Black southerners were left largely illiterate while white schools flourished

Evidence

The institution of the fourteenth amendment in 1868 which states that “No state shall.. .deny…the equal protection of the laws” (Mills, 20) came at a time when the conditions in the South were particularly disturbing. White students were receiving far superior education, largely by private groups, while the blacks were experiencing very little education which left most of the race illiterate (Mills, 47). In some states the law still forbid the education of blacks (Mills, 47). — Marcy Crouch, Magnet Schools and Other Means of…, 4

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins the Fourteenth Amendment’s 1868 equal-protection clause to its concrete historical context.
• XREF: Echoes A Midwife’s Tale’s early-republic New England setting and the era’s patchy access to formal schooling. — connects to: Ninety-five percent of southern blacks were illiterate at the Civil War’s outbreak — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 117