e civil rights bill,[34]
the State Superintendent[35] was astonished at the number of
delinquencies and persistent evasions of the law.

The Commissioner of Education was able to report in 1870: "This State
has a larger proportion of schools[36] for Negro children than any
former slave State. Opposition to the education of the Negroes is
rapidly disappearing. Their rapid improvement and good conduct help to
disarm prejudice." Among the methods of evading the law the following
were reported; the failure to enumerate the Negro children, the
complaints of a lack of funds, and the plea of an inability to secure
teachers. In 1875 the State Superintendent reported[37] that the
citizens of Calloway County, the most strongly southern county in the
State during the Civil War, were evincing the greatest readiness to
provide good schools for their large Negro population. This, he
believed, augured well for the future of the Negro schools of the
State, since it indicated a growing kindly disposition of the southern
element of the State towards them. How great was the change in
sentiment can be readily seen by contrasting this report with those of
the county superintendent for 1866 and 1867. In 1866 the
Superintendent of Calloway reported[38] much objection to public
schools in that county on account of the impartial application to
children of all races and colors. The only Negro school in the county
had been established under very discouraging circumstances at Fulton.
In many rural districts there were not enough children to permit the
establishment of a school and in other districts the existing
opposition to Negro schools made their establishment impossible. The
next year it was reported[39] that the white schools were better
fitted for pigs than for children and that there was no interest at
all in the education of Negro children.

Another factor which effected the development of the Negro school
system was the sparseness of the Negro population. In many districts
and even in some counties there were not enough Negro children to form
a school. In 1871, reports[40] were received from 109 of the 115
counties of the State. Thirty-nine of the 109 counties did not report
a single school district with the required number of Negro children
to establish a school. The other seventy counties reported 395 school
districts having twenty or more Negro children of school age. The same
counties also reported 158 schools for these children. I