At the beginning of this period, popular opinion concerning free public schools in general and Negro schools in particular was not favorable. The school laws of the State were in advance of the people. These laws[16] were the product of a few statesmen who appeared at intervals, and who, in spite of well known social protests, pushed forward with great energy school laws modeled after those of the more progressive eastern States.[17] The State Superintendent complained in his report for 1867 that in those counties in which the southern sympathizers predominated, the people were either wholly negligent or bitterly opposed to their public school right. Three classes of opposers were enumerated;[18] those who believed that the public schools tended to foster infidelity, those who believed that the State, the county or a municipal body had no right to tax for educational purposes, and those who regarded as unnecessary any education beyond reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. In March of the year 1866, four months after the constitution of 1865 had gone into effect, of the thirty-four Negro schools[19] in the State only two were situated in counties in which the southern element predominated. Thus we see that the attitude toward public schools in general was reflected upon the Negro schools.
The school laws themselves, which seem to have been adequate to provide equal school rights for all the children in the State, were easily evaded when the officials of a community were hostile to them. In his first annual report,[20] State Superintendent Parker called attention to the following facts: No remedy was provided in case the township board refused to comply with the statutes. There was no remedy in case the local board of directors refused to hire teachers for the school when the requisite number of pupils were in the district. In this manner, he reported, the Negro children in many districts were deprived of an opportunity to attend school. Even where there was no apparent hostility to the statutes and to the education of the Negroes there was a failure to make the requisite enumeration of the Negro children in many townships and consequently many children were by the very law itself deprived of the benefits of the State school fund. He pointed out that in the year 1867 many would thus be deprived, since the law regulating the apportionment of the State school fund, compelled the apportionment to be made on the basis of the enumeration which had already been made, and which in many cases did not include the Negro children. The law concerning the establishment of Negro schools was abused here and there throughout the entire period. As late as 1876 the State Superintendent complained[21] that in many cases through ignorance of the law and in other cases through willful disobedience of the law, schools for the Negroes had not been established. In the first case, he reported that merely explaining the law had the desired effect and in the other case it was necessary to call the assistance of county clerks and of grand juries.