Historic Snaps

Kentucky School Finance History

Over at EdJurist, Justin Bathon has been producing videos illustrative of various school law topics.

On Tuesday he posted a nice explanation of the history of school finance in Kentucky as outlined by Council for Better Education co-counsel Debra Dawahare's "Public School Reform: Kentucky's Solution" and Bill Hoyt's, "An Evaluation of the Kentucky Education Reform Act."



Nice. I found myself wanting more, like something on the Rollback law.

Notes: The number of CBE school districts at the time the Council's case was filed was actually 60 according to the council's own records. CBE kept saying 66 because that represented the number at which Bert Combs agreed to represent them. *

It should be noted that the Corns Committee Bathon refers to was determined to be an unconstitutional intrusion into legislative authority. This separation of powers issue was also key to the summary judgment issued in Young.

* Day, Richard E., Each Child, Every Child: The Story of the Council for Better Education, Equity and Adequacy in Kentucky’s Schools, Ed. D. diss., University of Kentucky, 2003

Martyr for a Cause: Desegregation

Herald-Leader columnist, Merlene Davis, wrote an interesting column recently about the passing of a 107-year old former teacher named Emma Jean Guyn Miller.

In her tribute to Miller's career, Davis wrote that her career ended "when integration made her years of knowledge and experience dispensable."

Interesting choice of words.

Some would argue that many desegregated schools have yet to become integrated. Further, Davis soft-sells what happened to end Miller's career when she called her experience dispensable."

What happened to Miller was an oft told tale in the African American community - so much so that Davis can be forgiven for glossing over it. But many whites have forgotten the "martyrdom" of far too many African American teachers during desegregation in this and other states.

The truth is that during the Jim Crow decades, whites argued that schools for blacks may have been separate, but they were equal to those of whites. Of course, everyone knew that wasn't true. They were funded at roughly a third of white schools. Leftovers from white schools were standard issue for blacks. The evidence of inequity was overwhelming. It was how folks expected things to be.

There was a period of time when African American teachers were better educated than white teachers in Kentucky, and with her teaching credentials as early as 1921, Miller would have been among that better-educated number.

But when segregation really ended in Kentucky - not in 1954 with the Brown decision, nor in 1955 with Brown II, nor in 1964 with the passage to the Civil Rights Act, but following 1968 when Green v County Board made it clear that school districts that continued to resist desegregation would lose federal funding - those African American teachers who had educated so many were simply discarded because politicians and school administrators knew black teachers would not be acceptable to white parents. They couldn't get jobs in desegregated "white" schools.

Following a parallel course, were the once "equal" schools that blacks attended. After desegregation, those building weren't good enough for white children to attend and most were closed: Lexington's Constitution, Jefferson Davis, and Dunbar high School to name only three.

Yes, Miller became dispensable. Many black teachers became dispensable.

This from H-L:

She taught with love and was loved in return

If calls and e-mails to our newsroom are any indication, Emma Jean Guyn Miller touched a lot of lives before her life ended peacefully at her home in Nicholasville on Friday. She was 107 years old.

For more than 40 years, Mrs. Miller was a schoolteacher, starting in a one-room schoolhouse during segregation and ending when integration made her years of knowledge and experience dispensable.

"She taught every person in my family," said Sarah Newby of Lexington. "There were seven of us."

Newby was in "Miss Emma Jean's" primary class in 1942 at Dunbar Elementary School on Chestnut Street in Nicholasville. Mrs. Miller taught first, second and third grades in one classroom, and Newby remembers her being loving but strict.

"She had a mailbox on her desk," she said. "We all took pride in writing her letters, nice letters, and she would read them on Friday. It was so much fun seeing the expression on her face when she read the letters. It made us all excited."

Newby's love of reading and her love of learning came from Mrs. Miller, she said. She transformed that love into a teaching career that spanned half a century in Lexington....

Graves school dating to 1925 rides to new home

This from the Paducah Sun (subscription), Photo by Lance Dennee:

The Hickory Colored School slows traffic as a truck moves it on U.S. 45 on Tuesday morning. The truck traveled 5 miles to Graves County High School, where the building will be renovated.

MAYFIELD, Ky. - Soggy weather couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of Debbie Smith and Kim Wheeler as they stood out in the rain Tuesday morning watching the Hickory Colored School move to its new home on the Graves County High School campus.

“We’re excited to even get it on the road,” said Smith, Gifted and Talented coordinator/teacher for Graves County. “This is the second chapter. We have another chapter to go with it being restored.”

The women found the one-room school on Southern Alley, off Ky. 1241, in Hickory three years ago while researching the Chalk Dust Project, the school system’s initiative to find and chronicle all the county schools. The House family, whose members live mostly out of state, then donated the school to the school system for the purpose of restoration.

The Hickory School, built in 1925 for black students, was funded in part by Julius Rosenwald, a former president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., who started a foundation to build schools for blacks from 1917 to 1932. By 1932, more than 5,300 Rosenwald school buildings, teachers’ homes and vocational school buildings had been built in 15 states, mostly in the South, but the schools are now on the National Trust for Preservation’s list of the 11 most endangered buildings in the United States.

It took most of a $50,000 grant from Lowe’s and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to move the fragile building. A former student, Walter Lynn, 85, even stopped to witness the move. “He was kind of sad to see it go, but happy it was going to be saved,” said Wheeler, community education director.

Edwards Moving Co. of Louisville moved the school, without its roof and floor, to the high school campus. It will be placed on a foundation today in a wooded area visible from the Purchase Parkway.

“We want it to be seen from the parkway so people can see we’re progressive but we also look to our past and heritage because that is what made us today,” Smith said.

Plans are to restore the school and convert it into a museum and learning center. Vocational students are going to rewire it for electricity and work on the original windows. “We’re going to have to beat the bushes to find money,” Smith said. “We’re hoping some civic clubs and even some local individuals will help us out. It’s just kind of fallen together. I’ve talked to teachers and they are so excited about the museum and learning center. They can spend all day and have their kids bring their lunch just like they brought their lunch in the 1920s and ’30s.”

The Chalk Dust book, featuring the history of more than 150 county schools, will be completed next week. It will sell for $10, and is available from Wheeler at
kimberley.wheeler@graves.kyschools.us.

EKU Rededicates One-room Schoolhouse Today

A shining symbol of Kentucky’s educational heritage will be celebrated when Eastern re-dedicates the newly renovated Granny Richardson Springs One-Room School on Tuesday, Nov. 18.

The ceremony, at 1 p.m., will be held at the school site, on Kit Carson Drive across from the University’s Perkins Building. The public is welcome. Speakers will include EKU President Doug Whitlock, College of Education Dean Bill Phillips and Robert Grise, a retired EKU professor and local historian who has often led tours of the facility. Also, the West Irvine Elementary School Choir will perform. Tours will be offered after the ceremony.

(Workers ready the Granny Richardson Springs One-Room Schoolhouse at Eastern for its re-dedication on Tuesday, Nov. 18. From left are Vickie Adams, Francine Bonny, Bruce Bonar, Tom Bonny and Estine Tipton. Adams, Ms. Bonny and Tipton are from the Irvine-Ravenna Kiwanis Club. Mr. Bonny and Bonar are with EKU’s College of Education.)
A fixture on the EKU campus since it was moved from Estill County in 1976, the schoolhouse has undergone an extensive facelift that includes new weather boarding, painting, new windows, interior and exterior lighting, landscaping, new concrete walks and signage.

“Many older Kentuckians attended one-room schools and have fond memories of their school days,” said Tom Bonny, retired superintendent of Estill County Schools who now serves as assistant director of the South East/South Central Educational Cooperative. “This schoolhouse serves as a living replica of education in the early 20th century and helps us all to understand some of the sacrifices our predecessors made to provide or receive an education.”

In 2003, EKU’s College of Education launched an effort to raise funds to renovate the schoolhouse. A $35,000 grant from the EKU Foundation augmented approximately $12,000 in money raised through a benefit event starring Carl Hurley and the late Homer Ledford and from individual contributions.

The Granny Richardson Springs School opened in Estill County in 1900, six years before Eastern Kentucky State Normal School was established, and closed in 1964. It was donated to EKU by the heirs of the late Eli Sparks. The Lee County Board of Education donated furnishings.

Thirty-one students were enrolled in the school’s first year. That number grew steadily, especially after oil was discovered in the area, but declined again during and after World War II.

By 1963, only six pupils attended.

Martha Elkin (Granny) Richardson was born in 1791 in Clark County and later moved to an area near Brushy Mountain in Estill County. She and her husband, Bradley, had 10 children – eight boys and two girls.

The renovated schoolhouse is again available for school and group tours. To make tour arrangements, contact the Dean’s Office in the College of Education at 859-622-1175.

Also, donations are still being accepted and may be sent to the attention of Associate Dean Kim Naugle, College of Education, 420 Combs Building, Eastern Kentucky University, 521 Lancaster Ave., Richmond, Ky., 40475.

SOURCE: EKU press release

Newport Academy: Northern Kentucky's first school, Chartered 1798

This from the Enquirer:

Newport has had a

public school

since 1800

The first public school in Northern Kentucky was Newport Academy, chartered in 1798 and opened in 1800 in Newport.

It was the first academy in the area. The state of Kentucky gave the city of Newport 6,000 acres south of the Green River in western Kentucky, and empowered the town's government to sell the land to help finance the construction and operation of the school.

Newport Academy was erected on a 2-acre site along the north side of Fourth Street, between Monmouth and Saratoga streets, which had been donated by James Taylor Jr.

The state charter required that a 12-member board of trustees be appointed to run the school. The first trustees included Washington Berry, Thomas D. Carneal, John Grant, Thomas Kennedy, Thomas Sanford, Richard Southgate, the Rev. Robert Stubbs and James Taylor.

Stubbs, an Episcopal minister, was hired as principal and given a house, 15 acres of cleared land, and a salary of 75 British pounds sterling per year. Many of the school's first teachers held other jobs, such as surveying or serving as clergymen.

Stubbs resigned after just one year and opened a private boarding school for boys in Campbell County, near the Two Mile House on Alexandria Pike.

A subscription drive was conducted in 1800 for construction of a one-room stone schoolhouse for Newport Academy. The school building measured 20 feet by 32 feet.

Newport Academy's early curriculum consisted primarily of reading, writing and arithmetic, coursework for which students were charged tuition of $8 per year.

However, some advanced instruction was also given, at a cost of $20 per year, in English grammar, the Latin and Greek languages, geometry, astronomy, logic and rhetoric.

Newport Academy was technically a public school, even though it charged tuition.

It operated until 1850, when it was merged with Newport Independent Schools.

The original schoolhouse was used until 1873, and then it was demolished and replaced by a new building to house Newport High School.

Fourth Street Elementary School now occupies the site of the original Newport Academy.

LBJ's Carrot and Stick

Ten years after Brown v Board of Education II the south was still deeply committed to incrementalism - an intentional and illegal foot-dragging - that was announced in 1955 when 101 of 128 southern legislators signed the Southern Manifesto and declared they would not follow the Supreme court ruling.

Not unlike George W. Bush - Lyndon B. Johnson, another of America's Texas presidents, used the political capital he possessed following the assassination of John F Kennedy to drive the political agenda as far to the left as he could. After 911, W headed right.

Part of Johnson's effort was to put some meaning into the Supreme Court's words - "all deliberate speed." To accomplish desegregation in the muleish south, Johnson thought it was necessary to use a two-pronged attack; a "carrot and stick."

The "stick" was already in place with the signing of the Civil Rights Acts in 1964.

His "carrot" was the $4 billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

With the Supreme Court's confirmation in Green v County Board of Education, for the first time it became possible for the federal government to punish school districts that were still refusing to desegregate. Do what the feds say or lose your funds - an approach that did not escape President Bush. In 1963-64, barely 1% of black students were attending school with whites. By 1972 that number had grown to 75%.

The No Child Left Behind Act—the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965—is central to many education policy debates today. But the origin of this groundbreaking law, its structure, and the expansion of the federal role in education since the law's enactment are important to today's debates, yet often overlooked.

Recently, The Education Sector sponsored an event (.pdf & audio transcript) that brought together leaders who have shaped ESEA on Capitol Hill to discuss how the federal role in education began, how it's changed, and what this important history means for accountability debates today and in the future.

The Rosenwald Schools: a little history lesson from C-J

At the start of the twentieth century, schools for white pupils in Kentucky were poor and less than half of the children received a formal education.

The quality of the schools for black pupils were worse. Materials for blacks were essentially leftovers from white classrooms. There were no serious attempts to fund the schools equitably and the 1904 Day Law made it illegal to educate whites and blacks together in Kentucky.

But, black schools were a vital part of the African-American community life. And since the teachers in black schools had often found their choice of occupation limited by segregation, some of the best and brightest went into education, a highly honored profession among blacks.

The state’s 714 black public high school students and 93 graduates in 1900 led the segregated South. In fact by 1907, a higher percentage of black youths in Kentucky attended school daily than did whites.

But things were changing.

State Superintendent John Grant Crabbe commenced the Whilrwind Campaigns joining forces with the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs to visit every community in the state; a "bombardment against Illiteracy and ignorance."

The public response prompted the legislature to pass The Sullivan Bill (sometimes called the County School District Law or the County Administration Law) the most sweeping legisaltion to date. A high school in every county; More money to Kentucky colleges; Enhanced teacher preparations; The creation of EKU, WKU and the renamed K State; Compulsory attendance; and a new set of School laws were the result.

After Crabbe’s reforms Kentucky schools stood 4th in the South.

But then, as happens in Kentucky, the lack of continued support allowed Kentucky to fall to 11th by 1920.

Around this time Julius Rosenwald began a program of school construction aimed at increasing opportunities for blackz in the south. Rosenwald rose to President of the Sears & Roebuck Company following a business innovation that brought city goods to the country - the Sears Catalogue.)

He grew up around the corner from Abraham Lincoln, in Springfield Illinois. Friends with Booker T. Washington, Henry Goldman, Henry Morgenthau and Frank Lloyd Wright, Rosenwald's philanthropic efforts resulted in 4,977 public schools, 163 shop schools and 217 teacher’s homes built in 883 counties in 15 southern states, The effort generated over $28 million for schools built by the African American communities from 1906-1932. The Rosenwald schools educated more than 500,000 students.

This from the Courier-Journal: Photo in C-J courtesy of George Kolbenschlag.

Rosenwald schools improved education for blacks in South

The first time Sylvia White ever heard of Black History Month was in Mrs. Wilda Brown's fourth-grade classroom at the Rosenwald-Jackman School in Columbia, Ky., during the early 1950s. Yet she and her teacher each were helping write a significant chapter in black history that day simply by their presence in the Adair County black school.

The Rosenwald School program was begun in 1912 by Booker T. Washington, the president of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, and his friend and benefactor, Julius Rosenwald, a chairman of Sears Roebuck & Co.

The aim was to improve the quality of education for black children in the segregated South.

Initially, Washington guided the building of six schools for black children in rural Alabama, using money donated to Tuskegee by Rosenwald. The pilot program was so successful that Rosenwald and other philanthropists increased funding. By 1928, about one of every five black schools in the rural South was a Rosenwald School.

Adair County's Rosenwald-Jackman School, co-named in honor of ex-slave and Civil War soldier Parker Hiram Jackman, was among 155 Rosenwald Schools in Kentucky and 4,977 in 15 states from Texas to Florida to Maryland. "It was the center of the community," White recalled.

"Anything social went on there at the school. It was like four rooms, divided, and was probably the only building besides the church available to black people."

Brown began teaching at the Rosenwald-Jackman School in Columbia during the 1940s. When the school burned in 1953, she continued teaching for about two years in makeshift schools in churches and homes in the community. Adair County schools were integrated in 1956, and soon the old Rosenwald Schools became relics of yesteryear.

Brown retired from teaching in Louisville, where she still lives, but returned to Columbia last summer for the dedication of a marker at the site of the former school, which still holds for her many warm memories. "Some of the parents would fix my lunch and send it to me," said Brown.

"And you had respect from children in these small towns, because the parents would come and say, 'My child is here to learn something. I want you to teach them.' "

White remembers numerous inequities between Rosenwald-Jackman and local white schools of the day, but her best memories are of good teachers and school plays which involved many children. Home economics teachers and high school girls often designed and sewed the costumes, using crepe paper. "I remember being Little Red Riding Hood in one play … and a lightning bug in one play," said White. "Somehow we had those little-bitty flashlights tied around our waists and hanging in the back. We thought there was just nothing like it."

Another teacher, Mrs. Edna Crowe, spent six years in her first teaching job as a home economics teacher at the Rosenwald-Jackman School in Columbia. She retired from teaching in Louisville in 1986.

Last summer, local historian Yvonne Kolbenschlag, with help from the Center for Rural Development, obtained a grant to place a marker at the site of the former Rosenwald-Jackman School. She was joined by White and other former students Terry Bradshaw and Donna Frazier in organizing a ceremony honoring Brown and Crowe at the marker's dedication. Adair County once had five Rosenwald Schools, but today only one building is still standing, a former one-room school in the community of Flatwoods a few miles south of Columbia. The building is now owned by the congregation of Santa Fee Baptist Church, which uses it for social gatherings.

I see your Moloch...and raise you a Jesus. My response to the Family Foundation's celebration of the Louisville school desegregation decision

Yesterday, Martin Cothran of the Family Foundation wrote a brief celebration on the Supreme Court decision in Meredith on his blog vere loqui. It is a ruling that has many historical overtones that must be understood. Since the issue hit me in my wheelhouse, I thought a response might be in order.

Cothran implies that those who think diversity is a good thing...(actually he says it better than that)...He says those who "sacrificed children to the idols of egalitarianism and diversity" are the modern descendants of the Canaanite god, Moloch.

Well, this sounds really bad. I believe there is strength in diversity, so I wonder... Have I just been offended?

I don't actually know. I'll have to look up Moloch first...to find out if he was particularly nasty or something. But if I've been sacrificing little children to some Canaanite god and didn't even know it...I'm gonna be hacked off.

Martin is correct to point out that school districts will find other means to promote diversity.

Today I reveal the social liberal's Double-secret Plan B.

~
Dear Martin,

Access to quality education – who gets taught, and the quality of that teaching – is the central issue in the history of education in America.

Our Constitution said that all men were created equal. But in America’s earliest days, with few exceptions, it was the sons of white male landowners who received instruction. Why is that?

Racism? Well, yes…slavery was America’s original sin - but also economics.

Poor children were not thought to be worth the effort. After all, how much schooling is necessary to work a plow? An adequate education in the 19th century didn’t have to meet a high standard – just the 3 R’s (at about a 3rd grade level) would do. This - while children of means learned the classics. Millions of poor white and black children were denied equal opportunities. It was about class and economics – one’s station in life.

As a youngster in all-white Ludlow, Kentucky, I knew what it meant to have low expectations. I believe I was one of two Ludlow graduates in 1969 that went right on to college. That was not the story at the upscale Beechwood School. As bad as it could be for poor white children, being black was an additional burden. Why is that?

Neither group found it easy to get to a high quality school. It was doubly tough in Appalachia.

But, future economic success demands a competitive workforce. That means a 21st century education for all Kentucky children – something I suspect you fully support.

So we have to get the kids to school.

Every day school folks put millions of kids (who can’t drive themselves) on buses. We bus them...all over the place. We bus them from wherever they live. Big yellow busses. Flashing lights but no seat belts. And the wheels on the bus go ‘round.

It would have been nice if we never had to bus kids for reasons of racial desegregation. The best solution is always the presence of a high quality school in every neighborhood. But it didn’t work out that way. Why is that?

I assume nobody is arguing in favor of a return to the separate and very unequal days of Plessy v Ferguson. But when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education I, in 1954, that separate schools for African-American children were unconstitutional the Court was largely ignored. The following year the Court in Brown II ordered schools to begin desegregating. But they didn’t. Instead over 100 southern legislators decried the Court’s “intrusion,” asserted local control, and signed the Southern Manifesto vowing to obstruct where they could.

It was not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the decision in Green v. County Board of Education in 1968 that school districts made any real attempt to comply with the court’s 1954 ruling, and then only under threat of losing federal funds. In the 1963-64 school year barely 1% of black children attended school with white children. By 1972 that percentage had grown to better than 75%.

Social engineering? You bet. Let’s say it together. Social engineering.

It would have been better if the Court had never had to intervene. But I think one can argue that the Court in Brown upheld unpopular principles of the Constitution on Christian moral grounds. As I read the Bible, I have trouble finding any place where Jesus did not gravitate toward the poorest, lowest class, downtrodden, sick, or otherwise despised individual and lift them up. Correct me if I’m wrong. Should we not do likewise?

Of course, the present Court’s ruling was predictable – signaled during oral arguments last March. There is even a rational legal basis for the decision. It is notable that civil rights advocates who argued the need for federal protection in Brown, were now arguing for local control in the Louisville case, Meredith. Legally, what else did they have to argue? It is fairly well understood that today’s residual racial segregation is the result of housing patterns in our cities – not the result of any intentional efforts by school districts to keep the races apart. This under lays Chief Justice Robert’s snappy retort.

So what now?

Is the Court inviting local school districts to return to the days of Jim Crow? Of course not.

I suspect what you will see now is a shift toward economics as a basis for future busing schemes. Since African Americans are overrepresented among the poor, the real impact of the Court’s decision may be limited in some places. In other places, probably in most places, it will result in a racial resegregation. The extent to which communities have built diverse neighborhoods will determine the extent of the impact.

Is this social engineering? You bet. Social engineering and busing. Different ideology, perhaps. Different set of kids maybe. Same buses.

What you won’t see: school districts ignoring the Court.

The solution today is the same as in the beginning. We must have high quality schools in every neighborhood, but the requirements of an adequate education today are much more substantial than in the past. If the citizens of Kentucky will support this effort we will all be better off and the courts won't have to do anything. Actually, our children will all be better off. We need a gainfully employed citizenry – with more employer supported healthcare and a much lower Medicare burden on the state budget. We need to care for the poor – not by giving them a handout, but by giving their children an opportunity to do better.

What would Jesus do?

With respect,

Richard

The birthplace of the black middle class in Kentucky

When the Civil War ended in the spring of 1865, approximately four million blacks were emancipated to fend for themselves. Seeking to address their ignorance and illiteracy, a group of ministers congregated at Louisville's Fifth Street Baptist Church in August of that same year to form an association of black Baptists in Kentucky, the need to make education available to the masses being prime on the agenda.

All of the 12 messengers gathered there to form the State Convention of Colored Baptists in Kentucky -- among them Henry Adams, Elisha W. Green, and George Dupree -- had been enslaved prior to the Civil War and they deeply felt the urgency to establish a school to help both the formerly enslaved and future generations extricate themselves from generations of illiteracy and ignorance.

...a stance of self-sufficiency, though under white supervision, already had been modeled by Louisville's First Baptist Church (now Walnut Street) in 1828 when the congregation dismissed 18 enslaved blacks and granted them permission to congregate for worship, "under their own vine and fig tree."

...Interestingly, the ministers understood that religion alone would not be the sole salvation of their people. In his autobiographical account of his life and ministry, Life of the Rev. Elisha W. Green, the formerly enslaved pastor explained, "…we agreed to purchase the "Hill property," at Frankfort, for the purpose of erecting thereon a college in order to educate our people and get a competent and well educated ministry. We saw from our own ability, and looking at the condition of our people just from slavery, that our effort to do this was a good one."

The churchmen envisioned future generations of free men and women who would be well equipped to compete on an equal footing with whites. According to Green, "We old brethren just out of slavery, many of us not having had the privilege to learn, thought it a grand thing to build an educational structure upon which, when we were dead, our children would look with pride and call us 'blessed.'"

...The Kentucky Normal Theological Institute in Louisville opened its doors in 1879 at Seventh and Kentucky Streets, with Elijah Marrs at the helm. His tenure would only last one year, however, as an intelligent, educated pastor in Lexington captured the Association's attention.

...William J. Simmons agreed to take on the challenge. Fortunately, Simmons had prior experience with resurrecting a fledgling educational institution. He had brought a struggling Washington D. C. school back to life while a student at Howard University. The pastors of the Association hoped that this gifted young educator/preacher would infuse vigor into the institution that had been their dream for over a decade.

Establishing a black liberal arts college that was supported by blacks was more than an ambitious undertaking, it was an anomaly. Many different kinds of schools for blacks existed after slavery, according to historian James McPherson, in his book Abolitionist Legacy. The best schools were financed by white entrepreneurs and philanthropists, like those who sponsored Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee (now University) Normal and Industrial Institute.

...The post-slavery era marked a time when an entire race was trying to go to school, according to Williams, both young and old. "The young wanted to learn and prepare themselves for the future. Older blacks wanted to learn to read Bible before they died."

...From 1879 to 1930, State (Simmons) University was responsible for the education of a large segment of the black masses in Kentucky. During that period, the school experienced a number of transformations in its effort to educate Kentucky blacks. In 1886, Simmons accepted a $1000 grant from the John Slater Fund for the purpose of funding industrial education, something to which the college president previously had been opposed.

At some point, Simmons experienced a change of heart and philosophy regarding the role of industrial schools. In May 1890, after a decade of service to the university, he resigned his position as president to establish an industrial school in Bullitt County, Kentucky.

...One factor that had helped to ensure the school's stability was the 1904 passage of the Day Law, which prohibited blacks and whites being taught in the same classroom. The law helped to make State University the primary provider of black higher education in Kentucky.

...In 1918, Charles Parrish was finally elected president, having served as president of Eckstein Norton for 21 years. Immediately upon assuming the position, Parrish successfully moved to change the name of the school to honor Simmons.

Parrish differed from his predecessors in a number of ways. The first president to graduate from the college, Parrish was an officer of the powerful National Baptist Convention, was well traveled, and had built credibility with local influential whites. Additionally, he was fortunate enough to be financially stable as he was pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, a leading church in the community, director of two banks, and a leader at two leading insurance agencies

Parrish had to tackle a number of problems at the school, mainly financial. Low teacher salaries made recruitment of educators difficult. Simmons University had a history of securing well trained presidents and faculty. In the 1920s, many of the faculty members held degrees from respected black institutions. In 1924, extension courses were offered there by the University of Louisville. These courses were taught by Simmons faculty and adjunct faculty from the black community.

...Between 1888 and the mid-1940s, the law and medical departments had trained many of the black attorneys and physicians.

...By the time World War I was in full effect, Louisville's black community had a number of well-trained professionals in the fields of religion, law, and medicine.

Simmons University had emerged as the college of choice for Kentucky's black middle class as Frankfort's Kentucky State Normal and Industrial Institute was primarily an industrial institute.

...By the fall of 1922, student enrollment had swelled to over 500 students and all available space had reached capacity. A building fund campaign was launch for the purpose of erecting a boys' dormitory, an assembly hall, and a hospital addition. But by 1925, the school's tentative financial standing had become cause for true concern.

...Simmons University was caught in rippling financial crisis that caused the demise of several black banks and businesses in the area. In 1930, the University of Louisville purchased the property at Seventh and Kentucky streets, having appropriated $100,000 for black education five years earlier.

...the close of Simmons as a liberal arts university signaled the close of an era in black self help schools in Kentucky and ushered in the start of a new strategy of using the ballot to achieve black higher education.

This from the Courier-Journal.