Alabama’s School Equalization Program
Beginning in the 1940s, Alabama’s government, like those of many other southern states, embarked on a school equalization program in an attempt to preserve racial segregation in its school systems. In response to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) school desegregation campaign, which emphasized the inequality in funding between Black and White schools, the state began to provide more funding for all of its schools, with particular emphasis on improving existing Black schools to forestall integration. Improved Black schools would later be called “equalization schools,” and included many of the Rosenwald Schools built in the decades prior.
Beginning in the 1930s, NAACP attorneys Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall directed their efforts towards dismantling the “separate but equal” underpinnings established by the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court decision by focusing on racial inequalities in education. Organizing teachers to fight for equal pay represented the first stage of the fight towards desegregation. This work would be the beginning of the legal framework leading to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which declared segregated public schools unconstitutional.
During the 1934 school year in Alabama, White teachers earned on average an annual salary of $715 whereas Black teachers earned $296. By emphasizing the pay inequity between Black and White teachers, the NAACP developed a strategy of attacking the “equal” claim first before addressing the “separate” issue. The pay differences between Black and White teachers translated into funding disparities between public schools. Out of the $14.7 million paid to public schools in Alabama in 1934, White schools received $13.1 million. The price of improving Black schools after decades of underfunding proved costly. Alabama would need to spend between $40 million and $150 million dollars to “equalize” the facilities. Arthur Gray, a theologian and the first Black president of Talladega College, noted that trying to maintain separate but equal schools would bankrupt southern states’ governments.
From 1945 to 1970, the state embarked on a school equalization campaign to correct the vast funding differences between segregated schools by improving school buildings and increasing teacher’s salaries to hold off integration. By 1950, Alabama increased Black teachers’ salaries to $1,739 a year, an increase of 450 percent from 1939. Similarly, the state raised per-pupil expenditures for Black schools from $10.65 in 1939 to $65.10 in 1950. White schools, however, continued to receive better funding, with $98.77 allocated for each White student. In 1949 and 1957, the Alabama Legislature commissioned studies to investigate the necessary conditions for school improvement. In addition to recommending more funding for Black colleges, researchers proposed that Alabama’s school equalization program follow the outline set by comparable states such as South Carolina and Mississippi by improving existing school buildings, rather than constructing new ones. Therefore, the equalization program mostly targeted schools built through the Rosenwald Fund, which financed the construction of schools for Black children in the South from 1917 through 1948.
Originally constructed as a Rosenwald School, the Chilton County Training School serves as an example of Alabama’s approach to school equalization. With financial support from the Rosenwald Program, residents of Chilton County had contributed land, labor, and building materials to construct the school in 1924. In 1951, Alabama replaced the original Chilton County Training School building with a long, low, flat-roofed concrete building typical of the mid-century modern school of design. Equalization programs focused on this style to exemplify the latest in school architecture and promote the redesigned schools as model buildings.
In addition to providing more funding for K-12 schools, the 1953 Alabama Legislature authorized $390,000 in funds, distributed over a two-year period, to HBCUs Alabama A&M University, Alabama State University, and present-day Tuskegee University to improve higher education for Blacks in the state. The increase in funding, however, could not undo the decades of unequal access to education for Black students.
Following Autherine Lucy’s attempts to enter the University of Alabama in the 1950s and the Brown v. Board of Education decisions in 1954 and 1955, maintaining racial segregation became a critical campaign point in Alabama elections, part of a broader southern movement of “massive resistance” against desegregation. Of the 11 candidates running for governor in 1958, John Patterson won 31.8 percent of the popular vote in the Democratic Primary after receiving the support of the Ku Klux Klan for his staunch opposition to desegregation. Speaking to the Alabama Senate in 1959 after his election, Gov. Patterson noted that the teachers’ salaries were inadequate and that something needed to be done to provide adequate school facilities to preserve segregation.
To bolster the school budget and fund equalization efforts, the state responded by implementing a one percent sales tax and equalized property tax assessments. These new funds resulted in a 15 percent increase in the public school fund by 1960. In addition, the legislature passed a $100 million school-building campaign in 1960. Within the first year, the state allocated $20 million to the program and distributed $50,000 to each of the 67 counties. Money for Black K-12 schools was largely spent on constructing new classrooms and renovating existing schools.
Every county in the state hosted at least one equalization school. But desegregation often left previously all-Black schools abandoned as students enrolled in previously all-White schools. Similarly, White school boards often continued to harbor racial prejudices towards Black teachers, leaving many teachers unable to apply for jobs in the now-desegregated schools. As Alabama slowly desegregated its school systems following the Lee v. Macon County Board of Education ruling in 1967, Alabama’s equalization schools fell into disrepair as the time and money necessary for counties to maintain duplicate schools proved too costly.
Of all the schools renovated during the Alabama Equalization Program, only Academy Street High School in Troy, Pike County, the Ada Hanna School in Marion, Perry County, East Highland High School in Sylacauga, Talladega County, the Mack M. Matthews School in Dale County, South Girard School in Russell County, and the Chilton County Training School remain. By 2017, the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation and the Alabama Historic Commission placed the Chilton County Training School on its list of “Places in Peril” in need of urgent attention.
