Southern States Spend 10x More Per Pupil on White vs. Black Students

By the 1910s, Southern states routinely spent 10 to 1 or more on white students relative to Black students per capita. In South Carolina in 1915, the state spent $13.98 per white pupil and $1.12 per Black pupil. Alabama spent $11.68 per white child and $2.71 per Black child. Black schools operated in churches and private homes, without books, with teachers earning a fraction of white teacher salaries. Black school terms ran 3-4 months versus 6-7 for white schools. This deliberate underfunding produced an engineered educational gap used to justify continued oppression.