Free The Jim Crow Laws and Racism in United States History by David K. Fremon

Chapter 7
    THE KEY TO INDEPENDENCE
    African Americans knew that education was important. An educated person could make his or her own decisions. An educated farmer could total his accounts at the end of the planting season without relying on the white foremen. Education was the key to independence, and an independent black population was the last thing Southern whites wanted.
Education
    Black education was virtually nonexistent in the South before the Civil War. Most African Americans were slaves. White masters felt slaves needed to know only how to do their jobs. Blacks learned survival skills: how to act humble, how to hide their real feelings when insulted, how to soothe the egos of white people.
    Access to free public education was unknown until after the war. At that time, the Freedmen’s Bureau opened schools for blacks. More than four thousand such public schools appeared. Even after the bureau disbanded in 1872, many schools survived.
    Blacks got their education wherever they could. Any available building might serve as a black school. Most schools lacked supplies such as books, pencils, blackboards, and maps. Schools were frequently overcrowded. Black teachers earned a fraction of what their white colleagues received. States often used funds aimed for black education in white schools. Thus, blacks were being taxed to educate whites.
    Black children had shorter school years than white kids. Blacks usually did not start classes until the end of the cotton harvesting season. This could be any time from November to January. Classes ended in early spring, at the start of the planting season.
“The Right and Power of a State”
    Educational inequalities existed, but not everyone was willing to accept them without a struggle. In most cases, courts sided with the white-controlled government, even when injustice was obvious.
    One such case involved schools in Richmond, Virginia. The city had separate schools for white male, white female, and black students. When the black grammar school became overcrowded, school officials closed the black high school and moved the black elementary students there. All white schools remained open.
    Black plaintiffs claimed that the white high schools should be closed as well. The case went to the Supreme Court. Its justices ruled that the states, not the federal government, should control education. The black plaintiffs lost the case.
    A 1908 case involved a small college in eastern Kentucky. Berea College was a private Christian school that did not receive state funds. Nevertheless, the Kentucky government ruled that it had broken state laws by admitting both black and white students. Kentucky law said a college could admit both black and white students—if their classes were at least twenty-five miles from each other.
    The college protested. The college claimed that, by denying students the ability to study together, the government was denying their freedom of religion. The Supreme Court did not agree. Because the college was incorporated in Kentucky, it had to obey Kentucky laws.
    African Americans were not the only victims of educational discrimination. A Chinese-American girl named Martha Lin attempted to enter an all-white school in Mississippi. Her father was not fighting segregation; he just wanted the best possible education for his daughter. This case, too, failed in the United States Supreme Court. Chief Justice William Howard Taft wrote, “The right and power of a state to regulate the method of providing for the education of its youth at public expense is clear.” 1
    Progress in destroying Jim Crow education ranged from slow to nonexistent. Even African-American educator W.E.B. Du Bois suggested that blacks were better off improving black schools than trying to desegregate all-white ones.
Social Engineers
    Charles Houston, along with two hundred thousand other African Americans, volunteered for military service in World War I. College-educated Houston soon became an officer.