Owing to the printers' strike the publication of Dr. C.G. Woodson's illustrated textbook, _The Negro in our History_, has been delayed. It is highly probable that the volume will appear before spring.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM IN MISSOURI[1]
On Tuesday, the eleventh day of January, 1865, the Negro of Missouri awoke a slave; that night he retired a free man.[2] His darkest hour had passed but before him loomed a great task, that of living up to the requirements of a man. His emancipators were confronted with the responsibility of preparing him for his new duties and for the proper use of suffrage which was to be granted him a few years later.
Prior to 1865 the State had seen fit to prohibit the education[3] of the slave because, although the educated slave was the more efficient, yet he was the more dangerous; as his training might aid him to make a better revolt against his position. But the qualities which were objectionable in the slave were necessary to the freed man, if he was to prove other than a menace to the State. His emancipators faced the education of the Negro fairly, and the same convention which had passed the Emancipation Act of 1865, drew up a new State constitution which was ratified the same year. This constitution[4] provided for the establishment and the maintenance of free public schools for the instruction of all persons in the State who were between the ages of five and twenty-one. It further provided that all funds for the support of the public schools should be appropriated in proportion to the number of children without regard to color.
The legislature, which met the same year, passed a law[5] which required that the township boards of education, and those in charge of the educational affairs in the cities and the incorporated villages of the State should establish and maintain one or more separate schools for the colored children of school age within their respective jurisdictions, provided the number of such children should exceed twenty. Persons over twenty-one were to be admitted to these schools. The same officers who were in charge of the educational interests of the white schools were to control the Negro schools. The length of the term and the other advantages to be enjoyed by these schools were to be the same as those enjoyed by the white schools of the same grade. This law further provided that if the average attendance for any month should drop below twelve the school might be closed for a period not to exceed six months. In districts where there were less than twenty Negro children, the money raised for their education was to be reserved by the boards of education in those districts and to be appropriated as the boards saw fit for the education of the Negro children upon whom the money had been raised. The same legislature[6] passed an act authorizing towns, cities, and villages to organize for school purposes with special privileges. This act, however, provided that any town, city or village so incorporated should be required to establish one or more Negro schools according to the law. At this session of the legislature[7] there was enacted a law to compel the school authorities in each sub-district to prepare a school census of their respective jurisdictions which should enumerate separately and according to sex the white and the Negro children who were permanently resident within the sub-district. In case the directors failed to perform this duty the township clerk was to have the census taken and to recover from the directors by judicial proceedings the cost of the work.