ites maintained that educating blacks was useless because they were intellectually inferior. So entrenched was racial segregation that such whites could not perceive a time when blacks would have the opportunity to use education even if they did receive one. Blacks in the segregated South could not marry, attend dances, or eat with whites. In some counties a black person could not touch a white man without his resenting it, and blacks were forced to give whites the right-of-way on sidewalks. Every aspect of Southern society was controlled by whites.
Many Southern whites feared that educating blacks would lead to subversion. Cotton plantation owners believed that educated blacks would become dissatisfied with tenant farming. White policymakers rightly assumed that educated blacks would eventually assert their rights: "By limiting the quality and the extent of black education, the white minority could hope to cramp black political aspirations, inhibit black ability to compete economically, and assure an adequate supply of low-wage menial black labor"
...