Education in the Reconstruction Era

The concept of universal public education had been accepted in principle since the early nineteenth century, but it had not yet spread throughout the country, and in much of the South it scarcely existed. The Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War became a turning point in the spread of public schooling, especially for the millions of formerly enslaved African Americans who hungered for the education long denied them.

Freedmen's schools, supported by the Freedmen's Bureau, Northern missionary societies, and the freed people themselves, sprang up across the South, teaching children and adults alike to read and write. The Reconstruction state governments, with the participation of Black legislators, wrote provisions for public education into their new constitutions, establishing for the first time tax-supported school systems open to all. Though these systems were poor, segregated, and often resisted, they laid the foundation for public education across the South and represented one of the most enduring achievements of the Reconstruction years.