ABSTRACT
The literature dealing with those women and men who dedicated themselves to teaching the newly freed slaves in the South during Reconstruction has grown considerably in recent years. From W. E. B. DuBois's Black Reconstruction in America in 1935, with its positive depiction of the role of these teachers through Henry Lee Swint's 1941 work. African-American women who worked in the field through the American Missionary Association during Reconstruction have not received the attention due them, in part because of the widely accepted stereotype of the Yankee schoolmarm. Stanley was sent to the mission in Norfolk, Virginia which was overseen, at the time, by Superintendent Professor Woodbury and William Coan. The AMAs involvement in education in Norfolk had begun in September of 1861 when the school run by Mary Peake, a free black woman, was brought under AMA auspices.
