By the end of the Civil War in the United States of America there were 4.4 million people of African descent breathing on the soils of the almost century old country. However, only twenty-eight of these millions had received baccalaureate degrees (Drewry 33). During this time only elite and middleclass white males were receiving or had received an education. Even before America had a constitution these men had established and were being educated in private institutions of higher learning. Such as Harvard University, which intended to "advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity" (Drewry 32). The rationale for not educating blacks rested on two flawed logics. The first explanation was that blacks were intellectually inferior. Secondly, many oppositionists felt that educated blacks would compete with the whites economically, politically, and in sexual spheres (Roebuck 23). Nonetheless, many blacks did seek admission to northern white universities, they were assumingly denied. Often laws, usually...