Decades of Neglect.

The optimistic story of progressive education in the 1910s does not include the seriously impaired educational systems in the South. Beset by economic woes and overwhelming rates of illiteracy, education in the former slave states had failed to develop and advance in the years following Reconstruction. As historian Edgar Knight wrote in 1920, the educational system in the South "bore the odium of bad rule and partisan politics; in consequence, indifference to it was so deadly as to equal outright hostility." Reform efforts had been attempted by the General Education Board, a philanthropic organization formed in 1903 to identify areas of need and render financial assistance. The board promoted secondary education and gave financial gifts to build and maintain hundreds of high schools throughout the South. Through the U.S. Department of Agriculture the GEB in 1906 set up demonstration farms under...