schools also reported an average salary of
$46.70 per month for male teachers and $40.00 per month for female
teachers. The white schools in the same towns paid an average monthly
salary of $87.72 to male teachers and $46.64 to female teachers.

The first school[72] in the State which was devoted to the work of
training Negro teachers was Lincoln Institute. This school[73] had its
origin in a fund of $6,379 which was contributed by the soldiers of
the sixty-second and sixty-fifth United States Negro infantry. These
men upon being mustered out of service at the close of the war gave
part of their pay to found in Missouri a school where their children
might enjoy the blessings of a good education. The school was opened
at Jefferson City,[74] the State Capital, September 17, 1866. Richard
Baxter Foster, a New England white man who was educated at Dartmouth
College and who had served as first lieutenant in the sixty-second
United States Negro Infantry, became the first principal of this
school.

In his report[75] to the adjourned session of the Twenty-fifth General
Assembly, T.A. Parker, the State Superintendent of Schools, offered as
his most important suggestion for the improvement of Negro schools in
the State, the establishment of a Normal School for the training of
Negro teachers. He gave five reasons why such a school should be
supported by the State: first, the number of teachers were
insufficient to supply the rapidly increasing demand; second, the
character of the teaching in a large proportion of the Negro schools
needed elevating as white teachers of high qualifications could
usually do better in white schools and Negro teachers of high
qualifications could not be found in any great number; third, as
Negroes had not, in many vocations, an equal opportunity with white
people, and as teaching is one of the most respectful and useful
vocations open to them, they should be encouraged to engage in it;
fourth, justice demanded it, for as a large part of the wealth of
Missouri had been produced by the unrequited labor of slaves, it was
but a small return that the State should give to their children, now
free, the largest privileges of education; and fifth, the State gave
no funds to institutions of learning above the grade of common
schools, which were practically, if not by force of law, limited to
white pupils. Equality of treatment demanded that something be
appropriated for a school of higher learning to which th