The American politician Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry (1815-1903) was the main force behind improved education in the South in the latter half of the 19th century.

Born on June 5, 1815, in Lincoln County, Ga., J. L. M. Curry was the son of a slaveholding family that ultimately moved to Alabama. He graduated from the University of Georgia and the Harvard University Law School. While at Harvard, Curry heard a lecture by Horace Mann that awakened his zealous interest in universal education.

In 1845 Curry was admitted to the Alabama bar, and he quickly gained prominence as a lawyer. Three terms in the Alabama Legislature preceded 4 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. During the Civil War he served first in the Confederate Congress and then as a colonel on the staffs of generals Joseph E. Johnston and Joseph Wheeler.

Shortly after his 1866 ordination as a Baptist...