public efforts in furnishing educational facilities for the colored people, especially in preparing pupils for the field that was now widening every day as a result of its early missionary efforts. The Peabody fund was also being distributed in a discriminating and effective way, and the friends of education were greatly encouraged. The tide had turned. public sentiment had at last come up almost unto the strength of unanimity for public education, and it was being generally conceded that the most pressing duty was the breaking up of the great mass of illiteracy, and that the negro must be educated to be fitted for the duties of citizenship.
The outlook in 1875 was still more encouraging, Delaware had organized a thorough school system under a new law, the colored children being provided for by a special tax levied on the colored population. West Virginia reported five normal schools, having 557 students and 85 graduates; North Carolina, 600 teachers in training in teachers' institutes and normal schools "for a demand that could not be supplied"; South Carolina, 39 pupils in the State Normal School; Alabama, three State Normal Schools and five similiar institutions supported by societies, all having 659 students, of whom 533 were believed to be colored; Mississippi, two State Normal Schools for colored pupils, with 351 students. Arkansas had taken a fresh start under the provisions of its newly adopted constitution. In the State Industrial University 58 white students were being trained as teachers, and in another institution sustained by a society, 150 were in training for colored schools. In Tennessee, a normal school had been established. Kentucky for the first time included the colored children in the enrollment of school-children. There was no State Normal School as yet, but 140 normal pupils were reported in two institutions, and 29 graduates from the Louisville Normal School. Missouri returned three State Normal Schools, with 644 pupils.
The year 1876 was a presidential year, and was not favorable, on the whole, to the interests of education. Nevertheless, Commissioner Eaton, in summing up the results of all the reports from the South, was able to say that "after a careful review of these facts, and an attentive consideration of them in their several relations, and with full recognition of the same backward tendency in certain other localities, I am increasingly convinced that their local public sentiment will not tolerate any further retrogression in these States; and that the friends of education may, on the whole, anticipate for their efforts increasing public favor."
In 1877 the reports from the South were gratifying and encouraging. The reconstruction period was ended, and we found ourselves getting on rising ground. The total number of negro children of school age in the late slave States was 1,513,065, and those enrolled, 571,506, There were for these 10,792 schools; besides which there were twenty-seven normal schools, with 3,785 pupils; twenty-three
