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| Ila Upchurch, 1950, Photo courtesy of the Arkansas State Archives. |
African Americans have fought for their rights to education
for centuries. In Arkansas, the goal of equal access to education was helped by
the establishment of a program that funded teaching supervisors in rural,
African American schools.
In 1907, Philadelphia philanthropist Anna T. Jeanes endowed
$1 million for “The Fund for Rudimentary Schools for Southern Negroes.” The
endowment would be used almost exclusively to fund the salaries of teachers who
would be supervisors in black schools.
The aid was very much needed among rural, African American
communities. In the early 20th century, Booker T. Washington, a renowned
African American educator, noted black schools in cities and towns were in much
better shape than their rural counterparts. He said rural schools were
“wretched, the teacher poorly paid and terms last only three to five months.”
Much of the problem stemmed from a lack of will among white
politicians to improve the schools. At times, some white politicians demanded
taxes paid by white citizens fund white schools exclusively. African Americans
should pay for their own schools with their own tax money, they said. The
campaigns to segregate funding for schools ultimately failed, but Arkansas’s
support for black schools remained paltry.
Under the new program, county school superintendents chose
teachers, referred to as “Jeanes supervisors” or “Jeanes teachers,” to work in
rural schools, mostly in the South. The program paid the salaries of Jeanes supervisors.
After the supervisors had been in place for several years, program funding was
expected to slowly dissipate. The idea was to show politicians the benefits of
funding African American schools and to create a will among governments to take
over funding teachers’ pay.
To qualify as a supervisor, a teacher must have skill in the
“practical arts,” such as domestic skills in cooking or sewing or industrial
skills in farming or construction. Jeanes supervisors monitored instruction in
schools and supported other teachers while promoting homemaking projects and
lobbying for better school facilities. They attended local churches, met
community leaders and families, and inquired about local health concerns.
Much of the program’s focus on “practical” education was
meant to ease the concerns of white communities. Some white landowners, for
example, worried African Americans were too focused on education outside of
domestic and farm work, the labor landowners needed to operate their properties.
To allay these fears, some African American schools advertised the lack of any
nonessential educational subjects. For instance, the Hampton Institute in
Virginia prohibited the teaching of Greek, Latin and Algebra at their school.
Still, the program caught on quickly in Arkansas, and by
1913, nine counties had their own Jeanes teacher. J.A. Presson, state agent for
African American schools, estimated Jeanes supervisors traveled 11,251 miles
and visited 156 school in 1917 alone.
One of Arkansas’s most prominent teachers in the program was
Ila Dedia Upchurch, who was born in Buena Vista, Mississippi, in 1892. As a
teenager, she entered Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and later
attended Shorter College, Philander Smith College and Arkansas A&M
University, which today is the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. She
completed summer training sessions and received higher education credits. In
1925, Upchurch became a Jeanes supervisor in Nevada County. During a typical
year, she supervised up to 58 teachers and taught home economics at Yerger High
School in Hope during the summer. For all of this, she was paid $1,350
annually.
By the 1940s, Upchurch had so strongly impacted education in
southwest Arkansas that she was named assistant supervisor for African American
schools in Nevada County. A teacher training school also was named after her.
After retiring from education and opened a sewing and alteration shop. She
remained active in the community until her death in 1989.
In another example, Mary Robinson, who worked as a Jeanes supervisor
in Fordyce, Arkansas, encouraged members of the African American community to
donate money to the local school. She was so persuasive she was able to get the
community to donate enough money to buy a range and cooking
stove, a dining table, six chairs and three sewing machines.
The program improved the quality of education, access to
schools and aid for teachers in rural communities, where resources had been
systemically denied. The efforts meant more schools, more teachers and more
resources for African Americans in Arkansas. For example, during the 1925-1926
school year, the number of African American high schools and teachers doubled,
and the graduation rate increased 68 percent over the previous four years’
totals.
By the mid-1930s, the original Foundation was expanded after
receiving money from several well-known educational funds. The move created
even more opportunities for more schools to have Jeanes teachers.
The program’s accomplishments were achieved despite the
anemic financial support among white communities. This lack of support is best
illustrated at the state level, where, in 1921, Arkansas invested an average of
$31.74 per student in white schools and $8.92 per student in African American
schools.
The program also helped to educate those who would become
leaders in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The program continued
until 1968, after which some counties took over the program and paid teachers’
salaries.
For more information on Arkansas history, contact the
Arkansas State Archives at 501-682-6900 or at state.archives@arkansas.gov.
Information is also available via the website at archives.arkansas.gov.
