<P> The rural areas faced many difficulties opening and maintaining public schools . In the country, the public school was often a one - room affair that attracted about half the younger children . The teachers were poorly paid, and their pay was often in arrears . Conservatives contended the rural schools were too expensive and unnecessary for a region where the vast majority of people were cotton or tobacco farmers . They had no vision of a better future for their residents . One historian found that the schools were less effective than they might have been because "poverty, the inability of the states to collect taxes, and inefficiency and corruption in many places prevented successful operation of the schools ." After Reconstruction ended and the whites disfranchised the blacks and imposed Jim Crow, they consistently underfunded black institutions, including the schools . </P> <P> After the war, northern missionaries founded numerous private academies and colleges for freedmen across the South . In addition, every state founded state colleges for freedmen, such as Alcorn State University in Mississippi . The normal schools and state colleges produced generations of teachers who were integral to the education of African - American children under the segregated system . By the end of the century, the majority of African Americans were literate . </P> <P> In the late 19th century, the federal government established land grant legislation to provide funding for higher education across the United States . Learning that blacks were excluded from land grant colleges in the South, in 1890 the federal government insisted that southern states establish black state institutions as land grant colleges to provide for black higher education, in order to continue to receive funds for their already established white schools . Some states classified their black state colleges as land grant institutions . Former Congressman John Roy Lynch wrote, "there are very many liberal, fair - minded and influential Democrats in the State (Mississippi) who are strongly in favor of having the State provide for the liberal education of both races ." </P> <P> Every Southern state subsidized railroads, which modernizers believed could haul the South out of isolation and poverty . Millions of dollars in bonds and subsidies were fraudulently pocketed . One ring in North Carolina spent $200,000 in bribing the legislature and obtained millions in state money for its railroads . Instead of building new track, however, it used the funds to speculate in bonds, reward friends with extravagant fees, and enjoy lavish trips to Europe . Taxes were quadrupled across the South to pay off the railroad bonds and the school costs . </P>

Many supreme court cases during the reconstruction era worked to