In regard to the elementary education of the Negro children the whole situation is rather discouraging, but great progress has been made and one may hope for still greater progress in the future. The increase in facilities for education between 1866 and 1870 was quite marked, with a corresponding increase in the number of pupils, as shown by the following table:
Increase in Education From 1866 To 1870[24]
| Date | Schools | No. Teachers | Pupils |
| 1866 | 975 | 1,405 | 90,778 |
| 1867 | 1,839 | 2,087 | 111,442 |
| 1868 | 1,831 | 2,295 | 104,327 |
| 1869 | 2,118 | 2,455 | 114,522 |
| 1870 | 2,677 | 3,300 | 149,581 |
The total expenditure for education during this period was $5,879,924. There was in 1870, however, only about one tenth of the Negro children of school age in school. Later, from 1889 to 1909, the number of children enrolled greatly increased:
Percentage of Persons 5 To 18 Years Enrolled[25]
| Date | White | Colored |
| 1889-1890 | 66.28 | 51.65 |
| 1899-1900 | 72.32 | 57.67 |
| 1908-1909 | 74.76 | 58.34 |
In the first year more than half the children were in school, a decade later the increase was practically the same in the case of the Negro children as it was in the case of the white children, but nine years later the percentage had risen over 2 per cent in the case of the white children and had decreased in the case of the blacks. The census report of 1910 shows the percentage of Negro children enrolled in school to be but 47.3 per cent, a decrease of 9 per cent. The average attendance of the Negro children amounted to about one-third of the number enrolled.[26] For these children there were 28,000 teachers, or in other words, one teacher to every group of 57 children; whereas the teachers for the white children averaged one to 45. The report of the Commissioner of Education in 1909 gives a total number of school children in the slave States of 3,054,888, instructed by 9,000 school teachers—3,114 males and 5,886 female.[27] According to this report, there would only be one teacher to every group of 184.35 children. This seems an impossible number, so that one feels that surely something must be wrong with the report. The training of these school teachers is not of the highest, nor do they have a great deal of training. The State School Commissioner of Georgia gives the following report of conditions there:[28]
| 326 | teachers with normal certificates, |
| 129 | teachers with first grade certificates, |
| 476 | teachers with second grade certificates, |
| 2,037 | teachers held third grade certificates. |
The expenditures for all the children equaled $46,000,000, but the Negro children who were one third of the total number received but one seventh of this sum. For 231,801 Negro children South Carolina spent $366,734.28, or $1.58 per capita, whereas Massachusetts spends $27 per capita each year, and the District of Columbia spends $35.21. The South Carolina school tax is heavier than the tax in Massachusetts, but this State spends only $3.82 per capita for white children.[29] Louisiana spends 93 per cent of the school funds for the white children, and 7 per cent for the colored, making a per capita expenditure of $16.60 for the white children and for the Negro an expenditure of $1.59. The District of Columbia spends more for the colored children than for the white, per capita expenditure: white, $20.82; Negro, $21.87.[30]