The first teachers of these schools were white, but they were gradually replaced by Negro teachers. The first teacher[67] of color was appointed largely through the influence of Samuel Crupples, who was a member of the Board of Education of St. Louis and also a regent of Lincoln Institute. He was so impressed with the work done by Lincoln Institute in preparing Negro children that he favored the giving of its graduates a trial in the public schools of that city. The chance to try teachers of color came when the friends of a white teacher, who had been assigned to a Negro school, protested against the assignment. From this time on the white teachers in the Negro schools were gradually replaced by those of color.
Very early in the history of the Negro schools the question of training teachers came up. The white teachers did not care to teach in the Negro schools and it was hard to find trained teachers of color at this date. Ten county superintendents in their annual[68] letters for 1872 mentioned the difficulties which they experienced in obtaining good teachers for their Negro schools. There was a prejudice on the part[69] of both the white and the black people of the State against white teachers for Negro schools; and it is reported[70] that in many cases the white teachers in these schools did not take the interest in the advancement of the people which was taken by the Negro teachers. The positions in the Negro school, moreover, were less desirable than those in the white schools because the financial returns were less in teaching in the Negro schools. In 1873 the cities, towns and villages which reported[71] Negro schools also reported an average salary of $46.70 per month for male teachers and $40.00 per month for female teachers. The white schools in the same towns paid an average monthly salary of $87.72 to male teachers and $46.64 to female teachers.
The first school[72] in the State which was devoted to the work of training Negro teachers was Lincoln Institute. This school[73] had its origin in a fund of $6,379 which was contributed by the soldiers of the sixty-second and sixty-fifth United States Negro infantry. These men upon being mustered out of service at the close of the war gave part of their pay to found in Missouri a school where their children might enjoy the blessings of a good education. The school was opened at Jefferson City,[74] the State Capital, September 17, 1866. Richard Baxter Foster, a New England white man who was educated at Dartmouth College and who had served as first lieutenant in the sixty-second United States Negro Infantry, became the first principal of this school.