History of education in the Southern United States
Residents of the Upper South, centered on the Chesapeake Bay, created some basic schools early in the colonial period.
Although it is difficult to know how many ads yielded successful schools, many of the ventures advertised repeatedly over years, suggesting continuity.
[12] [13] Calvin H. Wiley (1819–1887), according to Harlow Giles Unger, in his 12 years as state superintendent of schools in North Carolina overcame traditionalistic opposition and set up the modern system of public education in the region.
For the first time, both whites and blacks would be educated at the expense of the state, but legislators agreed on racially segregated schools.
Generally public schooling in rural areas did not extend beyond the elementary grades for either whites or blacks.
In the 1930s roughly one fourth of the US population still lived and worked on farms and few rural Southerners of either race went beyond the 8th grade until after 1945.
[19][20][21][22] Booker T. Washington was the dominant black political and educational leader in the United States from the 1890s until his death in 1915.
Washington was a respected advisor to major philanthropies, such as the Rockefeller, Rosenwald and Jeanes foundations, which provided funding for leading black schools and colleges.
The Rosenwald Foundation provided matching funds for the construction of schools for rural black students in the South.
[24] At the same time, Washington used his network to provide important funding to support numerous legal challenges by the NAACP against the systems of disenfranchisement which southern legislatures had passed at the turn of the century, effectively excluding blacks from politics for decades into the 1960s.
Middle-class professionals instituted these reforms; they were equally antagonistic to the traditional business elites and to working-class elements.
Schools closed in some instances or shortened their academic year because districts could no longer bear the burden of teacher salaries and administrative costs.
The Depression greatly transformed teachers' working conditions, and educators observed the deterioration of school programs they had spent years building.
[26] "Separate and unequal" was the typical status of education for Blacks and women, as well as poor whites, into the late 20th century.
The community welcomed the SPG plan--the leaders wanted well-behaved white youth who had employable skills.
The goal was to create a permanent Christian community in the slave quarters, characterized by literacy and piety.
[29][30] In the early days of the Reconstruction era, the new Freedmen's Bureau opened 1000 schools across the South for black children.
In the South, people were attracted to teaching because of the good salaries, at a time when the societies were disrupted and the economy was poor.
After the Republicans lost power in the mid-1870s, conservative whites retained the public school systems but sharply cut their funding.
Northern denominations and their missionary associations especially established private schools across the South to provide secondary education.
It required states to identify colleges for black students as well as white ones in order to get land grant support.
This second Morrill Land-Grant Act thus simultaneously provided increased higher educational opportunities for African Americans but encouraged segregation.
[39] Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was of national importance because it set the standards for what was called industrial education.
[40] Booker T. Washington, one of its graduates, founded the influential Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers in 1881.
DuBois emphasized the importance of offering African Americans the opportunity to prove themselves equal to whites by succeeding in traditional, classically oriented B.A.
[43] While the colleges and academies were generally coeducational, until the late 20th century, historians had taken little notice of the role of women as students and teachers.
The College of William & Mary was founded by Virginia government in 1693, with 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) of land for an endowment, and a penny tax on every pound of tobacco, together with an annual appropriation.
[46] In the 20th century training for professional careers in law, medicine, religion, business, and teaching typically involves attending specialized schools after finishing college.
Virginia's College of William & Mary hired the first law professors and trained many of the lawyers, politicians, and leading planters.
George Wythe (1726?–1806), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, gave a one-year course in law at the College of William and Mary starting in 1779.
