Twelve teachers were employed in these schools. In
1871 a sixth Negro school[63] was added and school No. 3 was improved
to accommodate five hundred pupils. There were sixteen teachers and
seventeen school rooms. The expenses for the year amounted to
$11,787.80.[64]

The next year it was reported[65] that good buildings had been built
for the Negro schools. A gain of eight pupils over the number enrolled
the previous year was reported. This small gain was not charged to
indifference, but to a decrease in the Negro population. In 1875 there
were twelve Negro schools in the city. The legislature of that year
passed a bill[66] which permitted the city to establish a Negro high
school with a normal department in the old Washington School building
and was known from this time on as the Sumner High School.

The first teachers of these schools were white, but they were
gradually replaced by Negro teachers. The first teacher[67] of color
was appointed largely through the influence of Samuel Crupples, who
was a member of the Board of Education of St. Louis and also a regent
of Lincoln Institute. He was so impressed with the work done by
Lincoln Institute in preparing Negro children that he favored the
giving of its graduates a trial in the public schools of that city.
The chance to try teachers of color came when the friends of a white
teacher, who had been assigned to a Negro school, protested against
the assignment. From this time on the white teachers in the Negro
schools were gradually replaced by those of color.

Very early in the history of the Negro schools the question of
training teachers came up. The white teachers did not care to teach in
the Negro schools and it was hard to find trained teachers of color at
this date. Ten county superintendents in their annual[68] letters for
1872 mentioned the difficulties which they experienced in obtaining
good teachers for their Negro schools. There was a prejudice on the
part[69] of both the white and the black people of the State against
white teachers for Negro schools; and it is reported[70] that in many
cases the white teachers in these schools did not take the interest in
the advancement of the people which was taken by the Negro teachers.
The positions in the Negro school, moreover, were less desirable than
those in the white schools because the financial returns were less in
teaching in the Negro schools. In 1873 the cities, towns and villages
which reported[71] Negro