Schools for All: The Blacks & Public Education in the South, 1865-1877 (review)

90CIVIL WAR HISTORY and whites to determine whether racial equality or white supremacy would be the guiding philosophy behind public policies" (p 77). Otto H. Olsen Northern Illinois University Schools for All: The Blacks ir Public Education in the South, 1865-1877. By William Preston Vaughn. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky , 1974. Pp. x, 181. $12.50.) Vaughn's account of black education in the South during Reconstruction is a straightforward narrative utilizing excellent research. There are few surprises, however, for the reader familiar with black education —and the lack of it—during Reconstruction. Vaughn traces the beginning of black education during the Civil War, the white reaction to black education, the various struggles in southern states to construct school systems, the experiments in New Orleans public schools and in the University of South Carolina, the faltering attempt of Congress to legislate on education, and the segregationist nature of the Peabody Fund. Though there was the possibility of integrated schools throughout the South during Reconstruction, there were few experiments; the dim ghost of possibility haunts the book making it relevant to a society still unable to accomplish desegregation with grace. The title, Schools for All, is more hopeful than accurate; there were schools only for about 10 per cent of the southern black children during Reconstruction eventually rendering some 25 per cent literate by the end of the era. Southern whites regarded black schools, Yankee schoolmarms , and the Freedmen's Bureau with jealousy and apprehension and preferred southern white to northern teachers with, as Vaughn explains, "their preoccupation with reconstructing the South along New England lines" (p. 28). The southern white insistance on control over all aspects of black life lingered on after emancipation, and many of the northern teachers were intimidated throughout Reconstruction. Vaughn reveals that Radical southern state governments usually avoided the issue of racially mixed schools. Though the experiments in the New Orleans public schools and in the University of South Carolina both worked well in the short run, both ultimately failed as Reconstruction ended. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 had the mixed schools provision amended from it before passage ending any hope of federal support . Thus, as is well known, southern state school systems would limp along separate and unequal for generations. Neither the Peabody Fund nor other philanthropic aid would end southern illiteracy. The main virtue of this book is Vaughn's diligent research and his placing in one work the history of the beginning of black education in the South. Pete Daniel University of Massachusetts, Boston ...