Though it seems almost incredible under such conditions, something was nevertheless accomplished. Many children, it is true, learned little or nothing and gave up the pretense of attending school. Others, however, found something to feed their hungry minds and, when they had exhausted what their neighborhood school had to offer, they attended the academies which had been reëstablished or had sprung up in the villages nearby or at the countyseat. Between 1875 and 1890, it was not at all uncommon to find in such academies grown men and women studying the regular high school subjects. Some had previously taught rural schools and now sought further instruction; and others had worked on the farms or had been in business. Men of twenty-five or thirty sat in classes with town children of fifteen or sixteen, but made such a large proportion of the total attendance that they did not feel embarrassed by the contrast in ages.
In the eighties there were scores of these academies, institutes, and seminaries in the towns of the South. They were not well graded; the teachers may never have heard of pedagogy. Their libraries were small or altogether lacking, and their apparatus was scanty; but in spite of these drawbacks an unusually large proportion of the students were desirous to learn. Many teachers loved mathematics or Latin, and some of the students gained a thorough if narrow preparation for college. An examination of college registers of the period shows a considerable proportion of students of twenty-five or thirty years of age. There is even a case where a college student remained out a term in order to attend a session of the Legislature to which he had been elected. The college students of the late seventies and early eighties were serious minded and thought of questions as men and not as boys. Though the clapper of the college bell was sometimes thrown into the well or the president's wagon was transferred to the chapel roof, these things were often done from a sort of sense of duty: college students were expected to be mischievous. Yet the whole tone of college life was serious. There were no organized college athletics, no musical or dramatic clubs, no other outside activities such as those to which the student of today devotes so much of his attention, except, of course, the "literary societies" for practice in declamation and debating.
Though many towns established graded schools before 1890 by means of special taxes, the condition of rural education at this time was disheartening. The percentage of negro illiteracy was falling, because it could not easily be raised, but the reduction of white illiteracy was slow. The school terms were still short, and many of the school buildings were unfit for human occupation. On the other hand, the quality of the teachers was improving. The short term of the schools was being lengthened by private subscription in some districts, and new and adequate buildings appeared in others. Progress was evidently being made, even if it was not obtrusive, and in that progress one of the leading factors was the Peabody Fund.
In 1867 George Peabody, a native of Massachusetts but then a banker of London, who had laid the foundation of his fortune in Baltimore, placed in the hands of trustees $2,100,000 in securities to be used for the encouragement of education in the Southern States. The Fund was increased to $3,500,000 in 1869, though a considerable part consisted of bonds of Mississippi and Florida which those States refused to recognize as valid obligations. The chairman of the trustees for many years was Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, and the other members of the board were distinguished men, both Northern and Southern. The first general agent, as the active administrator was called, was Barnas Sears, who at the time of his election was president of Brown University.
Dr. Sears was an unusual man, who comprehended conditions in the South and was disposed to improve them in every feasible way by using the resources at his command. He had no inflexible program and was willing to modify his plans to fit changing conditions. The income of the Fund appears small in this day of munificent foundations, but it seemed large then; and its effects were far-reaching. Sears was not an educational reformer in the modern sense. He seems to have had no new philosophy of education but took the best schools of the nation as a standard and strove to bring the schools of the South up to that standard. Through the aid of the Fund model schools were established in every State. The University of North Carolina opened its doors to the teachers of the State for professional training during the summer and was apparently the first of the summer schools now so numerous and popular. Direct appropriations in aid of schools were made out of the Fund, provided the community by taxation or subscription raised much larger sums. The Peabody Normal College at Nashville, Tennessee, was founded, and no effort was spared to develop a general interest in public education. Advice to legislatures, trustees, or communities was given when asked but so tactfully that neither resentment nor suspicion was aroused.
Before his death, Dr. Sears had chosen Dr. J. L. M. Curry as his successor, and the choice was promptly ratified by the trustees. Dr. Curry was a thorough Southerner, a veteran of both the Mexican and the Civil War. He had first practiced law and had sat in the House of Representatives of the United States and of the Confederate States. At the time of his election to the management of the Peabody Fund he was a professor in Richmond College, Virginia, and a minister of the Baptist Church. He had a magnetic personality, an unyielding belief in the value of education for both white and black, and the temperament and gifts of the orator. As a Southerner, he could speak more freely and more effectively to the people than his predecessor, who had done the pioneer work. During the years of his service, Curry therefore gave himself chiefly to the development of public sentiment, making speeches at every opportunity before societies, conventions, and other gatherings. As he himself said, he addressed legislatures "from the Potomac to the Rio Grande."
While the influence of the Peabody Fund and its agents was large, it was not the only influence upon the educational development of the South. There were throughout that section men who saw clearly that the main hope centered in education for black and white. They talked in season and out, though sometimes with little apparent result, for the opposing forces were strong. Among these forces poverty was perhaps the strongest. It is difficult to convince a people who must struggle for the bare necessities of life that taxation for any purpose is a positive good; and a large proportion of the families of the rural South handled little money. This was true even for years after the towns began to feel the thrill of growing industrialism. It has sometimes seemed that the poorer a man and the larger the number of his children, the greater his dread of taxes for education.
Then, too, the Southern people had followed the tradition of Jefferson that the best government is that which assumes the fewest functions and interferes least with the individual. Many honest men who meant to be good citizens felt that education belonged to the family or the church and could not see why the State should pay for teaching any more than for preaching, or for food, or clothing, or shelter. There were, of course, those claiming to hold this theory whose underlying motives were selfish. They had property which they had inherited or accumulated, and they objected to paying taxes for educating other people's children. It must be said, however, that as a class, the larger taxpayers have been more ready to vote higher taxes for schools than the poor and illiterate, whose morbid dread of taxation has been fostered by the politician.
There were others who were cold to the extension of public education on account of the schools already existing. In many towns and villages there were struggling academies, often nominally under church auspices. Towns which could have supported one school were trying to support two or three. In few cases was any direct financial aid given by the religious organization, but the school was known as the Methodist or the Presbyterian school, because the teaching force and the majority of the patrons belonged to that denomination. The denominational influence behind these schools was often lukewarm toward the extension of public education, and the ministers themselves had been known to make slighting references to "godless schools." There was still another class of people who really opposed public schools because they did not believe that the masses should be educated. This class was, however, small and is perhaps more numerous in other sections of the Union than in the South.
Last, but by no means the least, of the obstacles to general public education was the question of its influence upon the negro. The apparent effects of negro education were not likely to make the average white man feel that the experiment had been successful. The phrase that "an educated negro was a good plough-hand spoiled" seemed to meet with general acceptance. The smattering of an education which the negroes had received—it would be difficult to call it more—seemed to have improved neither their efficiency nor their morals. As a result there were many white people so shortsighted that they would starve their own children rather than feed the negro.