Negro Higher and Professional Education in Missouri

Abstract

The geographical location of the state of Missouri has influenced the direction and the rate of development of her program of higher and professional education for Negroes more perhaps than it has any other level of the state's program of education. Moreover this characteristic appears not to be shared generally by the border states. While it is true that other border states share with Missouri the opportunity to secure advanced training in non-segregated institutions of higher learning of neighhoring states, few other border states show the highly neglibile non-urban Negro population found in Missouri. Similarly, records known to the writer indicate that few, if any, other border states have demonstrated a traditional attitude of indifference on the part of Negroes in metropolitan areas toward the state's provisions for higher and professional education as have those of Missouri in past years. In recent years there have been evidences of a change to a more positive attitude toward the state's program. This attitude is indicated by the increasingly large numbers of city students enrolling in the state university for Negroes; by the appointment of a larger number of graduates of the state school to a variety of positions in the public school systems of large cities, and by the legal action taken by Negroes of the state, including those of the large cities, to gain equality of opportunity in higher and professional education. The assumption has often been expressed that the recent concern for publicly supported higher and professional education in Missouri resulted from the influence of a large number of Negroes from states in the lower South. Be that as it may, the more recent attitude appears to be definitely displacing the traditional one. It gives evidence, moreover, of being permanent and of predicting increased effort on the part of Negroes to unite for the purpose of attaining equality of opportunity in higher and professional education.