Private Schools for the Public Good: Historically Black High Schools in the South from Reconstruction through the Progressive Era, 1877–1930

Historically Black high schools and those who led the drive to found them across the South proffer nuanced understandings of private schools and the public good in the history of education and the Black Freedom Struggle from Reconstruction through the Progressive Era. Black education advocates utilized the schoolhouse as a pathway to liberation. They used private means to build schools to establish a public good that stood at the center of communities whose members collectively envisioned a new future through their education. This article examines the deeper origins of secondary schools after Reconstruction through social and political mobilization that led to the founding of historically Black high schools across the South. The historical implications are central to a broader understanding of historically Black high schools and the larger public good they sought to actualize during the nadir of race relations.