Noah B. Cloud

Noah Bartlett Cloud (January 26, 1809 – November 5, 1875) was an American educator, surgeon, and politician. He served as Alabama's "Superintendent of Public Instruction", the superintendent of public schools after the American Civil War; and served as a state representative for Montgomery County, Alabama, in 1873 in the Alabama House of Representatives.[1] As Alabama School Superintendent he sought to establish a public school system in Alabama for both white and black students.[2] He was labeled a "scalawag" by Southerners.[3]

Noah Bartlett Cloud
Alabama House of Representatives
In office
1873–1873
Alabama Superintendent of Public Instruction
In office
1865–1873
Personal details
Born(1809-01-26)January 26, 1809
Edgefield District, South Carolina, U.S.
DiedNovember 5, 1875(1875-11-05) (aged 66)
Montgomery, Montgomery County, Alabama, U.S.
Alma materJefferson Medical College
NicknameN. B. Cloud

Biography
Cartoon from September 1, 1868, published in the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor. Lakin ("Ohio") and Cloud were the subject's hanging from the tree
Cartoon from September 1, 1868, published in the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor. Lakin ("Ohio") and Cloud were the subject's hanging from the tree

Noah B. Cloud was born on January 26, 1809, in Edgefield District (now Edgefield County), South Carolina.[4] He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Pennsylvania in 1835.[4][5] He was a member of the Whig Party, the Union Party, and then a Republican. He moved to Macon County, Alabama in 1838.[4]

Cloud served as a surgeon in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865).[4] After the war he was appointed the first to be Alabama's "Superintendent of Public Instruction" (now Alabama State Superintendent of Education) for the Alabama State Department of Education.[2] On September 1, 1868, Cloud and University of Alabama's president Arad Simon Lakin were the subject's of a Klan cartoon published in the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor (see image).[6] The cartoon featured images of the two educators lynched and hanging from a tree in the "City of Oaks" (or Tuscaloosa), with a KKK-labeled donkey below them, walking away.[6]

He edited the Cotton Planter magazine (later known as The American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South).[7][8] He married Mary M. Barton. He had a farm on Uchee Creek in Russell County, Alabama.[5]

Some of his correspondence as superintendent of education are extant.[9]

References
  1. "America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War, section 5". Digital History. Valentine Museum in Richmond. 2003.
  2. "Book Note: A Scene in the City of Oaks: Searching for Freedom after the Civil War, by G. Ward Hubbs". May 27, 2016.
  3. Hubbs, G. Ward (2015). Searching for Freedom After the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 9780817318604.
  4. Jordan, Weymouth T. (1951). "Noah B. Cloud's Activities on Behalf of Southern Agriculture". Agricultural History. 25 (2): 53–58. ISSN 0002-1482. JSTOR 3740819.
  5. Jordan, Weymouth T. (1987). Ante-Bellum Alabama: Town and Country. University of Alabama Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-8173-0333-4.
  6. "Klan Cartoon, 1868". Encyclopedia of Alabama. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  7. Owen, Thomas McAdory (1921). History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography. S. J. Clarke publishing Company. pp. 557, 567.
  8. "Dr. Cloud's Southern Rural Magazine, The American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, (New Series) No. 3, No. 7, Montgomery, July, 1859". National Museum of American History, Smithsonian. Retrieved 2023-03-15.
  9. "Q14536 - Q14537". digital.archives.alabama.gov.
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