The Hidden History of St. Philips and Slavery
The white Episcopalian Church in San Antonio was at the forefront of the conspiracy to make Black people subservient to the needs of whites. In 1882, the true founders of St. Philip’s College can be said to be John M Randolph, James R. Davis, Reverend Abraham Grant, J.C. Emory, R.H. Harbert, and J. C. Carnes. These men were erased from San Antonio history. They met and pushed for a state college for Black folks. They brought forth a petition in San Antonio to city hall and all the while the white Episcopalian was waiting in the wings to sabotage it by making sure they controlled the educational aspirations of Blacks in San Antonio. They were attempting to control education for Blacks with curriculum that was geared to servicing the needs of whites—slavery by another name.
Look at what is left out of the St. Philip’s College story and you may be shocked. Little is said about the history of the founder, James Steptoe Johnston, and how he was a racist Confederate soldier that wanted to keep blacks in check by offering them a segregated inferior Jim Crow school. This was his aim, and he would have kept a white teacher over the facility if not for the radical Blacks who demanded a black teacher, thus resulting in the appointment of Artemisia Bowden. Steptoe Johnson was led by Bishop Robert Woodard Barnwell Elliot who stole the idea from Black teachers. This history is generally not known even by those closely associated with the college. It has been hidden on purpose. The Episcopalian Church was engaged in a long-lasting scheme to bring Black educational desires under their control by creating institutions that serviced the needs of whites.
A key figure in this racist move was Bishop Alexander Gregg. He made the case that Christian education must be used to make Black people docile and obey the will of whites after slavery. He set up segregated Sunday Schools in San Antonio. Bishop Gregg moved from South Carolina in 1860 and brought with him some 27 slaves to Austin, Texas. The Episcopalian Church in San Antonio, St Marks Church on Pecan Street, and the Black counterpart St. Philips (and the college), are all connected to the racist leadership at the time. It is interesting to note that Robert E. Lee, the arch racist and pro- slavery leader for the Confederacy, while stationed in San Antonio, was a member of St Marks Episcopal Church in San Antonio.
James Steptoe Johnston became a Bishop with the white-only Episcopalian Church. According to the researcher Kenneth Mason, the racialized Episcopalians had given up on trying to “make Christians of the Negroes” and instead sought out ways to make them docile and conform to “white ways.” Part of this conformity was to give freed slaves an inferior education by establishing segregated schools and destroying the Freedmen Bureau Schools. With a segregated school system, blacks could be kept away from white educational institutions and an academic education. James Steptoe Johnston founded St Philips for all of the wrong reasons. Later, African Americans would help to overcome a racist curriculum, but would not know that the very racist founder of the institution set it up that way. San Antonio history has been hidden to satisfy a skewed understanding of the forces that shaped San Antonio. We should be honoring the Black leaders that originally called for a Black College and not the racists that sought to control the educational needs of Black folks after slavery was partially ended.
