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My mother Amelia [[strikethrough]] Canty [[/strikethrough]] ^[[Cantey]] and her sister Amanda [[strikethrough]] Canty [[/strikethrough]] ^[[, Cantey]] finished the colored public schools on June 27, 1884 at St. [[strikethrough]] James' [[/strikethrough]] ^[[James]] A.M.E. Church. Besides mother and Amanda, there were 15 other classmates. It's very interesting to note that there were [[strikethrough]] all [[/strikethrough]] ^[[only]] girls in the ^[[graduation class]] [[strikethrough]] school [[/strikethrough]]. While talking long distance to a friend in Columbus, I asked him whether he had ever heard if they had separate schools for girls and boys ^[[in Columbus.]] He didn't know. The principal of the school ^[[from which Mother and Aunt Frannie attended]] was P. B. Peters. Mother often spoke of him as being quite an excellent teacher and a very intellectual person. By 1890 the Whites had five schools compared to the only four schools for the Negro children and no high school at all. These four schools were either primary, elementary or grammar. The grammar school ^[[which went to the 9th grade]] was the late school [[strikethrough]] that [[/strikethrough]] ^[[for]] the Negro attended. ^[[In 1898, a white high school was built for the whites but none for the colored youth.]]

On January 16, 1871, Jefferson Franklin Long took his oath was the first and only Negro Congressman from Georgia. On February 1, 1871, he made his first speech in Congress. In his speech he proposed the law removing the test oath required of all confederates before they could take public office, he described the conditions in Georgia, and told of the way in which lynch laws had grown to such proportions that it was no longer safe to be a loyal citizen in Georgia. While in Congress, Long supported the Fifteenth Amendment, the Universal Suffrage in the District of Columbia and other laws which would benefit the nation as a whole. At the expiration of his term in March 1871, Long retired