{"id":7005,"date":"2025-05-14T03:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T03:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/?page_id=7005"},"modified":"2026-08-28T16:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T20:25:07","slug":"establishing-schools","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/foundations\/establishing-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Establishing Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-123143e5 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\" style=\"padding-right:300px\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Black residents of Illinois fought hard for schools for their children. Taxpayer-funded public schools were slow to get off the ground, and early state legislation made clear that white students would receive priority. In 1825, the legislature called for a property tax to fund schools that would be \u201cfree to every class of white citizens.\u201d Ten years later, the legislature required school funds to be divided among districts according to the number of <em>white <\/em>children under age twenty-one.[1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Black communities responded in part by establishing independent schools. Black churches frequently doubled as schoolhouses. In 1848, for instance, African Americans in Jacksonville opened a school that provided lessons to seventeen students between the ages of six and twenty-six. By 1850 in Sangamon County, home to the state capital of Springfield, African Americans had organized a school, and a women\u2019s committee was soliciting donations from the white community.[2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">StoryMap: African American Schools in Antebellum Illinois<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00bb <em>Use left and right arrows to navigate, use scroll bar on the right side to read entire length of text.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"frican American Schools in Antebellum Illinois\" src=\"https:\/\/uploads.knightlab.com\/storymapjs\/e86eacc25cd48360efa87123a9a7bfc3\/schools-2\/index.html\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"800\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-123143e5 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\" style=\"padding-right:300px\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Wood River Association (WRA), an organization of Black Baptist churches, organized several schools. Thomas Johnson, the son of Wood River Baptist leader <a href=\"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/delegates\/james-henry-johnson\/\">James Henry Johnson<\/a>, initially taught children in the basement of a private home and then, beginning in 1855, in Salem Baptist Church near Alton. <a href=\"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/delegates\/robert-jonathan-robinson\/\">Robert J. Robinson<\/a> taught a school for thirty-one students in Alton, beginning in 1858 when the city council, responding to Black demands, finally established a taxpayer-funded school for Black children. Robinson\u2019s school was in the basement of Union Baptist Church, which stood on a hill over the town.[3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The leadership of the WRA believed Illinois residents should do more to support the education of Black children. In 1852 the organization issued a public appeal to \u201cthe Generous People of our State.\u201d They requested donations of money, land, or other property to support independent Black schools and ensure that students who could not afford to pay tuition could attend school for free. Representing the WRA, Robinson traveled the state to promote this vision for the education of Black children who were mostly denied access to public schools.[4]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In some areas, Black and white children did attend school together. An early public school in Alton, incorporated by the state government in 1821, was supposed to serve \u201cevery child of suitable age.\u201d In Jersey County, the Hamilton Primary School, established in 1840 by former slaveowner Silas Hamilton, was a Christian school and open to \u201call classes of people.\u201d Black and white children alike also attended the Wood School, built in 1859 in rural Wood Station.[5]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Black Illinoisans worked hard to establish schools for their children. By the early 1850s, many were also <a href=\"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/foundations\/petitioning-for-justice-in-public-education\/\">fighting for justice in school financing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1. Paul Everett Belting, <em>The Development of the Free Public High School in Illinois to 1860 <\/em>(Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society Journal, 1919), 98; Robert McCaul, <em>The Black Struggle for Public Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Illinois<\/em> (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2. \u201cExamination of the Colored School in Jacksonville, Illinois,\u201d <em>National Era <\/em>(Washington, DC), Sept. 14, 1848; <em>Illinois Daily Journal <\/em>(Springfield), June 14, 1850.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">3. \u201cThe Colored School, Mr. John Robinson, Teacher,\u201d <em>Alton Weekly Courier, <\/em>June 17, 1858; Madison County Historical Society, \u201cSchool Segregation in Nineteenth-Century Madison County,\u201d accessed Aug. 26, 2021,<a href=\"https:\/\/madcohistory.org\/online-exhibits\/black-history-in-madison-county-before-1900\/school-segregation-in-19th-century-madison-county\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> https:\/\/madcohistory.org\/online-exhibits\/black-history-in-madison-county-before-1900\/school-segregation-in-19th-century-madison-county\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">4. \u201dH.O.W. to Douglas,\u201d <em>Frederick Douglass\u2019 Paper, <\/em>May 13, 1853.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">5. N. Dwight Harris, <em>The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois and of the Slavery Agitation in that State<\/em> (Chicago: A. C. McClurg &amp; Co., 1904), 230-31; \u201cSchool Segregation in Nineteenth-Century Madison County.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Credits<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Written by Hope McCaffrey. Edited by Kate Masur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black residents of Illinois fought hard for schools for their children. Taxpayer-funded public schools were slow to get off the ground, and early state legislation made clear that white students would receive priority. In 1825, the legislature called for a property tax to fund schools that would be \u201cfree to every class of white citizens.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6829,"parent":6998,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7005","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7005"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7861,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7005\/revisions\/7861"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/black-illinois-organizing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}