Article 2: Fugitive Perseverance, Political Resistance, and Emergent Public School Sustainability for Blacks: 19th Century St. Louis, Missouri

Historians routinely report that public schools for Blacks in St. Louis opened in 1866 (Claude and Davis 2019). However, only some 437 Black students were enrolled in three schools. And three times that many (at least 1,500 students) attended private “subscription” schools that year after the Civil War ended (Christensen 2001). For most in Black St. Louis, the public schools in 1866 were located on a road with little freedom on its horizon.

Finally, by 1880, the majority of Black school children and their parents found the public schools amenable to attend. That year, after Black community agitation, Black teachers were located and placed in public school classrooms (Gersman 1972). Black parents responded in overwhelming fashion and lifted what Michael Fultz called a “boycott” of the public schools. Freedom schools need not have been located anymore on the Mississippi River.