Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Public schools===
Historian James D. Anderson argues that the freed slaves were the first Southerners "to campaign for universal, state-supported public education".{{sfnp|Anderson|1988|p=[https://archive.org/details/educationblackss00ande_055/page/n20 4]}} Blacks in the Republican coalition played a critical role in establishing the principle in state constitutions for the first time during congressional Reconstruction. Some slaves had learned to read from White playmates or colleagues before formal education was allowed by law; African Americans started "native schools" before the end of the war; Sabbath schools were another widespread means that freedmen developed to teach literacy.{{sfnp|Anderson|1988|pp=6–15}} When they gained suffrage, Black politicians took this commitment to public education to state constitutional conventions.

The Republicans created a system of public schools, which were segregated by race everywhere except New Orleans. Generally, elementary and a few secondary schools were built in most cities, and occasionally in the countryside, but the South had few cities.<ref name="Tyack Lowe"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Vaughn |first=William Preston |title=Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1865–1877 |date=2015 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813155326}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}

The rural areas faced many difficulties opening and maintaining public schools. In the country, the public school was often a one-room affair that attracted about half the younger children. The teachers were poorly paid, and their pay was often in arrears.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=365–368}} Conservatives contended the rural schools were too expensive and unnecessary for a region where the vast majority of people were cotton or tobacco farmers. They had no expectation of better education for their residents. One historian found that the schools were less effective than they might have been because "poverty, the inability of the states to collect taxes, and inefficiency and corruption in many places prevented successful operation of the schools".{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|p=139}} After Reconstruction ended and White elected officials [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchised Blacks]] and imposed [[Jim Crow]] laws, they consistently underfunded Black institutions, including the schools.

After the war, Northern missionaries founded numerous private academies and colleges for freedmen across the South. In addition, every state founded state colleges for freedmen, such as [[Alcorn State University]] in Mississippi. The normal schools and state colleges produced generations of teachers who were integral to the education of African American children under the segregated system. By the end of the century, the majority of African Americans were literate.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

In the late 19th century, the federal government established land grant legislation to provide funding for higher education across the United States. Learning that Blacks were excluded from land grant colleges in the South, in 1890 the federal government insisted that Southern states establish Black state institutions as [[land grant colleges]] to provide for Black higher education, in order to continue to receive funds for their already established White schools. Some states classified their Black state colleges as land grant institutions. Former Congressman [[John Roy Lynch]] wrote: "there are very many liberal, fair-minded and influential Democrats in the state [Mississippi] who are strongly in favor of having the state provide for the liberal education of both races".{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mayberry |first=B. D. |title=A Century of Agriculture in the 1890 Land Grant Institutions and Tuskegee University, 1890–1990 |date=1992 |publisher=Vantage Press |isbn=9780533095100 |location=New York}}</ref>

According to a 2020 study by economist [[Trevon Logan]], increases in Black politicians led to greater tax revenue, which was put towards public education spending (and land tenancy reforms). Logan finds that this led to greater literacy among Black men.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Logan |first=Trevon D. |date=2020 |title=Do Black Politicians Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=1–37 |doi=10.1017/S0022050719000755 |issn=0022-0507 |doi-access=free}}</ref>