The Development and Spatial Patterns of Black Colleges

THE DEVELOPMENT AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF BLACK COLLEGES Janet St. Cyr Henderson and John Fraser Hart* The maintenance of "separate but equal" educational facilities was such an important aspect of traditional racial discrimination in the South that one of the first shots in the War of Desegregation was the 1954 Supreme Court edict banning school segregation. Some of the most dramatic and widely publicized confrontations of the conflict have occurred, whether literally or figuratively, on the schoolhouse steps, as various Federal agencies have attempted to enforce the decisions of the courts. Most of the confrontations have occurred on the steps of white schoolhouses , and relatively few white students have demanded admission to hitherto black institutions at the elementary, secondary, or college level. Many white people, in fact, have only a vague awareness of the very existence of black colleges, and even the knowledgeable few have acquired most of their expertise within the past decade or so. Although they have been largely ignored by most whites, the black colleges have been cherished by their students and alumni, because for nearly a century they provided almost the only hope of higher education for a black person in the United States, and more recently, students from black colleges have participated in some of the most effective campaigns against segregation. (1) The black colleges of the United States are essentially a regional phenomenon. Most were created after the Civil War to provide higher education for black teachers, preachers, farmers, and businessmen; a century later they are still predominantly black, although white students have begun to enroll in some. How did they get started? Where are they? What are they like? Whence do they draw their students? What are their prospects? This paper is concerned with the spatial patterning and character of black colleges within the larger matrix of an evolving educational philosophy and system. ORIGINS. Before the Civil War the very idea of teaching black people to read and write was anathema to many Southerners, who feared that slaves, once literate, might begin to read the seditious writings of the abolitionists and be tempted to rise in rebellion. Most Southern states had Black Codes prohibiting the education of blacks, but a few individuals promoted Sunday schools, religious education, and Bible reading in the hope that such activities would save souls and make the slaves more docile and obedient, and it was virtually impossible to forbid a certain amount of on-the-job training for plantation foremen and artisans. *Mrs. Henderson is a COMGA Fellow, and Dr. Hart is professor of geography, at the University of Minnesota. This paper was accepted for publication in June 1971. 134 Southeastern Geographer Northern churches sent missionaries to work among the slaves and attempted to establish schools for blacks, but in 1864 the United States had only four black colleges, two in Pennsylvania, one in Ohio, and one in Washington, D. C. After the Civil War some Southern whites continued to oppose the idea of education for the emancipated slaves, for fear that it might bring more Federal interference, or that it would make blacks "unfit for the place to which Southern society had consigned them." (2) Nevertheless, under the stimulus of white leaders from the North, no less than thirtyseven black colleges were founded in the dozen years between 1865 and 1877 (Fig. 1). Twenty-three of these were founded under the aegis of churches and other religious organizations (Table 1). Only ten statesupported black colleges were founded during this period, but seven of these ten early starters have become graduate training institutions offering advanced degrees. By 1891 every Southern state except South Carolina (1896) and Oklahoma (1897) had at least one predominantly black college. The founding of four-year black colleges declined after the turn of the century , and only Roman Catholic Xavier ( 1925 ) in New Orleans and statesupported Texas SoutJhern (1947) in booming Houston have been opened o