Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/252

240 wise for all children between the ages of five and twenty-one years.” In Alabama the Reconstruction Constiution of 1868 provided that "It shall be the duty of the Board of Education to establish throughout the State in each township or other school district which it may have created, one or more schools at which all children of the state between the ages of five and twenty-one years may attend free of charge." Arkansas in 1868, Florida in 1869, Virginia in 1870, established school systems. The Constitution of 1868 in Louisiana required the general assembly to establish "at least one free public school in every parish," and that these schools should make no "distinction of race, color or previous condition." Georgia's system was not fully established until 1873.

We are apt to forget that in all human probability the granting of Negro manhood suffrage was decisive in rendering permanent the foundation of the Negro common school. Even after the overthrow of the Negro governments, if the Negroes had been left a servile caste, personally free but politically powerless, it is not reasonable to think that a system of common schools would have been provided for them by the Southern states. Serfdom and education have ever proven contradictory terms. But when Congress, backed