The legislature, which met the same year, passed a law[5] which required that the township boards of education, and those in charge of the educational affairs in the cities and the incorporated villages of the State should establish and maintain one or more separate schools for the colored children of school age within their respective jurisdictions, provided the number of such children should exceed twenty. Persons over twenty-one were to be admitted to these schools. The same officers who were in charge of the educational interests of the white schools were to control the Negro schools. The length of the term and the other advantages to be enjoyed by these schools were to be the same as those enjoyed by the white schools of the same grade. This law further provided that if the average attendance for any month should drop below twelve the school might be closed for a period not to exceed six months. In districts where there were less than twenty Negro children, the money raised for their education was to be reserved by the boards of education in those districts and to be appropriated as the boards saw fit for the education of the Negro children upon whom the money had been raised. The same legislature[6] passed an act authorizing towns, cities, and villages to organize for school purposes with special privileges. This act, however, provided that any town, city or village so incorporated should be required to establish one or more Negro schools according to the law. At this session of the legislature[7] there was enacted a law to compel the school authorities in each sub-district to prepare a school census of their respective jurisdictions which should enumerate separately and according to sex the white and the Negro children who were permanently resident within the sub-district. In case the directors failed to perform this duty the township clerk was to have the census taken and to recover from the directors by judicial proceedings the cost of the work. If we were to judge from the constitutional and the statutory laws of this period, we might conclude that the education of the Negro was very popular and that his needs were well taken care of. But before we can draw any conclusion we must study certain conditions. We must know something of the character of the men who were to enforce the law, of the desire of the Negroes for an education, of popular opinion concerning public education, and of the distribution of the Negro population.