Abstract
Debate over the curricula of Black colleges and universities dates back to before the turn of the century and involved such noted Black leaders as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. The 1890 Land-Grant Colleges eventually established in 17 southern and border states were created to provide institutions for the teaching of the agricultural and mechanical arts to African-Americans. However, due to their being chronically underfunded and understaffed during the early decades of their existence, they focused mainly on teacher training and to a large extent became state normal schools or teacher colleges for Blacks. I argue that the improvements in public education of southern Blacks at the primary and secondary levels during the 1920s and 1930s induced many graduates of the 1890 institutions to become teachers. At the same time the growing numbers and higher quality of these individuals lead to an increase in the returns to time spent in school and induced increasing numbers of Black parents to send their children to school. During the 1930s expenditures per pupil in Black public schools increased, as did the real wages of Black teachers, while average classroom size fell. At the same time both literacy and school attendance of southern Blacks rose. In no small part these changes were due to 1890 colleges and their students.
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Lee A. Craig is Assistant Professor of Economics and Business, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695. He was co-winner of the 1989 Allan Nevins Prize, presented by the Economic History Association for the best Ph.D. thesis in American Economic History. He has published articles in journals such asAgricultural History and theJournal of Economic History, and his book,“To Plant or Sow One Acre More:” Farm Output, Productivity, and the Fall of Rural Birth Rates in the Northern United States is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Craig, L.A. “Raising among themselves”: Black educational advancement and the morrill act of 1890. Agric Hum Values 9, 31–37 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02226501
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02226501