Southern Problem.

The story of black education during the decade was set almost completely in the South. Nine-tenths of the total black population of the United States, according to the census of 1910, resided in the South. About 30 percent of the population of the South was black, while less than 2 percent of the population of the northern states was reported as minority in that census. In South Carolina and Mississippi more than half the population was black at the beginning of the decade. The South was handicapped by dire poverty, with incomes averaging just $3,449 per school-age child in the eleven southern states in 1912 (an amount derived by dividing the states' total incomes by the number of children in those states), compared to the wealth in Iowa at the same time of $13,473 per school-age child. All public schools in the South suffered from decades of poor economic conditions and neglect, but the black schools suffered...