Segregation Scholarships

The untold story of Black Americans in pursuit of higher education in the North when Southern graduate schools were white-only. The academics, who left during the Great Migration, returned to the Jim Crow South to strengthen their communities and to help end segregation. SEGREGATION SCHOLARSHIPS highlights the trailblazers while illustrating the role of education in transforming social conditions.

The untold story of Black Americans in pursuit of higher education in the North when Southern graduate schools were white-only. The academics, who left during the Great Migration, returned to the Jim Crow South to strengthen their communities and to help end segregation. SEGREGATION SCHOLARSHIPS highlights the trailblazers while illustrating the role of education in transforming social conditions.

Black Americans, who pursued a post-baccalaureate education in the North, traveled by train to their respective colleges and universities from the South. But what they endured on the trains, and in the waiting rooms, would be considered a less than second-class citizen experience.

In Southern and bordering states, Black Americans were left out of post-baccalaureate education. To study in the North where they would be welcomed, taxes turned scholarships were given to students by these states. But the opportunity hid the fact that segregation in education remained.

Founded by Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, the Rosenwald Schools were built to educate young Black children in the American South. The educator and philanthropist, who were from two different walks of life but understood supremacy and persecution because of their race and faith, collaborated on this program to advance education when it was segregated between Black and white students.