OPINION: For quality education, the struggle must continue

During the period in which African people were enslaved in the United States of America, it was against the law to teach them to read and write. Those laws, however, were broken in many instances where white slave-abolitionists and enslavers secretly taught them. In some instances the enslaved taught themselves, owing to the fact they descended from well-educated Africans and never lost the desire to be educated and free.

As a consequence, as soon as the Civil War ended, nullifying the prohibitions on educating Black people, schools and colleges for their education began springing up. In the state of Mississippi for an example, more than a dozen Black colleges were established in places like Okolona, Prentiss, Meridian, Rosedale, Natchez, Tougaloo, Holly Springs, Jackson, Vicksburg, West Point, Utica, and Piney Woods. Although the vast majority were private – Alcorn, being the exception – they were fulfilling an insatiable desire and need for their communities.

Many of these colleges taught secondary grades and vocational and teacher preparation classes. In that sense, they truly bridged the gap in many communities. In their role as vocational training schools, they were non-threatening to the southern white population, which would be in the position of hiring laborers. In their role as secondary schools, they were preparing children for college and/or more skilled occupations. In their roles as teacher preparation schools, they were filling the need for trained Black teachers. At that time, individuals were permitted to teach once they graduated from eighth grade. 

Although it may be a strange phenomenon, the development of high schools for Black students was a development coming much later. The ex-Confederates had supported the idea of public schools only if they were segregated. Therefore, once such schools were established, funding was provided in such a manner as to make Black high schools “unaffordable” in most communities. Many Black communities only got suitable buildings, elementary or secondary, when philanthropist Julius Rosenwald provided funds to those local communities. Similarly, many Black schools depended upon the efforts of Anna Jeanes to provide the schools with what would today be classified as highly-qualified teachers. There were also many communities, such as Jackson and Greenville, that were provided their first Black high schools through the generosity of Mother Katherine Drexel, a Catholic who has since been declared a saint.

Across the span of time since the mid-1960s, there have been tremendous changes in the arena of Black education. Schools and colleges have desegregated, Black schools and colleges have closed, federal intervention has taken place, and now we have the threat of the U.S. Department of Education being dismantled. Much of that change swirled around the idea of or effort to diminish what has been done to secure and bolster quality education for African Americans. 

Particularly in Mississippi, private, segregated academies were established; charter schools have been created and called public in order to receive public funds; most of the private Black colleges have closed either because of a lack of funds or under state pressure; Harris and Utica junior colleges have been merged out of their independent status; and Mississippi Valley State University has been so underfunded and threatened with closure until it seems to be merely limping along. 

Current conditions are truly alarming. However, these conditions demand we keep our wits about us and plan how to best meet the challenges.

We bring these matters to the forefront at this time because just as millions of Black youngsters are reaching their peak, not just the Trump administration, but the state government and millions of their fellow citizens are poised to take away Black youngsters’ opportunity for a quality education, a fundamental constitutional right to which they are entitled and for which their ancestors have struggled for more than a hundred years.