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On January 7, 1865, 66 delegates to the Missouri State Convention assembled in St. Louis to create a new constitution. Four days later the delegates - nearly three -fourths of whom were Radical Unionists (Parrish 1965, 14, 18) - voted to emancipate the state's slaves as one St. Louis newspaper proclaimed, ** 'Glad tidings of Great Joy'... Missouri Free!" (St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, 12 January, 1865). However, some were unenthusiastic, as, for example, Platte County delegate Samuel A. Gilbert who had exclaimed during the debate, "In the name of God, if you are going to free negroes, send them from us" (St. Louis Daily Missoun Democrat, 13 January 1865).
Chief among issues to be addressed was the education of blacks, which, since 1847, had been illegal in Missouri (Laws of Missouri 1847, 103-104). Following the emancipation vote, delegates drafted a new state constitution providing for public education for all persons from ages five to 21 (Constitution of the state of Missouri 1865, Article IX, Section 1). Between 1865 and, 1893, the General Assembly passed laws creating segregated schools and, establishing, for black schools only, an attendance threshold to allow them to operate. If, in any month, attendance fell below the minimum number, a black school had to close for up to six months.
In 1865, Missouri was one of two border states (slav eholding states remaining in the Union during the Civil War) to enact minimum attendance laws with mandatory closures for black schools. The other state was West Virginia (Jim Crow Laws: West Virginia 2007, 1). Kentucky did not establish a system of public education for blacks until 1874 Q ones, 1). Maryland's 1864 constitution established public education for the first time but did not compel school boards to provide schools for blacks (Fuke 1999, 88). The Delaware legislature failed to recognize black public education until 1875 when it allowed African Americans to tax their own property for black schools. Only in 1881 did Delaware legislators appropriate money from the state's general fund to support black public education (Taggart 1988, 29). In discussions of black education, Missouri is therefore compared favorably to other states where slavery existed. For example, Parrish wrote that by 1875 Missouri had established a black public school system...