HongLiang Dong - Question 3

Q3.

       For African Americans in the South after the Civil War, what help did they receive? What challenges did they face?


According to the article "The Education of African Americans After the Civil War " said the government did raise taxes in order to appropriate money for public education. Proponents of this had various rationalizations. First, throughout the post-war South there were much lower literacy and school attendance rates among blacks and whites, as compared to the North. Furthermore, Southern families grew in size, meaning there were more children to send to school. Finally, given the hard economic times, the Southern states struggled to pay teachers and upkeep school buildings unless they taxed. Not everyone favored these taxes, though, and as McClure wrote, it caused " our state to disagree."

Source:    Edward L.Ayers, The Promise of the New South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 417-420.

Unfortunately, though, with the turn of the century, Edward Ayers notes that "black in the south paid for schools for whites--not the other way around. The more black citizens in a country, the greater the benefits to white students." Racial tensions would not disappear for some time.