Segregated schools

Prior to the Supreme Court's decision on Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, segregated schools were the norm in the South. White students attended all-white schools and black students attended all-black schools. Southern counties and school districts consistently spent disproportionate sums of money on educating whites. An example is the state of Mississippi during the 1920s: "Mississippi's largest cities distributed an average of $36.96 for the education of every white child, but only $9.66 (26 percent as much) for every black one" (McMillen, 1990, p. 75).

As a consequence of lack of funding, the physical facilities of black schools were often deplorable. At the turn of the century, black schools mostly consisted of dirt floors, rude wooden benches, and leaking roofs. The schools also were overcrowded. Decades later, the situation was not greatly improved: "during World War II, a local official admitted, 75 percent of all black school buildings were still unfit even for cotton storage. Elsewhere in the state, hundreds were said to be 'hardly better than cattle sheds'" (McMillen, 1990, p. 84). The majority of the black schools were not even in publicly-owned buildings, thus they did not qual

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students who wished to pursue education beyond the eighth grade frequently could do so only by leaving home to attend privately operated boarding schools" (McMillen, 1990, p. 85). The necessity of placing their children in boarding schools or boarding houses near schools was an additional burden on black families who were already financially strapped. Some black families in the rural South had to make tremendous sacrifices for their children to attend school. The inadequacy of segregated schools forced a significant number to conclude that the sacrifice was not worth the effort. Many blacks were tenant farmers on cotton plantations who were only able to subsist with the aid of their children's labor. When there was work in the fields the parents had no choice but to make their children stay home. Some black schools were forced to accommodate the farming schedules or risk empty classrooms. Thus the schools closed their doors during planting and harvesting seasons: "The time for the closing of the school, for example, is not a predetermined date as in the case of white schools, but depends upon the condition of the crop" (Johnson, 1967, p. 108). The result was that the black schools had shorter sessions than the white
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2610
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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