1800s. Students at the College will benefit from her wealth of knowledge in the spring semester, when she will teach a class based almost completely on her dissertation research. Next on Moss's agenda is expanding her paper into a complete book.
A woman who has applied eight years of her life to the study of education knows the value of her teaching position. "Teaching at Amherst reminds me every day why education matters," said Moss, "and why equal access to education is so important."