Acting on this advice, the legislature passed in 1870 a bill[76] granting the normal department of Lincoln Institute an annual sum of $5,000 for the training of teachers. In his reports for 1872 and 1873 the State Superintendent commented on the excellent work which this school was doing. But as this school was hampered by debt and could not train the number of teachers needed, he advocated that the State should take a greater interest in the school or better still, the State should take the school over entirely and make it into a normal school for Negro teachers. The annual reports of the State Superintendents from this time up to 1879, when the school was finally given over to the State, contained accounts of the excellent work which this school was doing in the training of teachers and he recommended from year to year that the State should give it more financial aid. By the year 1875 the Negro public school system of Missouri was well established. Elementary schools had been started in all parts of the State. A high school for Negroes had been established in St. Louis and the first steps had been taken towards the establishment of a Negro State normal school. Popular opinion had crystallized in favor of separate schools for Negro children taught by teachers of color. The progress of the Negro schools had been somewhat retarded by a prejudice against public schools in general and to a greater extent by a prejudice against the education of Negroes. Towards the end of the period there was evidence to show that this prejudice was dying out. Much good legislation had been passed with the idea of giving the Negro children the same educational advantages as were held by the white children of the State. The Negro school system of this period was in advance of the corresponding systems in the other States which had recently held slaves.[77] The report of the Commissioner of Education for 1872, shows that there were no public schools for the education of the Negro in Georgia, Alabama, Delaware, Kentucky, and Maryland. Ninety per cent of the Negro school population of Tennessee was without the benefit of public schools. Although the Negro public schools of Louisiana and West Virginia were established before those of Missouri, the greater illiteracy of their population in 1870 and 1880 show that these schools were not as efficient as those in Missouri. THE CRITICAL PERIOD, 1875 TO 1885