Virginia Vignettes

With no statewide public education system before the Civil War, the Underwood Constitution of 1868 mandated public schools. Over the objections of the traditionalists, one of whom labeled universal education a “Yankee error,” the new system was created in 1870 with enthusiastic support from freedpeople, poor whites, and middle-class groups, the very people for whom there had been few schools in the antebellum period. William Henry Ruffner was appointed superintendent of public instruction. A man of wide-ranging interests in scientific and social questions who had opposed slavery, Ruffner became an advocate of public free schools for both races, believing education produced more productive workers who contributed to economic growth and less criminal behavior. He designed a statewide system of racially segregated schools as mandated by the assembly. In the first year (1870-71), 130,000 students were taught in 2,900 schools; within five years enrollment reached 185,000. However, the system foundered on inadequate funding. Most rural schools were one-room, single-teacher schools; terms were approximately five months; and teachers’ pay averaged $30 a month. It was not until the twentieth century that Virginia began to address these deficiencies.

Further Reading

William A. Link, A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920.

This Vignette Provided By

Ronald Heinemann, Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: The History of Virginia, 1607-2007