Northern Foundations and the Shaping of Southern Black Rural Education, 1902-1935

DURING THE FIRST two decades of the twentieth century an educational awakening stirred the American South. Stimulated by Northern philanthropists and their Southern agents, the region experienced a remarkable expansion of its public educational system. In many states laws were changed to strengthen the constitutional basis of public education. The value of schoolhouses increased, illiteracy rapidly decreased, local taxes multiplied, school terms were extended, and teachers' salaries increased considerably. Historians generally view this organized school campaign as the official launching of the Southern education movement. To be sure, white missionaries and black leaders had campaigned for universal education in the South since the Reconstruction era, but in the dawn of the twentieth century white Southerners made their first vigorous, largescale efforts to improve the region's schools. The success of the Southern education movement was a result of the combined efforts of industrial philanthropists and Southern white educators. These two groups formed a powerful new force in the struggle to determine the purpose of Southern education for both whites and blacks. The alliance between Northern businessmen-philanthropists and Southern white school officials was ratified by the creation of two major educational organizations, the