In the period of reconciliation and optimism that followed the American Civil War, sweeping new amendments to the Constitution would forever abolish slavery, guarantee the equal protection of all citizens under the law, and grant African American men the right to vote. During this period, newly emancipated slaves were openly encouraged learn. But the pursuit of literacy as a means to freedom was not new to African-Americans.

The noble Abolitionist Frederick Douglass taught himself to read and write, and went on to become one of the great American orators of the 19th century. Reflecting on his early life, Douglass wrote that his proudest accomplishment was being a teacher in the Sabbath Schools. There slaves were permitted by whites to learn to read as a prerequisite for their conversion to Christianity.

“I could hold my school under the shade of an old oak tree, as well as anywhere else.” he wrote, “The thing was, to get the scholars, and to have them thoroughly imbued with the desire to learn.”

By the end of the Civil War, social activist Horace Mann was well known outside of his native Massachusetts for arguing that education was a natural right for every child. He talked about the problems of poor teaching, substandard materials, inferior administration and student absenteeism. He reasoned that an educated public would improve society, and that this critical investment should be funded by taxation.

In 1865, The Freedman's Bureau was created by the Federal Government to assist African Americans in adjusting to their new status as free citizens. Separate from white schools that existed at the time, Bureau schools formalized the movement to educate Blacks that began with Missionary efforts and Sabbath schools earlier in the century.

Two years later, Oliver Otis Howard, a decorated veteran and Chief Commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau, helped to establish Howard University, an institution of higher learning for Blacks. It was followed in 1868 by Hampton Institute, founded by another veteran, Samuel Armstrong Chapman. The curriculum at Hampton focused on the manual trades. As the role of education in the lives of African-Americans became more pronounced, there were many different views about how public schooling should be implemented, and what goals it should hope to achieve.

Booker T. Washington had championed vocational training as a vehicle for Black self-reliance since becoming the first Principal of Tuskegee Institute in 1881. His work had long benefited from the philanthropy of wealthy white benefactors. In September of 1895 he spoke at Atlanta's Cotton States and International Exposition.

"Cast down your bucket where you are," he admonished his fellow African Americans, "No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities…in all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

By contrast, W.E.B. DuBois, an activist and intellectual who had received his Doctorate in History from Harvard University, advocated "full manhood suffrage, an end to discrimination in all public accommodations, equal enforcement of the law" and, perhaps most notably, for African American children to be "trained as intelligent humans should be." For DuBois, this meant the opportunity to attend and obtain a liberal arts education in qualified academic settings.

Each man affirmed the power of education to transform the lives of Black citizens, but Washington saw achievement-not protest-as the best way for African Americans to gain equality. It would earn him the nickname "The Great Accommodator" and set in motion a clash of philosophies among Black leadership that would linger into the next century.

In 1896, in its landmark ruling in the case Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the socially supported doctrine of separate but equal. Enshrined in law, the precedent would stand as the legal bastion of resistance to racial integration for nearly 60 years.

In its decision, the Court cited as precedent an 1850 ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. In Roberts v. the City of Boston, the Court had upheld the principal of state-approved segregation of the races. Negro student Sarah Roberts, they ruled, did not have the right to attend Boston's white public schools, which were far superior in resources and facilities.

African American attorney Robert Morris and the great abolitionist lawyer Charles Sumner had argued the case, appealing that to segregate Negro children was to "brand a whole race with the stigma of inferiority and degradation." Segregation, Sumner added, injured white pupils as well, "their hearts while yet tender with childhood are necessarily hardened by this conduct and their subsequent lives, perhaps, bear enduring testimony to this legalized uncharitableness."

In announcing its decision in Plessy, only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented:

"In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."

America as a nation, however, was not yet ready to accept
Harlan's views.