Background
New Constitution
In 1867 Congress required Virginia and most of the other former Confederate states to hold conventions to write new state constitutions. The constitutional convention met in Virginia from December 3, 1867, to April 17, 1868, and the new constitution, ratified in July 1869, included an article for the state's first system of public schools. Two dozen African Americans, some of them formerly enslaved, served in the convention, as did several white Virginia Unionists who had embraced radical reform and other men who settled in Virginia during and after the war. The majority favored significant reforms to Virginia's political and social systems and placed the establishment of a system of public schools high on their agenda. They granted adult African American men the right to vote and believed that voters should be educated.
Convention delegate Thomas Bayne, who had escaped from slavery in the 1850s but returned to Norfolk before the end of the Civil War, introduced an amendment to the education clause requiring the schools to be "free to all classes, and no child, pupil or scholar shall be ejected from said schools on account of race, color, or any invidious distinction." The amendment to prohibit racial segregation failed by a vote of 56 to 15. Rejection of the amendment legally left the question of segregation unsettled, but in practical terms it meant that unless the General Assembly decided otherwise the schools were certain to be segregated.
First Year
African Americans in the General Assembly supported the bill, but shortly before it passed J. B. Miller Jr., an African American member of the House of Delegates, made a motion to delete the requirement for racial segregation. The motion failed, and then most of the African Americans voted against passage of the bill as their only means of objecting to what they believed was a denial of rights of equal citizenship they had gained with the abolition of slavery and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
During the summer of 1870, Ruffner and the board of education appointed county school superintendents and 1,400 district school trustees pending the elections the constitution required. The first few schools opened in November. Voters in seventy-three counties agreed to tax themselves to provide more money for the schools, but in twenty-five other counties proposals to provide more money failed to pass. By the end of August 1871 Ruffner and the superintendents had created more than 2,800 public schools, of which more than 700 were for African Americans, and hired more than 1,600 white male teachers, more than 900 white female teachers, more than 300 black male teachers, and more than 150 black female teachers. The schools enrolled about 90,000 white children and 40,000 black children for an average instructional term of four and a half months. The state spent about $450,000 on the schools, but additional county appropriations and money from such foundations as the Peabody Education Fund allowed for a total expenditure for the public schools the first year of $587,472.39.
Some white Virginians opposed public education as an unnecessary innovation, as too expensive, because they disliked paying for the education of freed people, or because they believed it unfair for the state to tax prosperous people to pay for the education of poor children. The new system was, indeed, expensive, and the constitution and laws imposed new taxes on incomes and owners of land to support the system, which raised tax rates by about 20 percent. At the end of the first full year of operations in 1871, Ruffner complained that the schools had received about $175,000 less than anticipated and required.
Building Support
The General Assembly nevertheless drastically slashed the school budget from more than $1,000,000 in 1877 to $570,000 in 1879. About half the schools in the state closed, their teachers lost their jobs, and half the students in the state received no education. By then both the state's political parties had divided into two factions. Funders insisted on paying full interest on the public debt regardless of the consequences to the schools, and Readjusters insisted on reducing both the rate of interest and the amount of the principal to be paid in order to restore money to the education budget. Readjusters framed the political choice facing voters this way: should their tax money be spent to support the schools and for the benefit of the children, or should it be paid to out-of-state and foreign speculators?
At the Turn of the Century
In spite of its inadequacies, the public schools had educated thousands of Virginia's children and by the end of the nineteenth century appeared to many people to be the best hope for the future of Virginia. Thirty-one years after the first public schools opened, William Henry Ruffner proudly commented that "the people are more sensitive in regard to any tendency toward weakening the school system than on any other subject—more so than on suffrage or the race question in any form."
Time Line
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1831 - The General Assembly makes it a criminal offense to receive a salary for teaching enslaved people and prohibits assembling classes of free blacks for the purpose of teaching them.
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1845 - The county of Norfolk establishes a public school system.
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1850 - The city of Norfolk creates a public school system.
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1862 - Virginia's first high school for African Americans, Beulah Normal and Theological School, opens in Alexandria.
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March 3, 1865 - An act of Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau) within the War Department.
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1868 - The city of Petersburg establishes a public school system.
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1869 - The city of Richmond establishes a public school system.
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July 6, 1869 - Voters ratify the new Virginia constitution that requires the General Assembly to create a statewide system of free public schools.
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March 2, 1870 - The General Assembly elects William Henry Ruffner to serve as the superintendent of public instruction.
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July 1870 - The General Assembly passes An Act to Establish and Maintain a Uniform System of Public Free Schools; the law requires racial segregation in the schools.
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November 1870 - The first few state-mandated public schools in Virginia open.
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August 1871 - By the end of this month more than 2,800 public schools have been established in Virginia, more than 700 of which are designated for African Americans. They enroll about 90,000 white students and 40,000 black students.
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1877 - By this year Virginia has established 3,442 public schools enrolling nearly 140,000 white students and about 65,000 black students.
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1878 - The General Assembly reelects William Henry Ruffner as superintendent of public instruction.
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1879 - The General Assembly drastically slashes the public schools budget from more than $1,000,000 in 1877 to $570,000. About half of all public schools close.
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1881 - About 162,000 white students and 77,000 black students are enrolled in Virginia public schools.
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January 13, 1882 - The General Assembly elects R. R. Farr the state superintendent of public instruction.
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1886 - About 197,000 white students and 111,000 black students are enrolled in Virginia public schools.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Julienne, M. E., & Tarter, B. Establishment of the Public School System in Virginia. (2016, July 26). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Public_School_System_in_Virginia_Establishment_of_the.
- MLA Citation:
Julienne, Marianne E. and Brent Tarter. "Establishment of the Public School System in Virginia." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 26 Jul. 2016. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: July 26, 2016 | Last modified: July 26, 2016
Contributed by Marianne E. Julienne and Brent Tarter. Marianne E. Julienne is editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography at the Library of Virginia. Brent Tarter is founding editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography.