By 
February 10, 2025
A measure of your time as a Huntsville resident might be if you remember 801 Franklin St. as the site of a dry cleaning business, a high-end dress shop, a popular restaurant, a brew pub, or its current life as a travel agency. The history of this lot, however, predates the mid-century modern, two-story brick building that now sits at the corner of Franklin Street and Townsend Avenue.
The current building is also steeped in history. In 1947, black business owners Lou Bertha and Shelby Johnson built the current building for their business, Grand Cleaners.
The land at 801 Franklin is hallowed ground, the original home of Rust Institute, Huntsville’s first school of higher learning for formerly enslaved men and women. Rust Institute offered education, opportunity and hope to people denied those liberties by slavery.
Education: A cornerstone of freedom
Freedman’s Schools like Rust Institute cultivated the minds and unleashed the intellectual potential of Americans who would shape our nation’s history. Anti-literacy laws in southern states made it a crime for enslaved or Free Black people to read or write. For millions of emancipated Americans, education became synonymous with freedom, independence, and equality.
Freedman’s Schools were an outgrowth of congressional programs designed to help freed people and impoverished white people after the Civil War. Along with providing food, shelter and medical services, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or the Freedman’s Bureau, encouraged missionary aid societies to set up schools throughout the South.
Rust Institute, c. 1880, at the current-day address of 801 Franklin St.
Northern philanthropy funds Freedman’s Schools
Rust Institute is the namesake of Richard S. Rust, a Massachusetts born Methodist preacher, abolitionist, and Secretary of the Freedman’s Bureau. In addition to his work with the Bureau, Rust also founded the Freedman’s Aid Society, an organization that raised money and recruited teachers for Freedman’s Schools.
Rust Institute ad in the Huntsville Gazette, c. 1881.
Rust established more than 30 colleges across the South, training the first generations of Black teachers, professionals, and business leaders. Over its forty-year history, the school was also known as known as Rust Normal Institute, Rust Biblical and Normal Institute, and Central Alabama Academy. The school closed its doors and moved to Birmingham in 1904.
The Freedman’s Society harnessed the philanthropy and activism of northern missionary aid societies to help emancipated American achieve freedom and independence. The Pittsburgh Freedmen’s Aid Society funded eleven schools in North Alabama, contributing mightily to the cause of Black education. The Society underwrote teacher salaries and supplied books to Rust Institute. In 1870, they invested $7,000 for a new two-story brick schoolhouse designed by Cincinnati architect William Tinsley. School amenities included a library with over 200 books, a reading room, and a lyceum.
Rust faculty sow seeds of enlightenment and equality
The Society recruited administrators and teachers to Rust who were experienced educators with strong ties to the abolitionist movement. The Society tapped Pennsylvania educator August W. McCullough to organize the Freedman’s Schools in Madison County. In addition to stellar teaching credentials, faculty member Matilda Hindman brought her commitment to equal rights and women’s suffrage. Mary Lakin Raines rounded out the faculty. Her father, Arad S. Lakin, organized the missionary activities of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Alabama.
Rust Institute appears to have experienced little of the hostility faced by other Freedman’s Schools in the state. In an 1868 report to the Freedman’s Bureau, Matilda Hindman states that the attitudes of the “intelligent portion” of the community toward the school were “quite favorable.” Newspapers indicate that Huntsville’s white elected officials often spoke at Rust commencement exercises.
Educator, abolitionist, women’s suffragist, and Rust faculty member Matilda Hindman.
Rust students received a well-rounded education, with classes that that included history, science, theory and practice of teaching, language, mathematics, algebra, and bookkeeping. Early on, local families hosted out-of-town students for $5 a month. By 1885, the school acquired a boarding house, charging students $8 a month for meals and lodging.
As students graduated, alumni filled the ranks of the Rust administrative and teaching staff, creating an integrated faculty. In an 1886 article, Huntsville Gazette publisher Charles Hendley praised the school’s policy to “recognize home grown talent and give employment to its worthy students whenever opportunity allows.” Rust graduates also served on the school’s Board of Directors. The student body did not reflect the racial diversity of the faculty, though. Although Freedman’s Schools were open to all, records indicate that the Rust student body remained exclusively Black.
Rust Institute: Enriching the Huntsville community
The intellectual community of Rust Institute flowed beyond the classroom, enriching the cultural life of a larger Black community thirsty for knowledge. The school hosted regular community concerts, established a literary society, and invited the public to graduation examinations. As an indication of Rust’s popularity with influential members of the white community, Huntsville’s Opera House hosted the school’s graduation exercises and concerts.
Rust alumni were the backbone of North Alabama’s early educational system. The first educators to teach in Huntsville’s Black public school were Rust graduates. According to newspaper reports, twenty-five Rust graduates taught in Huntsville’s and Madison County’s Black public schools in 1885.
Putting Rust principles into Practice: Henry C. Binford and Ellen Scruggs Brandon
Rust faculty were leaders in the social movement that brought about the end of slavery.
Henry C. Binford, 1851-1911
When Jim Crow laws and racial segregation eroded the political and civil rights of Black Americans, Rust alumni stepped forward to lead their generation in a march to equality.
Rust alumnus Henry C. Binford made an enduring mark on our city as an educator, principal, elected official, and newspaper publisher. His newspaper, The Journal, became one of the state’s most influential Black newspapers. On its pages, he chronicled the activities of Huntsville’s Black community and provided insightful analysis of current events. A tireless advocate for Black Alabamians, Binford poetically expressed the pain and frustration of his community when the state’s 1901 Constitution stripped most Black and poor white Alabamians of their voting rights.
In an editorial written days after voters approved the Constitution, Binford issued a call challenging his readers to “see how good a citizen you can be.” Ellen Scruggs Brandon, a Rust alumnus, organized the response, pulling together a community of women devoted to equality and racial uplift.
Making the grade
When Huntsville aldermen cut funding to the city’s Black public school in 1905, Brandon and her church members organized fundraisers to fill the gap. They hosted charity bazaars to help those “unable to help themselves.” They formed a Mother’s Club to support Huntsville children, stressing the need to be “wide awake to the needs of the hour…especially for our girls and boys.”
They followed the model established by the National Association of Colored Women’s Club (NACWC) which taught that the social and economic conditions of Black women and children could be improved by “lifting as we climb.” The NACWC became a fervent advocate for women’s suffrage.
Following the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, Ellen Brandon and five of her peers registered to vote, the only Black women in Madison County allowed to do so.
As they walked up the steps to the Madison County courthouse, with poll tax and property tax receipts in hand, one can imagine the faculty of Rust Institute cheering them on.
Rust Institute Graduates, c. 1880.
Castellano is the Executive Director of The Historic Huntsville Foundation. Click here to see more blogs by Castellano about Huntsville’s historic people and places.
