Chapter 42: Tennessee

In 1835 the first Tennessee constitution containing an education article was adopted and stated the necessity of educating the public by assigning a “duty” to the General Assembly for the establishment and appropriation of a perpetual common school fund.¹ After the Civil War ended, a new constitution was passed and ratified in 1870. New language has been interpreted by Tennessee courts as the state’s intent to establish a “uniform” system of education, even though the same section was also amended to “no school established or aided under this section shall allow white and negro children to be received as scholars together in the same school.”²