Before the Civil War, a higher education for African Americans didn’t exist. Very few who did get an education studied in informal and sometimes hostile environments. If some blacks wanted a higher education,they were forced to teach themselves, and some schools did exist for secondary educationand elementary.
Thousands of freed African American’s wanted a higher education after the Civil War, even though they were still disliked by the whites. The blacks founded Howard, Atlanta,and Fisk Universities,between 1865 and 1868 with the help of Freedmen’s Bureau and other groups. However, private donors could not financially educate or support a great number of black college graduates to meet the needs of the segregated communities. By1900, only 3,880 out of 9 million African American’s got accepted into collegesor professional schools.
In the years after the Civil War, with the reconstruction of the south and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, thing began to change. For example, the Morrill Land-Grant Act stated that using land-grantfunds to open up universities and colleges were supposed to make the schoolsfor both blacks and whites, or to designate money for separate black collegesto serve as an alternative to white schools in 1890.
Between 1870 and 1920, several historical black universities and colleges were established from state legislatures, and the demands for those institutions were increased for years to come by the help of AfricanAmerican churches. Historic black college attendance quickly grew throughoutthis period of debate.
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