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Black rural schoolhouses separate, not always equal
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By KATHERINE CUMMINS
The Fulton Sun After the Civil War, former slaves “wanted two things - first, land ... Then, in addition to that ... they wanted to know ... They were consumed with curiosity at the meaning of the world ... They were consumed with desire for schools.” -W.E.B. Dubois, “Black Reconstruction in America.”
It was with this quote from the famous African American writer that William Woods University history professor Brett Rodgers began his lecture on black one-room schoolhouses in Missouri Thursday night as part of the Daniel Boone Regional Library's 2008 One Read programming.
Rodgers agreed with Dubois, noting that owning their own land and achieving an education is “what freedom meant to these people.”
“To them, it was the key to upward mobility - albeit limited upward mobility,” he said.
Rodgers said rural black schools could be found in little pockets throughout the state, where former slaves had settled after the war - primarily in St. Louis and Kansas City and a corridor of counties in between that traditionally are referred to as Little Dixie. According to him, Callaway County had the highest number of black schools, with as many as 28 at one point.
“Callaway is a treasure trove ... it still has more rural black schools standing than anywhere else in the state,” he said.
As Rodgers showed a slide show of photos - including a number of schools from Callaway - he took during a four-year research project with former William Woods professor Gary Kremer into black schools in Missouri, he shared with his audience a little about what he had learned.
According to Rodgers, in 1866 Missouri legislators passed a new law requiring townships “to establish schools for blacks wherever there were more than 20 or more African American children.” Despite that edict, he said there still were a number of impediments to young black students.
“A number of counties refused to enumerate their black children, sometimes they falsified their numbers and some places - when they received funding to build the schools - money disappeared,” Rodgers said. “Finding competent teachers for those schools was a big, big problem also, especially because black parents wanted black teachers.”
It was because of that shortage of qualified black teachers, he said, that James Milton Turner in 1869 appealed to the state for funding for the Lincoln Institute.
“Lincoln was set up to provide education for teachers, but they were primarily going to bigger schools, so in rural areas the teachers - even up into the 1920s and 1930s - were barely qualified, and sometimes only two grades ahead of the students,” Rodgers said.
Even the learning materials were not quite as good as those provided to their white counterparts - including, sometimes, the buildings themselves.
“Buildings that belong to minorities are never built very well - they often have to use inferior, and sometimes even recycled materials,” Rodgers said. “Some of the buildings were castoffs; the whites got a new school, and the blacks got the old one.”
He said leftover schoolbooks and supplies also were often those no longer needed or wanted at the white schools.
“They never got anything new - School No. 1 passed theirs on to No. 2,” Rodgers said. “They would get books that were worn out with pages missing ... they would get the chalk nubs discarded by the white schools.
“That's just the way it worked - that's separate but equal,” he continued. “But they weren't bitter. There is a quote I always use from Faye Holt from Guthrie; ‘We didn't get too far, but we made good with what little we got,' and they really did.”
(Editor's note: Pick up Sunday's edition of The Fulton Sun newspaper for more coverage of one-room schoolhouses in Callaway County.)
Rodgers agreed with Dubois, noting that owning their own land and achieving an education is “what freedom meant to these people.”
“To them, it was the key to upward mobility - albeit limited upward mobility,” he said.
Rodgers said rural black schools could be found in little pockets throughout the state, where former slaves had settled after the war - primarily in St. Louis and Kansas City and a corridor of counties in between that traditionally are referred to as Little Dixie. According to him, Callaway County had the highest number of black schools, with as many as 28 at one point.
“Callaway is a treasure trove ... it still has more rural black schools standing than anywhere else in the state,” he said.
As Rodgers showed a slide show of photos - including a number of schools from Callaway - he took during a four-year research project with former William Woods professor Gary Kremer into black schools in Missouri, he shared with his audience a little about what he had learned.
According to Rodgers, in 1866 Missouri legislators passed a new law requiring townships “to establish schools for blacks wherever there were more than 20 or more African American children.” Despite that edict, he said there still were a number of impediments to young black students.
“A number of counties refused to enumerate their black children, sometimes they falsified their numbers and some places - when they received funding to build the schools - money disappeared,” Rodgers said. “Finding competent teachers for those schools was a big, big problem also, especially because black parents wanted black teachers.”
It was because of that shortage of qualified black teachers, he said, that James Milton Turner in 1869 appealed to the state for funding for the Lincoln Institute.
“Lincoln was set up to provide education for teachers, but they were primarily going to bigger schools, so in rural areas the teachers - even up into the 1920s and 1930s - were barely qualified, and sometimes only two grades ahead of the students,” Rodgers said.
Even the learning materials were not quite as good as those provided to their white counterparts - including, sometimes, the buildings themselves.
“Buildings that belong to minorities are never built very well - they often have to use inferior, and sometimes even recycled materials,” Rodgers said. “Some of the buildings were castoffs; the whites got a new school, and the blacks got the old one.”
He said leftover schoolbooks and supplies also were often those no longer needed or wanted at the white schools.
“They never got anything new - School No. 1 passed theirs on to No. 2,” Rodgers said. “They would get books that were worn out with pages missing ... they would get the chalk nubs discarded by the white schools.
“That's just the way it worked - that's separate but equal,” he continued. “But they weren't bitter. There is a quote I always use from Faye Holt from Guthrie; ‘We didn't get too far, but we made good with what little we got,' and they really did.”
(Editor's note: Pick up Sunday's edition of The Fulton Sun newspaper for more coverage of one-room schoolhouses in Callaway County.)
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