"Land-Grant College Legislation and Black Tennesseans: A Case Study in the Politics of Education"

Abstract

OF AMERICAN SECULAR FAITHS, perhaps none has been more resilient than the belief in higher education as a means to a more fulfilling life. The land-grant college movement, initiated by the Morrill Act of 1862, has stood historically as one very tangible article of this faith. Rightly recognized as a revolutionary influence upon American education, this public college movement gave profoundly important impetus to tendencies that were apparent within the nation. A revolt against classical schooling was already under way. Belief in the efficacy of the sciences was gaining momentum. There were simultaneous demands for more practical learning that would emphasize agricultural and mechanical arts instruction. And pervading each of these tendencies was the growing insistence upon the democratization of educational opportunity. (1) Yet the first Morrill Act did vastly more than add impetus to existing attitudes. It also provided a legislative mechanism for synthesizing such ideas into an educational formula of inestimable importance. The federal government was thereafter obligated to support public land-grant colleges within the various states. A large measure of flexibility was added to the prescription, for the reciprocal obligations of the states were not so precisely defined. Agricultural and mechanical education were instructional requirements, yet there was no master organizational model for gauging either the curricular accent or the content of such requirements. Neither were there uniform standards established for governing academic performance. (2) The states' enthusiasm for this land-grant plan was immediately apparent. By 1870 there were thirty-seven states which had agreed to comply with the terms of the act. Within the succeeding decades it became impressively obvious that land-grant colleges had not only arrived, but were beginning to take on adaptable identities as well. Extension work and agricultural