Education in Missouri
The new Missouri constitution of 1865 provided for free public schools, with funds appropriated “without regard to color.” But the same constitution, which called for equal educational rights, also established literacy tests for voting. Shortly thereafter, a law was passed which established segregated but so-called “equal schools for blacks.”
Acting on these new laws, the St. Louis Board of Education opened three schools for African-Americans in 1866. Seven white teachers were hired to provide instruction for 437 students. In 1868, the number of schools for blacks rose to five with an enrollment of 924. By 1871, there were six such schools with 16 white teachers.
In reaction to the all-white supervision of the segregated schools, a committee of black citizens wrote to various colleges in an effort to locate and hire competent Black teachers. In 1877, a New Englander, Richard H. Cole, came to St. Louis to accept a position in one of the schools. He was the first of his race to enter the ranks of professional teachers in the city.
The first high school for Blacks, Sumner High School opened in 1875. It is the oldest high school for African-Americans west of the Mississippi. Named for the abolitionist U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, its graduates included some of the outstanding black leaders in the history of the city.
The first kindergarten programs for blacks opened in 1882. They were fashioned after the schools designed by Susan Blow, the St. Louisan credited with starting the first kindergartens in the country.
In 1890, the Board of Education voted to give names to the black schools in the city. It is not clear if the African American community was consulted but judging from the new inscriptions, black citizens let their feelings be known.
The history of Black America is reflected in the naming of these institutions: Dumas, Dessalines, L’Ouverture, Bannaker, Delany, Wheatley, Simmons, Garnett, Vashon, Aldridge and Attucks.
There is no question that these schools for black children were grossly inferior to the white school system. But, from all accounts, strong movements led by black leaders such as Charlton Tandy, James Milton Turner (former minister to Liberia in the Grant Administration and Moses Dickson were underway to stabilize and enhance “the education of Negroes in the city.”
According to the laws of Missouri in the 1800s, it was against the law to teach Black people to read and write. But John Berry Meachum, a former slave who had won his freedom, figured there were some laws that had to be broken and this is what he did.
He established a secret school. He called it “The Tallow Candle School.” It was conducted in a room with no windows so as to avoid being discovered by the authorities – and did those candles burn so bright.
When it came to light that he was teaching, the sheriff closed the operation.
But John Berry Meachum would not be denied and with the help of some friends, he bought a steamboat, fitted it out with a library and classrooms and christened his ship “Freedom School.” He ferried students out to his floating academy. The Mississippi River was Federal territory and the U.S. Government did not recognize slavery... and a generation of children learned their A.B.C’s. It is a wonderful story.
Lloyd Gaines
On December 12, 1938, Lloyd Gaines, an articulate young black man from St. Louis won a monumental civil rights victory. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that Gaines could not be barred from the university segregated law school unless the state could provide a facility of equal merit within its borders. The state had none.
Looking back it seemed that Gaines was about to take his place in the pantheon of figures who desegregated America.
But today, his name is almost forgotten. A few months after his Supreme Court victory, he vanished. He was never seen or heard from again. The reasons have remained a mystery to investigators, his family, friends and scholars to this day.
Even so, Lloyd Gaines’ life was a major step toward the 1954 Supreme Court decision known as Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down segregation in America.
School Desegration
In 1983, St. Louis pioneered a metropolitan-wide school desegregation plan that tried to fuse the predominantly black and poor inner city with 16 mostly white and wealthy suburbs.
The plan, which resulted from a Federal District Court settlement that postponed threatened litigation for five years, involved no mandatory busing and became the largest voluntary school transfer program in the country, with 12,000 children attending schools outside of their designated districts each day.
But as the first five-year phase comes to an end on June 30 and faces review in the Federal court, several factors have emerged that could jeopardize the size and shape of the plan. Nevertheless, other metropolitan areas have already copied parts of the St. Louis program, but no major area has yet tried anything approaching the scale used here.
Once hailed as ''one of the most creative social experiments of our time'' by William H. Hungate, the judge who oversaw its design, the plan fostered many problems. Among them are what some parents and educators in the city called a brain drain of the city's best black students, too few white students coming into the city system and high operating costs, financed mostly, and reluctantly, by the state.
The areawide voluntary school desegregation is nearing an end — and it seems to be passing quietly.
Faced with the end of the desegregation program after this school year, participating school districts a couple years ago voted to extend it five years. At the time, the Lindbergh School District in south St. Louis County said it would let already-enrolled transfer students from city schools move through the pipeline but wouldn’t be accepting new students.
Nonetheless, the program is winding down. When it disappears, many believe the racial diversity the program brought to classrooms will pretty much disappear as well.