Segregation in the Schools

Segregation.

Segregation in education meant separating black and white schoolchildren from one another, forcing them to attend black-or white-only schools. A national issue, segregation was most prominent in the South, where it was enforced by law and where it fit into a broader pattern of social segregation and political oppression of African Americans known as Jim Crow. The Jim Crow school system was patently unfair to the educational aspirations of millions of southern blacks. In many cases no institution of high training would accept black students; at the primary and secondary levels, white school boards badly underfunded black-only schools, failing to provide adequate facilities, textbooks and instructional materials, or qualified teachers. In 1949, for example, Clarendon County, South Carolina, spent $179 on each white child enrolled in school but only $43 on each black student. While public education was generally in dismal...

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