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This chapter shows how the emergence of Jim Crow reform in the 1920s stimulated the emergence of what Jim Crow reformers would call the “golden age” of segregated education. In particular, the activities of northern foundations as well as the growing acceptance by many states of a minimal responsibility toward black public education led to this modernization of segregated education. This golden age rested on a mix of white paternalism, black pragmatism, and the institutionalization of state racial management structures.

Chapter One explores the emergence of three 20th Century foundations that promoted southern education reform, the General Education Board, the Rosenwald Fund, and the Negro Rural School Fund (Jeanes Fund). The annual Conference for Education in the South began at Capon Springs, West Virginia in 1898 and brought together an assembly of leaders in farming, business, church, and school, but quickly became an important venue for far-reaching collaboration between reformers, university scholars, northern businessmen, and southerners who represented state interests. The foundations involved in southern education developed from the extensive collaboration that these meetings produced. This chapter argues that education reform was instrumental to the broader goal of state building, and foundation programs specifically targeted state and local governance capacity. An effective public system of education required governance structures that could provide sufficient oversight, integrate a range of state and local agencies, and promote the organization and participation of local communities. Schooling promoted those administrative structures and helped to organize rural black communities. Foundation programs extended black educational opportunity and strengthened local governance capacity, but restricted the quality of education that would be available. Yet, their programs also had the potential to affect black agency over the longer term.

The introduction explains both the historical and theoretical context for understanding southern black education reform in the Jim Crow South. This includes a description of black education reform beginning with Reconstruction, the state of rural black education at the beginning of the 20th Century, and the important role of southern blacks in promoting education reform in local communities. It also describes the emergence of the 20th Century foundations involved in southern education and their interest in creating a stronger national state, a basis for their focus on southern black education between 1900 and 1940. The introduction draws on scholarship in American political development to understand black education reform. Schooling in rural black communities was important to reorganizing state and local governance structures and promoting social policy in the early 20th Century, though the racial state created strict parameters for reform. The introduction describes how APD theory and the use of historical methodology comparing North Carolina and Mississippiprovides important nuance to the accepted historical narrative and makes contributions to the existing literature in southern education reform, American political development, African American history, and foundation history.

Crouch was exposed publicly as a liar during two trials in 1954. During Senate hearings in New Orleans on the Southern Conference Education Fund, Crouch testified at the behest of Senator James Eastland. During his testimony, Crouch asserted that Leo Sheiner, James Domborwski, Aubrey Williams, Clifford Durr, and Virginia Durr were all members of the Communist Party and used the Fund surreptitiously to spread Communist propaganda. The testimony became famous when Clifford Durr threatened and attacked Crouch after he had claimed Durr's wife, Virginia, was a Communist. Worse than the spectacle was the general sense that Crouch was an unbelievable and unreliable witness. Despite that, Crouch also testified in the trial of nine Communists in Philadelphia. During that trial, prosecutors showed Crouch to be a liar when he charged David Davis with being a Communist after denying in previous trials that Davis had any Party affiliation. Although not charged with perjury, the questionable testimony in Philadelphia, combined with the spectacle in New Orleans, effectively ended his usefulness as an anti-Communist informant.

The Mississippi History Project started in 1970 and received funding from the Southern Education Foundation. The Project sought to create a distinctively new type of history textbook that included the silent, the unnamed, and the dispossessed and that reflected modern historical scholarship. It wanted to correct the racial bias that dominate other textbooks. The radical book also featured original design and format features.

Kerr Scott’s roots were in a dairy farm in the middle of the state. Scott was influenced by the passage of a referendum to finance the first school in the area – a measure that passed by one vote cast by an ex slave. His father, Farmer Bob, was heavily influenced by politics, especially the Farmer’s Alliance movement that began in Texas.