First Black Students at Loyola University: A Strategy to Obtain Teacher Certification

Abstract

As early as 1906, a teachers' certificate could be obtained Louisiana, but it was not available to Black teachers because of the system of racial discrimination, and few White teachers bothered to apply for it. Ten years later, September 1916, the State Board of Education officially set up teacher requirements, but with no mechanism of enforcement. It was not until 1921 that the revised Louisiana State Constitution firmly established a new State Board of Education and authorized it to prescribe the qualifications, and provide for the certification of the teachers of elementary, secondary, trade, normal, and collegiate schools; it shall have authority to approve private schools and colleges.1 An official document published by the State Board of Education 1926 repeats the well-known fact that the Louisiana law required separate public schools for the two races. Furthermore, the document states, in the past and at the present time Louisiana, the conditions under which the two groups of children receive training the public schools are unequal. The Negro schools were on short terms, had inadeqate buildings, insufficient school supplies, and outdated schoolroom equipment; but above all, the State had not provided a teacher-training institution. As a stopgap measure, the document states, since the State has not provided any facilities for