The idea her is to outline the developments of Prairie View as conceived by Woolfolk in Prairie View: A Study in Public Conscience.
Terms:
"a bustling optimism" 10 This refers to the reaction to the "African" provision in the Constitution of 1866.
Theses:
- The civil war brought more than just freedom to Blacks. It ignited the desire for free public education.
- The Texas experience may have been different from that of the western South. Anderson asserts the strength of the "ideological position of the planter regime." 4 Woolfolk makes the case that Texas was committed to free, public education for all citizens. "Most students of Texas for this period have been superficial enough to follow the old idea that whites were completely antagonistic to the idea of education for the Freedmen; the record does not bear them out." 12
Early period
1787 Provisions in the U. S. "for giving in each township of new states or territories one or more sections of land "for the use of schools." 4
1833 Mexican government makes it a law that "all children were to be trained in the Catholic schools." Mentions Stephen F. Austin, ""we want free schools for our children." 3
1835 Declaration of Independence of the Province of Texas. Cites the text complaining about no public schools.
1836 Texas Constitution. "It was declared in that instrument that "it shall be the duty of Congress, as soon as circumstance will permit, to provide by law a general system of education." 4
1839 Legislative provision "for future free schools by giving each organized county three leagues of land, divided into tracts of 160 acres each, for the purpose of establishing a primary school or academy in the county." 4
1840 Legislature of the Republic passed an act creating School Commissioners for each county. The "free school" act. "The School Commissioners were empowered to make the proper disposition of the school lands, organize the school districts, inspect the schools, and examine, for the purposes of certification, the teachers to be employed in the county schools and academies." 5
1845 Texas Constitution Legislative duty to "establish free schools throughout the state...." 5
1854 Act to mandate provisions ($2M) "...to be distributed among the counties for the support of schools, on the basis of free white population in each from six to sixteen years of age." 6
1860 Republican Party takes control of the national government.
1865 Creation of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas (1865 - 1870)
1866 New State Constitution had "educational provisions." 8 Provisions for "'Africans,' or persons of African descent, should be exclusively appropriated to the maintenance of a system of schools for Africans and their children." "...marked a new era in the annals of public education in Texas." 9 "enthusiasm" 10 "The values of self-help and self-determination underlay the ex-slaves' educational movement." Anderson 10.
