The Black Struggle for Public Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Illinois

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AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES / ILLINOIS In the pre–Civil War and Civil War periods the Illinois black code deprived African Americans of suffrage and court rights, and the Illinois Free Schools Act kept most black children out of public schooling. But, as Robert L. McCaul documents, black Illinoisans did not sit idly by. They applied bargaining power and the American ideal of community to participate in winning two major victories during this era. By the use of dialectical power, exerted mainly via John Jones’s tract The Black Laws of Illinois, African American citizens helped secure the repeal of the state’s black code; by means of punishing power, mainly through boycotts and “invasions ,” they exerted pressures that brought a cancellation of the Chicago public school policy of racial segregation. McCaul makes clear that the struggle for school rights is but one of a number of such struggles waged by disadvantaged groups. He postulates a “stage” pattern for the history of the black struggle—a pattern of efforts by federal and state courts to change laws and constitutions, followed by efforts to entice, force, or persuade local authorities to comply with the laws and constitutional articles and with the decrees of the courts. RobertL.McCaulisanassociateprofessorofeducationemeritus at the University of Chicago. Southern Illinois University Press 1915 University Press Drive Mail Code 6806 Carbondale, IL 62901 www.siu.edu/~siupress Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-8093-2905-0 ISBN 978-0-8093-2905-2 ...