History of African-Americans Education

  • 1830

    The Virginia General Assembly forbids the teaching of African-Americans, slave or free, to read or write
  • 1870

    Virginia Law declares that white and African American persons should be taught in separate schools.
  • 1871

    Virginia schools employ one African-American teacher for every 232 school-aged African-American children.
  • 1896

    U.S. Supreme Court endorses the doctrine of "separate but equal" in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case.
  • 1904-1913

    Large amounts of money is donated by wealthy philanthropists and business owners to fund African-American education. Six schools were built from that money in Alabama.
  • 1915

    Virginia schools employ one African-American teacher for every 80 school-aged African-American children (recall the ratio from 1871).
  • 1919

    On average, each white teacher in Virginia is responsible for 33 while pupils, while eacher African-American teacher has 48 African-American pupils.
  • 1921-1922

    Wood Grand donates 2 acres of his land for the Scrabble School to be built on. This school was founded by Isaiah Wallace, who was born in 1876.
  • 1932

    The Rosenwald School program ends after sponsoring 4,977 schools, 217 teachers homes, and 163 shop buildings in 15 states.
  • 1948

    Wallace, founder of the Scrabble School, dies at age 69. Also, George Washington Carver High School opens as the closest high school for African Americans in relation to Scrabble School.
  • 1954

    In Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court overturns Plessy vs. Ferguson to integrate the schools.
  • 1954-1967

    Scrabble School remains open as a segregated school.
  • 1956-1958

    Virginia passes a series of "Massive Resistance" laws to avoid school integration. Over the next decade, tens of thousands of African-American students are denied public education as schools in several cities are closed.
  • 1967

    White students join African-American children at Scrabble School for the school year 1967-1968.
  • 1968

    The Scrabble School is closed and a new integrated school is built.
  • 1970s-1980s

    The black-white achievement gap narrowed but to this day has not narrowed any further.
  • 1971

    African-American 25 to 29 year olds were only about half as likely as their white peers to have completed 4 years of college. To this day, this gap has not diminished).
  • 1992

    African-Americans and white students 16 to 24 year olds who had been retained were about equally likely to drop out of school. However, African-American 16 to 24 year olds were much more likely to have repeated one or more grades.
  • 1993

    African-American high school completion rate was 84% , while the completion rate of their white peers was 90%.
  • 2015

    University of Wyoming creates Diversity Strategic Planning Committee to further create a UW Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement Plan for both long term and short term goals on creating a diverse university. [Link text]